Everything You Need to Know About Sparks Everything You Need to Know About Sparks By Dave Swanson March 30, 2015 1:31 PM REDDIT allsparks.com We take a look at one of the most enduring, distinct and incredible musical entities to ever roam the Earth in With Everything You Need to Know About Sparks. Though they never had any major hits in the U.S., their presence has long been felt in corners big and small. The core duo of brothers Ron and Russell Mael have been at it since the late ’60s, making music that has always been out of step with the conventional idea of rock and roll. Their music can recall the past as it plunges you deep into the future. Not bad for a couple of misfits from Los Angeles. Overview YEARS OF OPERATION: 1969 – Present ORIGINAL LINEUP: Ron Mael – keyboards / Russell Mael – vocals / Earle Mankey – guitar / Jim Mankey – bass / Harley Feinstein – drums CLASSIC LINEUP (1974-75): Ron Mael – keyboards / Russell Mael – vocals.

With all due respect to the many musicians who have helped stir the pot, there was never one “classic” lineup. Guitarists Adrian Fisher and Trevor White, along with drummer Dinky Diamond and bassists Martin Gordon and Ian Hampton, all played a significant part in the sound and style of what many would call the “classic” years, 1974-5. During that era they released the three albums that their legacy was built on, but there was never one constant lineup aside from Ron and Russell. KEY DISCOGRAPHY: Halfnelson (1971) / Kimono My House (1974) / Propaganda (1974) / Indiscreet (1975) / No. 1 In Heaven (1979) / Angst in My Pants (1982) / Lil’ Beethoven (2002) / Exotic Creatures of the Deep (2008) Growing up in Los Angeles in the ’60s, brothers Ron and Russell Mael were obsessed with rock and roll and pop culture. In 1968 the pair, both in their early 20s, decided to form a band.

They chose the unlikely moniker of Halfnelson. This new band had a sound and style as unique as their name. With Ron doing the bulk of the writing, the influences of everything from the Who and the Move to Broadway and classical music came shining through. They recorded a demo of 12 songs that led them to sign with the fledgling Bearsville label. With the swap of a couple members, they set about to record their first proper album. Todd Rundgren served as producer on Halfnelson’s self-titled debut which went nowhere. It was suggested that the problem was their name. The label thought they should be called the Sparks Brothers. They took that idea under advisement, dropped the Brothers part and became simply, Sparks. Their debut was repackaged and re-released and sold roughly the same, though the single “Wonder Girl” did get airplay in Los Angeles. A second album followed causing even more subdued enthusiasm. At this point Ron and Russell packed their bags and moved to England. Hooking up with producer Muff Winwood, they were signed to Island Records and formed a new version of the band with British players. The change was just what was needed.

From 1974 through 1975, Sparks released the three key albums that most fans still consider a holy trinity of sorts. The single “This Town Ain’t Big Enough for Both of Us” was released in 1974 and shot to No. 2 on the U.K. charts. The unlikely hit struck a chord with its glam-affected guitars, triumphant rhythm and far from average vocal style of Russell. This was the first of eight Top 40 U.K. hits in a row for the band. As times changed, so did Sparks. Their sense of adventure both musically and lyrically (Ron Mael’s knack for a great lyric has few peers) would lead them from glam to pop via big band and hard rock before crashing into both New Wave and disco along the way. By the early ’80s, the Maels had moved back home to L.A. and formed yet another version of the band. This time around, they would find some success Stateside with songs like “I Predict” and “Cool Places” (which featured Jane Wiedlin of the Go-Gos).

As time moved on, Ron and Russell became more interested in, and reliant upon, electronics, making a series of more synth-pop albums. Though the music had changed, their sense of humor and wit remained intact. In 1997, they released the album Plagiarism, which featured re-workings of old songs with help from such varied sources as Faith No More and Erasure . Some of the songs used full orchestration, which would in part signal their next move. The ground breaking album Lil’ Beethoven was released in 2002 to much fanfare. Most fans and critics hailed it their best work since the mid-’70s. Its success led to a renaissance of sorts which included another strong run of albums culminating in the 2008 series of concerts in London where the band performed every one of their albums in their entirety for a total of 21 nights, leading up to the release of their 21st album, Exotic Creatures of the Deep. Though Sparks never had a big helping of mainstream success in the U.S., their fans remain among the most loyal of any, following them from album-to-album, genre-to-genre and every avenue along the path.

They have influenced everyone from Queen and Paul McCartney (check out the video for “ Coming Up ” and see who Paul is imitating) to Depeche Mode and Morrissey to the Darkness and Franz Ferdinand , both of whom have collaborated with the Mael Brothers. Sparks are not an easy listen for most music fans. Their style, particularly that of vocalist Russell Mael has often been the dividing line between love and hate, but that is part of what has made them so special over these past 40-plus years. They have never sounded like anyone other than themselves and unlike many bands of that particular vintage, they are constantly looking forward, trying new ideas and keeping things fresh for themselves and their fans. Sparks Meets Franz Ferdinand; World Wins [Video] Sparks Meets Franz Ferdinand; World Wins Dave DiMartino Yahoo Music • June 10, 2015 In the world of internet acronyms, FFS may be self-explanatory to those with overly clever, nasty mouths. But clever as it may be, this week’s newly released album FFS—by a new group with that very same name—is anything but nasty.

It is instead sharp, catchy, aggressive, and sophisticated—and it the unexpected union of two unique groups from two different eras. FFS–short for comparative newbies Franz Ferdinand (Scottish, formed in 2002, hit with “ Take Me Out ” in 2004) and aged L.A. wunderkinder Ron and Russell Mael, better known as Sparks (American, formed in 1971, three billion massively clever albums, occasional hits)– are here, and they’re very dear indeed. You need to hear their brand new album, released this week by Domino Records, which miraculously combines the two very distinctive pop brands—FF and S—and emerges as something not necessarily better, and certainly not worse, than anything either band has produced on its own, but something…equally good. And catchy. And clever. It is one of the most expected collaborations in pop music history, and from the album’s very opening track—lead single “Johnny Delusional”—it makes complete aesthetic sense.

