Archive for the 'music' Category

It’s the album title…give it more punch

Friday, May 14th, 2010

Angst in My Pants…the Sparks album that all of my friends first take a liking to. The 80’s synth pop sounds and lyrics
Angst in My Pants
Kidnap is an unlikly narritive that sounds like it could have been used for a children’s animated short feature. A Trying Day is all the optimism you need on [...]

golden ticket!

Monday, December 29th, 2008

here is a golden ticket for you!
Islington n1!

EVOLVER

Friday, October 17th, 2008

“I was trying to make good songs and they came out this way. This is the mood I’m in right now. The mood of the last album was a romantically nostalgic and I feel like having more fun on this album”

john legend
evolver

little little brenda

Friday, October 10th, 2008

BRENDA BRENDA BRENDA BRENDA IS ALWAYS IN THE WAY
WISH I HAD THE NERVE TO TELL HER
“GIRL JUST MOVE THIS WAY, OR THE OTHER OTHER”
NO ONE HAS THE GUTS TO TELL HER “GIRL, YOU’RE IN THE WAY!”
then organ - organ -organ
“Brenda is Always in the Way” - from Japan - a Sparks adaptation of Ludacris’ “Move [...]

pope, the club owner; monk, the jazz man

Sunday, June 1st, 2008

a little bit of history for you (as told to me by Lawrence Hopgood - pianist for Kurt Elling)
so sometime around the year 800, Catholic monks began recording their chants in an early form of notation. they wrote music like they wrote latin: in learned manner. so some tone deaf and dumb monachus could sit [...]

final post - one and a half albums

Monday, May 26th, 2008

this is my final post in the ’sparks series’.
‘one and a half nelson’ is proboly one of the best known sparks live recordings. recorded at Croydon U.K, 9th of November 1975. this is from the remastered CD - really fun stuff, captures sparks at their best in this form.

this town ain’t big enough for the [...]

three sparked resteraunt

Saturday, May 24th, 2008

today i am dishing up a collection of rarities. here is ze menu:
for the apitizer, there is a plentiful cd of demos, unreleased tunes and two live tracks.
the main course is a favorite, “the hell collection”.
and desert is a slice of “french pineapple”

the demo cd has quite a few interesting numbers, espically “sports”, “get laid”, [...]

growing pains

Friday, May 23rd, 2008

today is a quick treat: the Bad Manners soundtrack
sorry for no update yesterday - been too busy playing with the new amazon kindle!
tomorrow there will be a chest full of things!
growing pains

Mai, The Psychic Girl

Thursday, May 22nd, 2008

in the early 90’s, Sparks began seriously thinking about filmmaking. they intented to make a film adaptation of Mai, The Psychic Girl, a Japanese magna by Kazuya Kudo.
a summary from animenewsnetwork.com
Alternative title:
Mai A Garota Sensitiva (Portuguese)

Mai La Ragazza Psichica (Italian)

舞 (Japanese)

Genres: action, supernatural
Age rating: Mature (May contain sex, drugs, and extreme [...]

live 1994.

Wednesday, May 21st, 2008

http://www.xs4all.nl/~cvbreuke
today we have a recording of a concert in 1994, from the “gratuitous sax and senseless violins” tour. sparks is now a trio - ron, russel, and the beautiful drummer christie haydon (see her in the “charlie parker” video). a lot of the songs here are re-workings of older songs, notably ”do re mi fa so la ti do” and [...]

its gonna be a sparks week!

Tuesday, May 20th, 2008

so after listening to exotic creatures of the deep twice today, i realized that i needed to share all the sparks oddities i have collected. I can’t put the new album online, it would be immoral. so i will dish out some rarities, one by one, each day this week on this website.
(thanks to steve [...]

exotic creatures of the deep

Monday, May 19th, 2008

“exotic creatures of the deep” is sparks 21st album. move over popular music gods. sparks wrote most of your mythological tales.
after one listen i am delighted. the mixture of content, musical experimentation, and passion is in line with all other sparks albums. The juxtaposition of orchestration and electronic beats is tantalizing.
in such shock and amazement, [...]

negativland

Wednesday, May 14th, 2008

negativland.
this is the band that put u2 in a hissy fit.
their music is strange, odd, anarchist and totaly pleasing. cultural statement using the culture itself. they murder songs and movies, cut them up and rearrange them into something new. your words will be used against you. if the government can do it for national security, [...]

sparks - halfnelson (1968)

Saturday, May 10th, 2008

sparks.
there is no way to begin to explain how mammoth sparks influence is. they did glam rock before there was any sexual overtones (kimono my house). disco before cocaine (no. 1 in heaven) . new wave before the storm (whomp the sucker). euro-pop before the EU (gratuitous sax and senseless violins). they found Ludwig van [...]

the gilmore

Monday, May 5th, 2008

every two years internationally renowned pianists come to kalamazoo for the Gilmore Festival. Kalamazoo seems to have a hankering for classical music, with the festival and also Fontana Chamber Arts. The artists these two organizations bring in are like the Wu Tang Clan or Rakim for hip-hop; Red Hot Chili Peppers or Coldplay in rock.
it [...]