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Concert
Review by Nick Morgan |
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SPARKS,
KIMONO MY HOUSES
Islington Academy
Islington, London
May 18th 2008
Do
you remember Sparks,
Serge? You know, the two weird brothers from LA,
Ron and Russell Mael. Ron’s the funny one
with the weird stare and the Adolph Hitler moustache
who does all the piano playing, and Russell’s
the can’t-keep-still high- pitched singer.
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| They
came to the UK in 1973 and blew everyone away with
their, er, weirdness, scoring a huge hit with ‘This
town ain’t big enough for the both of us’
from their third album, Kimono My House. It was
one of those albums that everyone had when I was
at college. Why I even went to see them play it
in Lancaster. Boy, they were weird. And then almost
as soon as they appeared, they disappeared, back
to the States to relative obscurity (by which I
mean they had a hit record in France) and a dramatic
change in musical style incorporating what was then
called ‘Disco’ and electronic –
all frankly quite weird. |
| And
it was probably only a few years ago that they came
back to my attention seriously when the press started
talking about their 2002 album Lil’ Beethoven
(according to their website a “genre-defying
opus”), which was followed by a number of
one-off appearances in London, and the equally well-received
Hello Young Lovers (“quite simply an extraordinary
masterpiece” says their website). Now, in
a gesture of genre defying weirdness Ron and Russell
have decided to perform all their albums live in
London over a period of twenty-one nights, finishing
with the premiere of their new release, Exotic Creatures
of the Deep (“Should it be possible for two
people to be so fresh, so vital, so unpredictable
and so incomparably individual?” says you-know-what).
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| That’s
right, twenty-one albums in twenty-one nights. How
weird is that? If you do the math (the brothers
did on their website) it comes out as over 250 songs,
or 4,825,237 notes. And as the brothers said themselves,
“Only Sparks would dare to take on this challenge,
this mammoth undertaking, this melodious epic, this
ground-breaking concept, this celebration of musical
greatness past and present.” Weirdness epitomised. |
| Actually
it’s not weird at all. The
21-night series has been a huge PR coup for
the brothers Mael, who for the past month have hardly
been off the pages of the broadsheet press, off
both popular and ‘highbrow’ radio shows,
or off the culture programmes on the box in the
corner. And as the gigs are being streamed live,
they have a world-wide audience. They’ve certainly
sold out the Academy tonight, and I would think
will be taking a fair revenue from these gigs, in
addition to the anticipated boost in sales for their
new album. All very clever and very calculated.
Why, even Ron’s wacky appearance was apparently
conceived as a way of capturing the attention of
television cameras. |
| Shame
to relate that they’ve chosen to perform the
first twenty albums at the Carling Academy Islington,
a small rectangular and soulless concrete box in
the middle of a newish shopping development bordering
posh, middle class Islington and tough gangland
Islington. When it was first opened Eurythmic Dave
Stewart had promised it would be a revival of the
famous Soho Marquee
Club, but that lasted barely four months before
it closed, eventually reopening under the tutelage
of the brewery-sponsored Carling Academy chain.
We did hear Jim White perform an almost studio-
perfect rendition of Drill a Hole in that Substrate
there, so there’s nothing particularly wrong
with the sound. But then it was only about two-thirds
full at the very most. |
Russel Mael |
Tonight
it’s about one hundred and twenty per cent
full. It’s night number three, and it’s
Kimono My House. We’re tightly packed like
suffocating sardines in a claustrophobic hot and
jostling crowd. It’s not fun, and it’s
slightly frightening. Next to me is apparently one
of Islington’s famous rock stars (I haven’t
got a clue who he is, but with long hair, too many
pounds and a Yorkshire accent I suspect a heavy
metal bass guitarist). He’s drinking iced
vodka by the half pint and regaling wide-eyed civilians
(who appear to be buying most of the vodka) with
tales of touring in LA, whilst evading his wife’s
calls on his mobile ‘phone. |
| There
are Sparks fans of all ages, sizes, genders and
trans-genders in this increasingly unpleasant place,
which is becoming reminiscent of the infamous Black
Hole of Calcutta. |
| After
what seems like interminable trash from a DJ whose
only applause was earned when he put on his jacket
to end his set, the brothers take the stage. |
| From
a distance, their appearance has changed little
since my last encounter with them in 1973. But it’s
really hard to say as I can barely see a thing (which
means the diminutive Photographer might just as
well be witnessing a soccer match for all she knows).
Occasionally I manage to get glimpse of Ron, and
whenever I do he’s staring straight at me
with a disapproving glower, just like one of those
old paintings in a horror B-movie. |
 |
His brother is jumping energetically round the stage
and working hard to make his high notes. Their band,
none of whom could have been born when the record
was released, are surprisingly loud and heavy (with
initially, a very over-bearing bass, as vodka rock
star and I agreed). And as they break into the first
track, ‘This house’ many of the crowd
start exhibiting dervish-like tendencies, which
only adds to the unpleasantness of the experience.
We last seven songs, all very well executed, before
fighting our way out to the cool air of a London
spring night. Inside, Sparks went on to finish the
album and play as a special track (one is promised
as an encore for each night) ‘Barbecutie’,
the B-side of ‘This House’. And I couldn’t
help thinking, as we drove back west, that I’d
heard enough to convince me that Sparks really were
very, very clever, but like English footballer Martin
Peters, were probably ten years or more ahead of
their time. And perhaps victims of their own ‘weirdness’
too, with punters failing to see the real substance
in their work through the novelty. So a worthy time
then for twenty-one nights of reassessment. It’s
just a shame that they chose such a shithole
poor venue to perform in. - Nick Morgan (concert
photographs by Nick) |
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