Joining Yahoo Music in our Santa Monica studio recently were three major perpetrators of the project—L.A’s own Mael Brothers and Franz Ferdinand frontman Alex Kapranos—who explained exactly how it was this union came to be, who brought what to whom where, and why artists who assume their listeners have some degree of intelligence—as these guys do—are always a delight to listen to. There is a tour coming, an inevitable re-examination of the respective glories of the legacies of both Sparks and Franz Ferdinand, and a lot of gratitude to be directed at all parties–for allowing one of 2015’s brightest moments to be unleashed upon the unsuspecting public so unassumingly, as if it were a matter of course. It isn’t, and it’s worth looking into right now. Bright Sparks | The Independent Features Bright Sparks Sparks have come up with the perfect antidote to bland and pointless pop. But, asks Michael Bracewell, can their epic of non-conformism ever make the breakthrough?

Thursday 24 October 2002 23:00 BST Click to follow The Independent Culture Ron and Russell Mael, the brothers from Los Angeles better known as the pop duo Sparks, appear not to have aged since about 1974, when they first hit the British charts with their blistering Top Five single "This Town Ain't Big Enough for the Both of Us". Back then, in the damp and dingy days of the early Seventies, the Mael brothers were possessed of an exotic sound pitched half-way between pop vaudeville and rock operetta. Russell, the singer, was Puck-like and boundlessly energetic, delivering the machine-gun patter of the vocals in a stylised counter-tenor; Ron came across as a spooky grandpa – your shotgun-shack paranoid, locked into his keyboard with an unblinking sideways stare that was, frankly, frightening. Nearly 30 years and the attainment of iconic status later, with a string of acclaimed and eclectic recordings behind them, Sparks are sitting in the lounge of a Kensington hotel, seemingly unchanged.

As individuals, they are charm itself: Ron's stage persona is exchanged for a quiet courtesy and good humour; with his slicked-back hair and Harold Lloyd glasses, he could be a visiting academic from Princeton. Russell remains a kind of sun child, with one of those enviable Californian accents that manage to sound simultaneously laid-back and razor-sharp. The brothers are here not only to promote their new album, L'il Beethoven, but to perform the whole of it – as a single piece – to an audience most of whom will not have heard a note of it. Such a performance may sound a high-risk proposition, but for those of us who have been lucky enough to hear an advance copy of L'il Beethoven, it makes total sense: for L'il Beethoven is not simply another Sparks album; it is a masterpiece of pop art – part manifesto, part, vitally, a critique of pop itself, and sounding as though George Gershwin, Philip Glass and the Mothers of Invention had sat down with Tim Burton and decided to write a musical.

"Aw stop, you'll make me cry," says Ron, beaming at the comparisons but patting his knees with a nervousness which articulates how much energy, passion and belief went into making the album. "The idea was to abandon all of the things which were the basis of how we've worked before," he explains. "Which meant that the traditional idea of songs, structure and so forth were all dropped. This is a concept album in the sense that we had the concept of throwing away 12 perfectly good songs that we had written, and making this instead. So it was a king of frightening experience as it turned out. There was no map." "Even as we were making the record, we were wondering whether it was the right move," Russell adds. "Particularly in these days when everything is so conservative and totally bland. But then we thought, no, that's exactly the reason why we should be doing this album.

It would have been so easy for us to just put out a traditional album of songs – there was even the temptation to put in the one cop-out track with a dance beat or whatever, but we resisted." When the opening track of L'il Beethoven begins to work its coercive magic on the listener – a truly Gothic overture, with triumphal strings reminiscent of Vivaldi's "Gloria" overlaid with a Guys And Dolls chorus of 'Oh no where did the beat go?" – you begin to understand why Sparks are so committed to presenting this piece of work as a single entity. In the face of a contemporary music scene they find weighed down with pointless, format-designed acts – the kooky singer-songwriters and the grungy metal bands every bit as manufactured as the pre-teen dance groups – the brothers Mael have made an epic of non-conformism, every track of which lingers in the mind. But what are the chances of such a project breaking through – despite the sheer exuberance of the "finale" track, "I'm A Suburban Home-Boy" ("And I say 'yo dog' and I mean it, by God!") ? "The people you mentioned," says Ron.

"Gershwin, for instance, I admire for the fact that you can't pigeon-hole their talent as either that of a serious composer or a writer of popular songs. I'm definitely not going to make any judgements of quality, but the experience of working in an area where you're not sure if you fit in – that we can relate to. So this new album is not going to be easy for some people, especially when people want to know right off the bat where you're going." "We love the idea of aggressive pop music," says Russell. "But these days some groups just feel obliged to act the bad boy and kick over a drum kit or something. That was good when the Who did it, but today? To get a 'wow' nowadays it's not by bashing your equipment, it's got to be by doing something different." Sparks, of course, are no strangers to swimming against the current. Their unique blend of cartoon, Americana and a somewhat European eccentricity has taken them in and out of fashion on a regular basis, before finally raising them above the whims of fashion completely.

On successive albums, not least when working with Giorgio Moroder, they have created Sparks as a theatre of ideas with a particular sensibility – conjuring up a world as rich and strange as the best of American pop art. "Our fashionability depends on what movement has just happened, and where you happen to be in the world at any given moment," says Russell. "For instance, we made six albums in the 1980s, which did very well in America but are hardly known here in Europe. Then again, in America they don't know 'This Town Ain't Big Enough...'; also, we're credited with being the 'godfathers' of various genres – electro-clash, for example. We've been offered a lot of money to go on one of those sad 'Bands from the Seventies' tours, but we'd never do it." They promise the staging of L'il Beethoven to be a unique visual production, making more use of Ron than in their previous shows.

