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SPARKS
Discussions about the band SPARKS
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| What do we really think about Lil' Beethoven?! |
| It's a masterpiece man! |
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65% |
[ 78 ] |
| It's not a masterpiece! But above average! |
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18% |
[ 22 ] |
| It's OK, but they have done better... |
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9% |
[ 11 ] |
| I don't get this sort of stuff! |
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2% |
[ 3 ] |
| Ron & Russell! Lil' Beethoven was crap! Pure craaap!! |
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5% |
[ 6 ] |
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| Total Votes : 120 |
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Dog Water
Groupie
Joined: 21 Jan 2007
Posts: 106
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
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 Posted: Mon Dec 10, 2012 2:12 pm Post subject: |
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| Pim Derks wrote: | | Funny, Ugly Girls is the only track which doesn't do anything for me :) |
Yeah, looking through the thread, it seems you're not alone. Funny how different people can like the same group but totally different tracks! |
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Fletcher Honarama
Groupie
Joined: 20 May 2007
Posts: 124
Location: Elation, joy.joy..joy
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| Posted: Thu Feb 21, 2013 4:00 pm Post subject: |
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it's not one of their best i'm sure but i like it, but then again i'd listen to a recording of them farting in the bath. Suburban Homeboy is stand out for me but then again I did like 'Back Home' the 1970 World Cup song
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......and second prize goes to Tracey Wise |
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Notnastassia
Newbie
Joined: 11 Feb 2013
Posts: 10
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| Posted: Tue Mar 05, 2013 9:05 pm Post subject: |
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I wish I could say that this album has gotten better with time, but it's the one album of theirs that i hardly EVER play.
The only songs I truly love on it are "How Do I Get..." and "Ride 'Em Cowboy"; spectacular songs.
Weirdly, my least favorites seem to be everyone's favorites: Suburban Homeboy and Rhythm Thief...oh well c'est la vie |
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bryan_davey
Sub-Deity
Joined: 11 Jan 2003
Posts: 1434
Location: west wales, miles from real life!!
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| Posted: Wed Mar 06, 2013 6:38 am Post subject: |
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| i would now like to here the album, re released with added percussion, taking to a totally different angle, with really pounding beats and added synths...this would be a marvellous set of songs to transform 10 years later.....!!! |
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tackytigress
Newbie
Joined: 06 Mar 2013
Posts: 2
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| Posted: Fri Mar 08, 2013 8:45 pm Post subject: |
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| One of the best in my mind. Pretty much every time the band have re-invented themselves it's been ridiculously successful, artistically... |
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SunnyFrimley
Power Groupie
Joined: 29 Aug 2005
Posts: 260
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| Posted: Thu Apr 25, 2013 1:44 pm Post subject: |
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| L'il Beethoven is my favourite album of all time. |
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Sparksswede
Sparks Guru
Joined: 12 Nov 2005
Posts: 2119
Location: Umeå,Sweden
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| Posted: Fri Apr 26, 2013 7:06 am Post subject: |
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At first I thought it wasn't good at all, a disapointment,not what I have expectected at all but after a little while it did grow ALOT and soon I thought it was really great.
Really original and great.
It has a certain power ,hard to explain,it's not common music and that goes for much of Sparks music more or less but Lil' Beethoven it's somehow more difficult to really like fast,take a little longer to really appreciate IMO.
Maybe some people tend to judge some music a little too fast after just one or a few listening and maybe that's why not so many like Sparks music because it's not like much else in music and not as simple as much else though Sparks is often really melodic even if not that simple.
I guess many more would like their music if they give them more time (for ex. a good friend of mine who first didn't like Sparks atleast not particulary but he gave them a little more listening and it grew rather fast and soon it was his favorites or atleast up there).
I guess though some wouldn't like them even if listen to them much because it's not for everyone but I guess more people would like their music if they gave it more listening.
I though quickly got in to Sparks many years ago and my love for their music will never fade as long as I live. |
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jill
Sub-Deity
Joined: 18 Jun 2008
Posts: 1281
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| Posted: Sun Jul 07, 2013 11:25 pm Post subject: |
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| dinky wrote: | I read and hear of the genius of 'My Baby's Taking Me Home', that the title is repeated so much that by the end of the song it means something totally different to the beginning.
