jason stives fills in for brent johnson with a rare nugget …
Some bands just fall through the cracks in the lexicon of important pop and rock music, and others just have a cult following. Los Angeles imprints turned British defectors, Sparks are in many ways the musical equivalent of a British comedy show: You find it entertaining, are amused and find it be borderline genius, yet you are one of the few outside of its primary audience who gets it. Indeed, stateside the band had very little mainstream success outside of having Go Go’s guitarist Jane Weidlin claim proprietor to one of their earliest fan clubs as well as praise by and an eventual appearance on The Gilmore Girls. In England, Sparks garnered much praise thanks to a slew of Top 20 hits in the mid-to-late ’70s.
Started in the late ’60s by brothers Ron and Russell Mael, Sparks started under the name Halfnelson and greatly structured their music as homage to the music they grew up around, mainly the British invasion and the L.A. club scene of the late ’60s. They released their first two albums, respectively, in 1971 and ’72 after changing their name to Sparks. When success was found to be greater in the U.K. than in the United States, the band relocated and proceeded to release multiple albums over the next 10 year,s including their first Top 5 album, Kimono My House.
While I prefer Kimono‘s equally sizable follow up Propaganda, a few years of re-listening made me understand the mass (or cult-like appeal) of this album. Kimono My House is quite simply a pop symphony. Combining all the best interests in ’60s and ’70s pop music, it cleverly disguised itself as a rock record upon release in 1974. With a beautiful blend of British pop send-ups, kitsch pop-culture humor, and almost operatic movements, the album is easily Sparks’ tour de force and a perfect mix of pomp and circumstance. This is made so remarkably clear by the album’s opening track, “This Town Ain’t Big Enough For The Both Of Us.”
The tinkering piano that begins the track is practically on a dream-like landscape. Russell Mael’s hi-res vocals are pretentious, high-class and almost insane to listen to. Suddenly, the song whips into a rock and roll frenzy. For someone who claims to not have a rock voice, Mael’s high pitched, Tiny Tim-like vocals take the song into greater and more operatic heights, even with some cleverly placed but cheesy gun shots whipping by during the chorus.
It’s not fair for me to spell out the ingenuity of this song, so I would just recommend watching this great video of them performing it back in the mid-’70s.