But with a leading Hollywood producer currently converting L'il Beethoven into a major motion picture – and the record cries out to wholly reinvent that debased term "pop musical" – Ron and Russell Mael appear to have risen above their reputation as legendary pop outsiders, and become something closer to important contemporary American composers. "We aren't interested in winning lifetime-achievement awards," says Ron. "We're interested in this new record, and how best to see it through as something very special for us, and, we hope, the audience. There's no going back, now, for us." The album 'L'il Beethoven' is out on Monday on Artful records Russell Mael | Metro News Russell Mael metrowebukmetro Tuesday 27 Oct 2009 5:39 am James Ellis James Ellis – 60 SECONDS EXTRA:Russell Mael, 49, is one half of pop’s strangest duo – Sparks – along with brother Ron. Despite having little commercial success since the early 1970s, when they hit the UK charts with This Town Ain’t Big Enough For The Both Of Us, they have influenced everyone from Soft Cell through to Erasure and the Pet Shop Boys.

Their 19th album, Lil’ Beethoven, is out now. Have your say about Russell Mael on our Metro Café message boards. Chat music & arts. Nice to speak to someone who’s such a cult. Well thank you… unless I misheard [laughs]. What’s your take on current pop? Well that’s what the album’s about. It’s a reaction to everyone else’s lack of adventure. Everyone else is very safe and very reflective. It’s all too tame. We wanted to do an album that is for the people who like Sparks and new fans that would be jarring and genre-defying. We hope it elicits a reaction from people – even if they don’t like it. We’re tired of people following pop conventions and clichés. You listen to songs and after two bars you know where the song is going because it follows so many conventions. Thirty years in the business – define a Sparks fan. The thing that binds them together is that they feel as if they’re members of a special club that others can’t enter. It’s like going to a club and there being a doorman who won’t let you enter the disco. The dedicated fan thinks they’ve been let in.

They’re quite diehard – they want other guys to grovel to get in. You look no older than you were on Top Of The Pops in 1974. What’s the secret? Formaldehyde and Dorian Gray pictures in the attic [laughs]. We actually subscribe to healthy lifestyles. It sounds un-rock’n’roll but we take care of our bodies. We eat what we’re supposed to eat… we have no fun in our life. We don’t drink, don’t smoke and do nothing enjoyable at all. So it’s all misery? There’s a lot of pain in being in a band that’s done 19 albums and is still considered a cult [laughs]. There’s also a lot in spending a year in a studio, listening to the finished result and realising it sounds like nothing out there. It makes you question what you’re doing. And of course, maintaining your physical appearance as well. It’s all related [laughs]. Has the lack of commercial success made you think of jacking it in? At this point we’re in it too deep to turn back and there’s no alternative. We have to keep proving ourselves because of the longevity of the band.

Although we’re not a household name we have a responsibility to the people who have stood by the band for all these years. Didn’t you cock up by returning to the US after your early success in the UK? In hindsight, the smarter thing may have been to stay here in the UK. But we had done three albums and are from LA so we thought it was time to move back. Tell the truth, it was the weather. [Laughs] It sounds stupid but little things like that do matter. We’re from California, so we weren’t used to that grey cloud that seems to hang over Britain most of the time. Most of the time you are so absorbed in your work and life that it doesn’t matter what colour the sky is, but LA was easier for us as we had a home studio. You could have a career in litigation. You could sue Queen for copying your vocal style on Bohemian Rhapsody and The Pet Shop Boys for, oh … almost everything. You say that so I don’t get the law-suit against me, but I have to agree. We once thought about pursuing a class action against the entire New Wave movement. It would be: ‘Sparks versus The New Wave your honour’.

All of the bands would have to answer the charges [laughs]. You modelled when you were younger. Did you never think of taking it up? I don’t think we were really old enough to understand what it was all about when we were that young – not that we understand what we’re doing now [laughs]. We’re on autopilot. There’s more satisfaction in being at the creative end of the knife. How much sibling rivalry is there? We spend a lot of time together, so tensions do flare. But there’s a bond that in the end we both have the same goal, it’s just that we sometimes have different ideas about how to achieve it. On a basic level, though, we have the same vision. Did you never advise Ron not to go for the Hitler moustache? In retrospect, probably another mistake. He probably regrets it. When he did it, he was quite naive – he thought he was copying Charlie Chaplin. We went to France to do a TV show and the presenter refused to go on with us so we had to pull out. At that point he decided the shape of one’s facial hair shouldn’t cause so much controversy so he changed it to a pencil-style one.

We like controversy and provocation but not in that way. I thought you let him keep it so you could get the girls. [Laughs] Well, yes. That’s another good reason, too. Melody Maker actually described his ‘tache as more important to music than any John Lennon guitar solo. I really liked that comment. That’s what pop music should be. A part of it is image and that’s important. Obviously, we love John Lennon but aside from the music, pop is about fashion, style, image, live presentation, album covers. The spirit of the comment is quite good. You once said being in a band is a good way to go around the world, experience people from other cultures… and then sleep with them. So where’s the best? Well, sex knows no boundaries. So I think there’s no one culture better or worse. They’re all equally up for the task. Has your art collection grown? No, I’ve still got the one piece. A signed manilla envelope from when we did an interview with Andy Warhol for Interview magazine. I asked for his autograph and he signed it with his dollar sign icon. What was it like being interviewed by him? Perfect. Exactly how you’d imagine.

The most amazing thing was that someone else did the interview and Andy sat next to him and didn’t talk much. He has a still camera and asked if he could take pictures of us – and who’d refuse Andy Warhol taking their picture? We both also had cameras as we didn’t want to miss the opportunity and asked if we could photograph him. He said he didn’t mind and asked what film we were using. We said: ‘Colour – the normal stuff.’ He said: ‘I’m so envious. You must be so gifted to work in colour.’ How mad. Andy Warhol’s telling you you’re gifted because you can use an instamatic camera with colour film in it. And he was serious. If there were a Celebrity Death Match between you and the Gallaghers, who’d win? With all the working out I’ve been doing at the moment, I reckon we could take them. And Ron’s much tougher than he might look. I’d be up for the challenge – bring it on, as we say [laughs]. Would you advise new bands to hit themselves with a sledgehammer?