Can someone explain how ? Or their interpretation of how ? |
Electric Elver posted a truly wonderful interpretation.
I'll try, though, to add my thoughts about this magnificent song, because it deserves to be talked about.
IMO one can understand/hear it in more than one way.
The first one: it's a sunny hymn about fulfilled love, when you have a progression, from hope and the intense feeling of waiting (the lover who is waiting keeps babbling about his hope and imagines the happiness of meeting the loved one) to an ideal union that reshapes the whole universe. The climax of the song is a complete vertigo, where the two lovers abolish the world outside, in a quite unsettling way ("home" is not a house, but the whole universe of their love, so the directions are as precise as in a dream). The ironic nuance isn't lost: the lover has the hope of a drunken man waiting for his wife to take him home at dawn. They enjoy a paradise of senses: the lovers' journey turns the rainbow into what it really is - a colorless result of the morning rain, if seen from above, but this is an enriched and truer perception, as it translates into the music of spheres. And the result is almost frightening, as love surpasses one's limits in a monstruous way, almost like in Christian theosis, where the child grows up, becomes an adult yearning for God's love and reaches unity with God in the musical harmony of heaven. The lovers' journey is an infinite, dizzying rotation; their home is everywhere.
Think about "Singing in the Shower" - not the orchestrated version with Les Rita Mitsouko, but the "naked" version where the lyrics regain their full force:
| Quote: | We could stay here a million years
never knowing the world and its games
Here we are like a naked choir
in a church that's completely in flames |
http://youtu.be/ZWe4OaZIlVc?t=5m30s
A second one: nobody manages to convey loneliness and desperation more intensely than Sparks. The lover recalls and reconstructs the ritual of waiting for his loved one in a deeply mechanical way: he is a child longing for his lost mother, a broken computer longing for his absent programmer, an obsessed sunflower longing for the absent sun. His waiting is utterly hopeless and deprives the lover of his humanity, it makes him "colorblind", unable to connect with anything else than his illusion. "We" is simulated and meaningless - it's rather a multiplication of the lover's ego, towards the climax where he fills his universe with his desperation, hears voices (the echo of his shouts in a big empty space) and mistakes them for a harmonious chorus which in fact is the mere expression of his loneliness, of the realization of his radical, useless and unavoidable separation from the world. Being colorblind is not a privilege, but a deprivation of joy: the world becomes colorless and heavy like lead. Yet he stubbornly keeps repeating ad infinitum his attempts to recognize and find the old, familiar road towards home (a road once traveled by the lovers), knowing that his attempts are nothing but an endless failure. He sees everything much more clearly, with the detached gaze of the one who has nothing to lose anymore. So he rejoices in this perfect failure and deprivation, because this is his only chance of "being high" ("I've never been high, I've never been high...").
Think about any song from Exotic Creatures or about "How Do I Get To Carnegie Hall", with its sense of frantic, absurd preparation for an encounter that will never be ("Practice, man, practice... All of this I did for you / Still there is no sign of you... I practiced, I practiced!!")
And a third one: it's a vintage American tune destined for a romantic musical, where the progression starts with a lone singer walking on the stage and ends with the chorus singing loudly and the full ensemble of dancers following an elaborate choreography. Here the lyrics count only as a pretext for a shining, stylized show of dancers who gloriously follow the traditions of Broadway and Hollywood.
Think about "Alabamy Right" - the same chorus effect, piano and choreography, using the lyrics about shopping at a supermarket as a comic pretext.
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jill
Sub-Deity
Joined: 18 Jun 2008
Posts: 1281
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| Posted: Sun Jul 07, 2013 11:27 pm Post subject: |
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Oh, and about the album - it has been and it will always be in my top 3 Sparks albums, along with Hello Young Lovers and Exotic Creatures (and then I should add Gratuitous Sax and Balls).
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Entertainment or art - one should know from the start |
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deadcalm
Sparks Guru
Joined: 26 Feb 2004
Posts: 2781
Location: Kidderminster West Mids UK
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| Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2018 2:58 pm Post subject: |
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Been listening to some Rodgers and Hammerstein to pass a few Hours.. The song "Oklahoma" has deff got a little bit of the Suburban Homeboy vibe about it.... 
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