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Russell and Ronald in Japan, 2011 (bad quality)

#the worst thing that ever happened to the Sparks fandom #was the deactivation of puncturesparksboom

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#ron mael #russell mael #sparks

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SPARKS: Rock of the 80′s 

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Sparkstember Day 15

Sparks throughout the 80's

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Rhi Rhi and Ron Ron

#one of the best posts I ever made

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Go take a look at this beautiful trove of old SparkSound magazines someone is selling on eBay. For the price they might as well be made out of gold, but the seller's been nice enough to take big, largely readable photos of so many of the issues. Is there a similar digital hoard of scanned versions? I'd love to see more! (I've seen photo pages in full but only snippets of the rest.) The absolute like... raw, sloppy, fanzine chaos of these as as official publications from a major label band is blowing my fucking mind, even if it is just for the fan club. It's literally their mom cutting and pasting and cramming mentions from both Melody Maker and TV Guide onto an A3 sheet of paper, layouts be damned. The apostrophe on her typewriter is broken for a couple issues but she carries on with an asterisk. She's also around 60 by this point and banging this out to an audience of hundreds or thousands like it's a local Kiwanis club newsletter. But she's doing it with gusto, by gum, and it's punk as hell. The best thing about it is that the lack of style is made up for by the absolute top-tier access to the band, and her being surprisingly on top of pertinent details.

For those of you who weren't in a fandom before the internet, those behind-the-scenes photos were like your favorite band's proof of life. There was no Instagram or Twitter, or anything that proved they existed between national TV appearances and touring in your area (besides those mentions in Melody Maker anyway). If you were lucky, your fandom had the capacity to trade videotapes and people in Scranton could see local TV appearances in Los Angeles and vice-versa. If you were really lucky they weren't all copies of copies with potato quality sound and video. Likewise, if you wanted the 12" extended European dance mix of a song with a B-side unavailable in the US, you had to either special order it somewhere and pay through the nose, hope it was in the imports section of a record store (and still pay through the nose), or you had to trade cassettes or burned CDs and hope the other person didn't flake on you. The fact that she's saying "Don't go running to the import section yet, the single will be out on ____ record label on this date with this track listing" is WAY more info than we usually got from our official sources. All "Mary Martin" needed to do for exclusive content was take pictures of her sons on vacation. On one page she's absolutely dunking on Russell them in wry cut-and-paste captions and on another she is the perfect hype man, telling people shows at The Greek Theater are gonna sell out so get your tickets early (but hold your horses on travelling- they're working on Japanese dates for September so you may not need to fly to the US). The personal thank-yous! The CARE! *slams fist on table* If any other band had their mom as the head of their fan club it'd be the most contrived shit in the universe, a complete lie, or both. I fucking love these guys.

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“After 10 attempts at reading and completing James Joyce’s magnificent ‘Ulysses’ and only making it to page 10 each time, on attempt number 11, I finally did it! Hallelujah! ‘Ulysses’ should be a real inspiration to anyone interested in breaking the rules in any art form.” -Ron

#ron mael #sparks #ulysses #james joyce

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#in case you missed it #timezone reblog #or have blocked me then you're not going to see the good stuff I post then are you

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#ooh 1975 #Ron drop your skincare routine please

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80's Sparks propaganda!

^ Some of Russell's attire.

Dick Clark always enjoyed having them on American Bandstand, their 80's American Bandstand performances are pretty famous among the fans. (Especially the one where Ron took over the mic, after which Dick Clark sent the letter seen above.)

^ Here we see them with Jane Wiedlin from The Go-Go's (also running in this competition) on American Bandstand, they did the song Cool Places together. (The music video for it is also worth checking out. As are most of their videos, actually, and they definitely had some good ones in the 80's.)

^ Some album covers people may enjoy.

^ Another collaboration, with the French band Les Rita Mitsouko.

^ Music That You Can Dance To era, which I personally am especially fond of.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk/80's Sparks crash course. VOTE SPARKS!

My Bloody Valentine vs. Sparks

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#puncturesparksboom #MORE PLEASE

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TODAYS RECORD: NO. 1 IN HEAVEN BY SPARKS (1979)

No. 1 in Heaven is the eighth studio album by American pop rock band Sparks. Known for their theatrical pop records that span genres, Sparks looked towards disco and electronica for their next record after years of indulging in all kinds of traditional rock music.

The album was produced by Italian producer Giorgio Moroder who caught Sparks attention when he produced Donna Summer's "I Feel Love." The sound of No. 1 in Heaven would become a staple of Moroder's future production; Layered sequencers and synthesizers, underpinned with layered drums, overdubbed vocals, and backing vocals.