Well, being a veteran and someone who went on stage and tossed one in the air thinking I would catch it and having it come on my head, I’d definitely advise against it. That happened in Houston, Texas. I went on, threw the hammer up, the mallet came down on my head and there was blood everywhere. People though it was part of the act; they were saying: ‘How neat. It’s fake blood’. Which two people is this town not big enough for? Me and the president of the United States. We are not George Bush fans – he concerns us. More The Seminal Sparks on Brother Feuds, Being Bowie Contemporaries and Morrissey's Favorite Band | Billboard The Seminal Sparks on Brother Feuds, Being Bowie Contemporaries and Morrissey's Favorite Band COMMENTS In the early 1970s, it was hard to know how to pigeonhole Sparks . Was Kimono My House glam-rock, or Gilbert & Sullivan-pop? Four-plus decades later, brothers Ron and Russell Mael are still as impossible to peg as ever, aside from possibly holding a place as the most consistently witty band in the history of rock 'n' roll.

Anything seemed possible when the stylistically and lyrically audacious Kimono came out in '74, and the possibilities are expanding just a little further now, with a symphonic rendering of the landmark album at L.A.'s Theatre at the Ace this weekend. The duo premiered the orchestral Kimono in London in December, with this two-night stand being the only other shows scheduled. (Night one Saturday is sold out, but very limited tickets remain available for Sunday.) The Maels won't linger on the nostalgia too long, since, as they reveal in this interview, their horizon includes a bold full collaboration with Franz Ferdinand and two planned movie musicals with major arthouse filmmakers. But for this weekend, downtown L.A. is just barely big enough for the both of them and the 38 string and horn players and percussions they're bringing along. More From Billboard: Pop Shop No one who's ever heard Kimono My House associates it with lush symphonic orchestration. So how'd this come about? Ron: In general we don't like to play up the past too much. But the chance to work with an orchestra live was something we couldn't really pass up.

There was an agent who was trying to find an angle for us to do a 40th anniversary thing with Kimono My House, and knowing we weren't gonna do it if we were just gonna be playing it as a band, he kind of organized the whole thing. And then the second half of the show we do a selection of songs, with the orchestra, from throughout the years. In London, most of the audience knew that album pretty well, but they were really accepting of us doing it this way. The producer of that album, Muff Winwood, came to the show and was really gracious and said, "God, it sounds so natural doing those songs in an orchestral way." Russell: We didn't want it to be the orchestra used in a sweetening way, with strings just augmenting a rock band. We wanted the orchestra to serve as the replacement for a band. There's no band. Ron's playing keyboards, but that's the only concession. The first half of the show, a lot of it is the grand piano, and the second half, he plays more electronic keyboard with the orchestra.

Wherever you would have the aggression of guitar and drums and bass, we would find a way with the arranger to do that where the strings are actually being really aggressive and propelling the thing, and to not worry about it being note for note exactly like the same arrangements from the album version, but to do it in a modern-classical way. We were hoping before we did it in London that the hardcore would be accepting of hearing little quirks and dissonance in the score. But I think everybody really liked it, because it sounds just as aggressive as the original album, in a different kind of way. It isn't just a recreation of that album in a sterile way. It's making use of the fact that we've got a 38-piece orchestra -- let's put them to work! But otherwise, you aren't fans of the trend of doing classic albums in their entirety? Ron: Well, we got that out of our system when we did a 21-nights thing in London [in 2008], where we played all of our albums in their entirety, five nights a week, starting with our first album all the way through to the latest. Russ: We thought that was the ultimate statement a band.

A lot of people do an album or two albums. We'll raise you and do 21 albums -- how about that? We think that'll be a record that no one will ever, ever beat, first by the fact of having 21 albums as a starting point, and then the amount of work that went into doing it. We prepared for four months to be able to learn over 250 songs. It was a pretty daunting challenge, so we think we'll hold the record forever. It was Morrissey who first talked you into playing Kimono My House in its entirety -- without the orchestra -- when he got you to play at the Meltdown Festival he curated 10 years ago. He's been such a vocal champion of Sparks, and has such a fanatical following. Do you ever get fans of his who come to your shows, thinking, "I don't know who they are, but if Morrissey says so…" Russell: He came to the last show we did in L.A. at the Fonda Theatre, so there were two shows going on: Sparks on the stage and Morrissey in the audience. We like him.

There's some kinship, not so much musically, even, but in how you're creating your own world with your music and especially lyrics. Thurston Moore from Sonic Youth is another kind of unlikely fan. He came to this last show of Kimono with the orchestra in London. And then he came to the previous show, and we said, "We'll put you to work, too," so he played on one song. Who do you see comprising your audience at your live shows now? In the 1980s, you became KROQ favorites, and seeing you then, it seemed like there had been a complete turnover of your audience from the '70s. Russell: It's now caught up where people that are Sparks fans have gone and investigated the whole repertoire of albums, where that wasn't always the case. The visibility has been really fractured, where it really gets popular with a specific album or a time, like in the '80s with KROQ.

We had a following in that period, here especially on the west coast and some of the east coast as well, where if we'd do a song like "This Town Ain't Big Enough for the Both of Us" off of Kimono, they said, "What is this? We've never heard of this thing." But they knew "Angst in My Pants" and "Eaten by the Monster of Love." So we stayed away from the '70s stuff during that time. Then in the '90s we had this really big hit in Germany called "When Do I Get to Sing My Way," and it really appealed to a really young audience, who definitely weren't aware of the '70s and had no clue about the '80s Sparks period either. But we're finding now there are younger people coming who've been made aware of us through different means that go back and find the history, and they respond to an album like Kimono, even if they obviously weren't there the first go-round. I think it's mainly because the music doesn't always sound like it's of an era.

A song like "This Town" doesn't sound particularly of the '70s but it doesn't sound like it's now, either. It just sounds like it's in its own little world. How aware were you of not fitting in, circa 1974, and did that bother you at all or did you revel in it? Russell: We fit in only because there was a period when we were really part of the scene in England with Roxy Music and Bowie, because of the success of the record. But a lot of people say "So you were part of glam" -- we never felt we were glam. It just happened to have a sensibility that kind of fit with the zeitgeist, and somehow it reached a British audience for some odd reason. Ron: We kind of had two different audiences at the time. There were people that were appreciating it in a more musical, intellectual kind of way. And then there were screaming girls at the same time. Both of those camps would come to the concerts, and it was a strange combination.

In some ways I think the fanatical side of it turned off some of the people that were thinking of it in more musical terms, thinking, "Well, if it's getting this kind of teenybop acceptance, it can't possibly be musically valid." But things have sort of shifted over time. And you completely upended expectations, in-between the glam era and post-new wave era, by making a proto-electronica album with Giorgio Moroder that threw everyone for a loop. Ron: We really liked "I Feel Love" by Donna Summer , and we were looking for a context to put ourselves in that was different than working in a band. And we contacted him and he really wanted to work with band people at that time. The audience was really accepting of that -- I mean, we had three hit singles from the No. 1 in Heaven album in '79 -- but we were getting a really severe, abusive critical reception, because they thought we were traitors to the whole band thing and were going disco. Russell: The history has been completely rewritten about that album, critically, which is really ironic.

Now that album critically is seen as "Well, that was the bible of the whole synth duo thing." Since that time, it's been proven that that can work, with everybody that followed after that, with Pet Shop Boys , Erasure , Depeche Mode -- where it became okay to not have a traditional band format, and you could have danceable rhythms, but "danceable" wasn't pejorative anymore. Obviously now, 35 years after that, with EDM and beyond, it can't get more cool -- cool in maybe a corny sense. Ron: In the end we're usually vindicated. Russell: The "hot young DJ" Giorgio Moroder now even is using one of the songs in his set. And you've always been one of the few acts who have Noel Coward come up as a point of comparison in your reviews more than anything contemporary. There's a strong show-tune influence in your music, but it's hard to find an exact antecedent in rock & roll for what you were doing in the early '70s. Some of the Kinks ' wittier songs come to mind.

Ron: Well, people like Ray Davies , and also Pete Townsend, with the early Who things, before they became more important. I really liked those little vignettes of guys getting tattoos, and "Mary Anne with the Shaky Hand," just a song about a girl with a shaky hand and what she could do to a man with that shaky hand. I really liked that kind of rock writing. But in general I like stuff more like Cole Porter, where there was a real craft and a precision about the writing, and things could be humorous, yet it'd always seem like there was an undercurrent of seriousness about what they were writing. I tried not to ever be lazy about it. Every song to me is precious, so to just write lyrics by rote and say "It's a good song, just write something because nobody will be listening to it," I can't work in that kind of way. Sometimes people think that it's too clever, but I'd rather have it be viewed that way than just as kind of this wallpaper of stuff coming out of a singer's mouth.

When you had those screaming girls come around, did you look into the audience and see them tilting their heads, like, "What's he singing, again?" Russell: It really was a strange cross-section, especially in England at that time, where it was screaming girls when we were doing songs from Kimono like "Talent is an Asset," about Albert Einstein. You'd see girls screaming over Albert Einstein -- "Ahhhh!" Is a new album in the works? Russell: Without getting overly specific on the details, we've done an album I think is really special: a collaboration with Franz Ferdinand. It's the two bands actually playing together for an entire album. We can't think of too many precedents for that. You can think of obviously two singers joining together, but this is actually two whole bands together. The other thing we've been doing is two movie musical movie projects. One has already been out there as an album of ours called The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman, which we premiered in a sort of live staging at the L.A. Film Festival three years ago.

It's to be directed by Guy Maddin who is an amazing director, and we just thought his sensibility would work with this story, which is: What if Ingmar Bergman had been lured to Hollywood with the idea of being able to take advantage of the money that's available to him here to further his art, but then he got locked into Hollywood in his own worst nightmare? Then there's a second project we've worked on -- a full movie musical with the French director Leo Carax, whose last film was Holy Motors. These two projects are sort of running their simultaneous course; this project with Leo Carax is moving along the fast track quicker than the Bergman project has. These won't be done in a Broadway, razzmatazz kind of way. They're both all music, where sometimes the story is being progressed through dialogue that's done in a hyper-stylized, sung/spoken way. They're both pretty uncompromising, but at the same time we think they're really accessible. Going back to Kimono, especially with the song "This Town," it was its uniqueness that appealed to a lot of people. And we have a bit of history with both these directors.

Guy Madden has a brand new film that just premiered at Sundance called The Forbidden Room, and it's not a musical, but it does have a musical sequence that he asked us to do something for, so we did a song called "The Final Derriere." And in Leo Carax's last film, Holy Motors, he used one of Sparks' songs from our Indiscreet album. How have you survived for four and a half decades as one of the most volatile things in rock & roll -- a brother act? We all know about the fraternal feuds that broke up the Kinks, Oasis , now the Black Crowes . What makes you the exception? Russell: You left the Everly Brothers off your list -- the Hatred Brothers. Ron: One key is that our roles are so separate and defined, we're not stepping on the other guy's territory. There aren't issues over "Oh, I want to sing this song." Because I know I would destroy any song I sang on. Russell: And he's a better songwriter. Also, with some of the other people you mentioned, you get so commercially successful that you aren't hungry anymore.

We're in a situation where we had a lot of commercial success but still aren't a household name for everybody. So I think there's this united sort of goal to keep hammering away on what we think are really special projects musically, and we won't rest until everybody is aware of it. To be excited about doing pretty cutting-edge movie musicals is not the traditional career arc of other '70s bands. So coming up with new challenges is something we both see the same way. We both have our own role within the group and don't overlap, so each person gets to be doing his own thing 100 percent. Ron: He's right. Ron Mael | Lady Garfunkel's Song of the Day Lady Garfunkel's Song of the Day Music is my hot, hot sex… Menu Kiss Me Quick Here’s something you may not realize about Sparks. It’s just a little thing that occurred to me. Namely, Russell Mael has rather a sexy voice when he’s not hitting his highest falsetto notes. You probably listen to Propaganda and Kimono My House a lot, and on those records Russ sounds just like a girl.

But I went through a phase of listening to Pulling Rabbits Out of a Hat a lot, and I noticed that Russell sounds quite dreamy when he’s in the lower ranges of his vocal capacity. Not to mention that I’ve always thought he was cute, so yeah. For that reason, and others, Pulling Rabbits is probably the least silly and most sexy of Sparks albums. The real reason for that, the record’s raison d’être, is the usual Sparks business of producing incredibly spot-on parody of popular musical styles. In this case, New Wave. It’s the first and best Fake New Wave record ever, and a better one than many real New Wave records. The nefarious-mustached Ron Mael easily fabricates the sound; lots of catchy synths, dramatic melodies and just a touch of rock bite. Meanwhile, Russell does the hyper-stylized vocal mannerisms that define New Wave, and he does them so well you almost can’t tell it’s a parody. Until you hear the lyrics, that is. The lyrics are, as usual, completely ridiculous. This one is actually uncharacteristically unsilly. It spoofs the cliches of romanticized ‘let’s fuck’ songs, but only slightly.

If you weren’t familiar with Sparks and didn’t know that their mission in life is to make fun of everything around them, you’d think this was a real New Wave song, by the likes of someone like Simple Minds or Modern English, maybe even a long-lost Depeche Mode B-Side or something. So convincing that had they wanted to, Sparks could have surfed the ‘Wave to mainstream popularity. All they needed was louder suits and more flamboyant hair. And dumber lyrics. Here In Heaven Ok, so Sparks might possibly be an acquired taste. Their records might sound like a weird novelty to the uninitiated. But I challenge you not to be charmed by their appearance. Russell’s clunky chicken dance. Ron’s deadpan glare. Those curls. That mustache. They’re adorable. Plus, they wrote a song about Romeo moping around heaven, waiting for Juliet, which all kinds of clever and hilarious. Sometimes the world needs reminding that there are so many more things to sing about than drinking and booty. This is your antidote when you’re going crazy from all the mindlessness you’ve been exposed to. The Ghost of Liberace I’ll admit I actually find this song a bit grating.

But it represents very well late-career Sparks. In which they’ve come to rely on a specific formula. Maybe I’m wrong about their creative process, but it seems like they first come up with the randomest song title they can think of and work from there. Sometimes it’s just Russ chanting the song title/joke over an endlessly repetitive synth melody. Here there’s a full set of lyrics in narrative formation, and they’re pretty damn funny. Love the formula or hate it, those guys have never lost their sense of humor. Sometimes they can be annoying but there’s always a good joke in there somewhere. I do miss early Sparks, when they were a full band with guitars and drums. They must have figured out keeping a stable of supporting players was too much trouble when all they ever needed was Ron’s keyboard and a mic for Russell. Now they’re the world’s only electronic music parody duo. But they’re not parodists in the Weird Al sense. They’re not interested in deflating whatever the next big thing is. They just write whatever they think is amusing. The youngest among you might not understand what makes this song funny. It’s funny because Liberace is such an absurd personality.

If you don’t remember, for a few decades starting in the 1940’s he ruled Vegas as a kind of smarmier version of Elton John. That is: flamboyant, sparkly, tacky, and piano-based. Also gay, but unlike Sir Elton, never out with it. I read that he’d force his toy-boys to have plastic surgery so they’d look more like him, something Elton John would never dream of doing, because Elton John is married to someone his own age, for one thing, and also because Elton John isn’t a total freaking lunatic like that. Though that whole story may not even be true, who knows. Anyhow, Liberace was a talented showman and pianist, but his horrible taste in everything you can imagine and slimy Vegas persona has made him into a figure of high hilarity, even without anyone coming along to write a song about him. Get In The Swing “I ain’t no Freud, I’m from L.A.” sings Russ Mael whilst flouncing about in tiny shorts. Why Sparks never caught on in America I can’t imagine. Maybe because Americans like their pop stars less flouncy?

Then there’s another one where the shorty shorts are different color. Throughout, Russ looks cherubic and fey, Ron looks like an Springtime For Hitler understudy. And fey. In 1975 the world desperately needed a parody of all those horny glam rock sagas, with a lesson about salmon tossed in. Sparks made their name with glam rock parodies, then went on to parody disco and electronica. With the distinction that everything they did could easily stand on its own, and was in fact frequently much better than whatever it was making fun of in the first place. Last Best Show: Sparks at Brighton Music Hall | Boston Herald Last Best Show: Sparks at Brighton Music Hall Bill Brotherton Thursday, October 31, 2013 October 30, 2013 was a big day in Boston history. The Red Sox won the world championship. President Obama came to town to promote his health care plan and create a traffic nightmare. My brother-in-law celebrated his birthday. Mere footnotes! The most incredible news of all was that brothers Ron and Russell Mael, better known as Sparks, were performing in our fair city for the first time in 31 years.

That 1982 "Angst in My Pants" show at the Paradise remains one of the greatest this jaded music lover has ever seen. Last night, some 400 or so folks made the pilgrimage to Brighton Music Hall to share in the Sparks experience, some from as far away as New Jersey and Pennsylvania. They were rewarded with a career-spanning 90 minutes of the brothers' off-kilter, mischievous pop highlighted by Ron's intelligent, witty, cinematic songs. The ovations between songs were thunderous, the loudest I've ever heard in this venue, and the Maels genuinely seemed thunderstruck by the affectionate response. Touring as a duo on this Two Hands, One Voice shindig, the Maels are one odd couple. Ron, 68, sits stoically behind his Roland keyboard (the letters are rearranged to spell Ronald) looking for all the world like a nerdy scientist with his Coke-bottle glasses, short-sleeved white shirt and tie tucked into his trousers.

Russell, 65, the voice, is seldom still, bopping around the stage much like he did when American audiences were introduced to Sparks in the early '70s on "Don Kirshner's Rock Concert" TV show. The boys opened with two songs from their genre-defying opus, 2002's "Lil' Beethoven." "Your Call's Very Important to Us, Please Hold," with Russell's taped, looped vocals building with the frustration one feels while waiting on the telephone for some corporate flunky to solve a problem. The sparse "How Do I Get to Carnegie Hall?" features a ferocious groove and minimalist lyrics, basically the title and punchline (practice, of course) repeated over and over. Sparks is a hugely influential band. Morrissey, Arcade Fire, Franz Ferdinand, They Might Be Giants and countless others have pledged their love, especially for those early '70s glam-rock albums that made them household names in England, Germany and France. Tunes from "Kimono My House," their best album, were delivered with gusto.

"This Town Isn't Big Enough For the Both of Us" found the crowd clapping along so vigorously the song's signature guitar blasts and gunshot ricochets were not missed. "Here in Heaven" humorously told of the chump who went first in a lovers leap jump only to have his partner get cold feet ("Up here in heaven without you/It is hell knowing that your health will keep you out of here for years and years and years") The electronic "Number One Song in Heaven," which closed last night's show on a rump-shaking note, has been cited by Depeche Mode, New Order and Bjork as one of the greatest songs ever written. When Russell commandeered the keyboards Ron, feigning indignation, finally walked into the spotlight to perform a daffy buck-and-wing tap dance. Midset, the duo performed a trio of winning tunes from their critically acclaimed fantasy musical "The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman," in which the iconic director is lured by an interfering Hollywood studio to helm an action film. (Guy Maddin is reportedly going to turn the project into a film.) But Sparks is not all about laughs. "When Do I Get to Sing 'My Way'?" is a brilliant bit of melancholy.

Ron, the silent partner in this endeavor, mouthed the words while Russell sang "When do I get to feel like Sinatra felt?" Brilliant. I have never had much luck turning my pals on to Sparks. Their loss. The Maels are and have always been musical trendsetters, caring not a whit about jumping on a bandwagon to sell more product. Ron and Russell, thanks for coming to Boston. We've missed you. See you in 31 years ... either here or up in heaven. More On: sparks | The Weirdest Band in the World The Weirdest Band in the World Weird Band of the Week: Meow the Jewels We’re cheating a little with this week’s “band,” weirdlings. Meow the Jewels isn’t a band per se; it’s more of a remix project, created hardcore hip-hop duo El-P and Killer Mike, aka Run the Jewels. The weird part? All of the remixes are composed primarily out of cat sounds. Why didn’t anyone think of this […] Blog Archives Posted by weirdestband It’s not every day you get to hear music by any band on our Weird List rendered by a 38-piece orchestra.

It’s even more remarkable when that band is Sparks , the quirk-pop duo of Ron and Russell Mael, and even more remarkable when the focus of the event isn’t one of their more symphonic efforts like Lil’ Beethoven but their 1974 glam-rock opus Kimono My House, which featured nary a string section but plenty of fuzzy guitar solos and Russell Mael’s swooping falsetto vocals at their most mock-operatic. The Mael brothers first gave Kimono My House the orchestral treatment last December in London , and decided to follow up those shows with a similar two-night run in their hometown of Los Angeles. The setting for both performances was the suitably stately Theatre at Ace Hotel, formerly the United Artists movie palace, a spectacularly ornate room with Gothic decorations nearly as elaborate as the music from Kimono My House. As I usually do these days, I wrote the full review of the show for my day job over at L.A. Weekly. So you can read my full account on their site .

Suffice it to say that while the orchestral reimagining of Kimono My House, most of the highlights (for me, anyway) came in the show’s second half, when they played an assortment of songs spanning Sparks’ amazing four-decade catalog. And at least one of those highlights involved a monkey. (And no, I’m not referring to Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos. Although he did insert himself into the proceedings. I’m still not sure how I feel about that Sparks/Franz collab .) Posted by weirdestband British music news rag NME broke some eyebrow-raising news last week: For their next studio project, avant-pop duo Sparks are collaborating with Scottish rockers Franz Ferdinand. Apparently sessions have been in progress since April 2013 and should be completed by this summer. If you think this sounds like a trainwreck in the making, you’re not alone. Sparks keyboardist Ron Mael agrees with you. “If there was a train crash between Franz Ferdinand and Sparks,” the mustachioed Mael brother told NME, “this is what the wreckage would sound like.” I’m sure he meant that in a good way, but still, we’re concerned.

Not that Franz Ferdinand are the worst of the early ’00s crop of Brit-rock bands; at least Sparks aren’t collaborating with, say, Razorlight. Alex Kapranos and co. are fine, and even occasionally catchy in a Scottish Strokes sort of way. But they’re not exactly weird or innovative or groundbreaking—so for this pairing to be anything more than a curiosity, Ron and Russell Mael are going to have to do a lot of the heavy lifting. Oddly, this isn’t the first time there’s been talk of a Sparks and FF collab. Way back in 2006, there were reports that Franz Ferdinand was working on an entire album of Sparks covers (which never came to fruition, obviously). Turns out Kapranos and his mates really are huge Sparks fans—so who knows? Maybe working with the brothers Mael will bring out a side of FF we haven’t heard before. Posted by weirdestband We’ve really been slacking on catching the uncategorizable duo Sparks on their “Two Hands, One Mouth” tour.

Not only did we skip seeing them at Coachella—a move I don’t regret at all, I might add, because seeing one of your favorite bands at Coachella is like kissing your biggest high school crush through a T-shirt soaked in other people’s sweat—we also totally missed the boat on seeing them perform at the Masonic Lodge at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, which is a gorgeous venue and way less sweaty. (We saw Matmos there earlier this year and it was awesome.) Fortunately, Sparks have decided to be kind to us slackers and return to North America this fall for another round of tour dates. This time, Ron and Russell Mael have redubbed their “Two Hands, One Mouth” tour and are calling it “The Revenge of Two Hands, One Mouth”—on account of that terrible thing you people did to Sparks on the first “Two Hands, One Mouth” tour. Don’t pretend like you don’t know what I’m talking about. Whatever you want to call it, “Two Hands, One Mouth” is just that: Ron Mael’s two hands on keyboards, and Russell Mael’s mouth on vocals. No band, no computers, no pre-recorded backing tracks.

Just one of the weirdest and most eclectic catalogs in pop history, whittled down to its bare essentials. Here’s a taste of the format from that Masonic Lodge show we missed; full tour dates after the clip. The Revenge of Two Hands One Mouth Tour Dates: 10/23: Atlanta, GA @ The Variety Playhouse 10/25: Asheville, NC @ Mountain Oasis Festival 10/27: Washington, DC @ 9:30 Club 10/28: New York, NY @ Webster Hall 10/30: Boston, MA @ Brighton Music Hall 11/1: Montreal, QC @ Le National 11/2: Toronto, ON @Lee’s Palace 11/4: Detroit/Pontiac, MI @ Crofoot Ballroom 11/6: Chicago, IL @ Lincoln Hall 11/7: Chicago, IL @ Lincoln Hall 11/8-11/10: Austin, TX @ Fun Fun Fun Fest 11/11: Los Angeles, CA @ Fonda Theatre Posted by weirdestband Let’s face it: Most love songs suck.

If you’re like me, you can’t fire up the Whitney Houston come Valentine’s Day for fear of your lady love punching you in the face (and rightly so, I might add). So what’s a misfit in love to do? Don’t worry, TWBITW is here to help. These 19 unconventional love songs will help you get your freak on with that special someone—of, if you don’t have a special someone, they’ll make you feel great about being single. Yes, they can do both. They’re just that fucking good. So fire up your Spotify player , or use the nifty embedded player below, and let’s start the seduction. Some notes on your listening experience: 1. Leslie Hall , “Power Cuddle.” Our current Weirdo of the Week starts us off with a little heavy petting. Spoiler alert: “Take me to Miami, we can hold handies” is the best lyric in this entire playlist. It’s all downhill from here. 2. Dirty Sanchez , “Give Head & Be Beautiful.” Now that we’ve got the cuddling out of the way, let’s get to the good stuff. 3.

Gonken , “Robot Lovin’.” OK, slow jam time. This one goes out to everyone whose significant other is one screw short. 4. Goldie Lookin’ Chain, “You Knows I Loves You.” Wales’ greatest (only?) hip-hop crew puts on the moves. Eat your heart out, R. Kelly. 5. Die Antwoord , “U Make a Ninja Wanna Fuck.” Believe it or not, this is actually the South African rap-ravers’ romantic side. They even quote Tiffany! 6. Here Come the Mummies , “Bed, Bath & Behind.” In which a bunch of funky mummies do the nasty all over your nice furniture. Don’t think about the cleaning bills, just go with it. 7. Baby Seal Club , “Silly Human Sentiment.” If you’re incapable of expressing love without feeling like an idiot, this is the song for you. Also, you might need therapy. Just sayin’. 8. DEVO , “The Day My Baby Gave Me a Surprise.” We’re not really sure what’s wrong with Mark Mothersbaugh’s baby, but it doesn’t sound good.

But his devotion sounds undying, which makes this about as close to a pure boy/girl love song as DEVO’s ever likely to write. 9. Barnes and Barnes , “Girl of My Dreams.” The “worried young man” of this song might a stalker, but at least he’s a romantic stalker. 10. The Emotron , “Love Song.” Boy meets cigarettes. Boy loses cigarettes. Boy loses his shit. It’s a love story for the ages. 11. Sparks , “Perfume.” If your girlfriend asks why you didn’t get her any perfume for Valentine’s Day, just play her this song instead. Unless you don’t want to spend your life with her. Then things might get awkward. 12. Nous Non Plus , “Acte Manqué/Freudian Slip.” We have no idea what this song is about, but a boy and a girl singing to each other in French always sounds romantic. 13. The Wet Spots , “Labia Limbo.” We got away from songs about sex for awhile there, didn’t we? Unless that French song is all about fucking like bunnies.

Anyway, Canada’s favorite kinky lounge act leaves no doubt what we’re talking about. 14. GWAR , “Sexecutioner.” You know what else this playlist needs? Some whip-crack and barnyard animal sound effects. Also, some metal. And genital wart and golden shower references in a ridiculously bad fake European accent. Now we’re ready for sexytime. 15. Anti-Nowhere League, “Woman.” Our old pal Army of Gay Unicorns recommended this track to us, and it is indeed the most romantic hardcore ’80s punk song we’ve ever heard, not to mention a harrowingly accurate depiction of marriage. (Love you, honey!) Also, the lead singer impersonates Animal from the Muppets, which is always a bonus. 16. The Residents , “Perfect Love.” Wise words from the patron saints of Weirdest Band in the World. Remember this song when you’re home alone crying this Thursday. 17. The Tiger Lillies , “My Funny Valentine.” When performed by our favorite Goth-punk cabaret trio with a full orchestra, the inherent twistedness of this old show tune really comes through. Did he really just call his lady love “unphotographable”?

That’s some cold shit right there, Rodgers & Hart. 18. Klaus Nomi , “Valentine’s Day.” Shout-out to reader Adela for reminding us about this thematically appropriate (albeit indecipherable) song from the late, great synth-pop counter-tenor’s unfinished masterpiece, Za Bakdaz. 19. Ween , “Sweetheart.” After you’ve finished ravishing your lover and/or lotion collection with the sensual sounds of this playlist, you’ll probably want to lie back in post-coital bliss and crank some smooth, sweet yacht-rock, courtesy of the only band we’ve ever blogged about that’s done anything even remotely resembling a Boz Scaggs record. Happy Valentine’s Day, y’all! Shooting Off Sparks | L.A. Weekly Shooting Off Sparks Or sign in with a social account: FACEBOOK GOOGLE + TWITTER YAHOO! Don't have an account yet? Sign Up › Connect. Discover. Share. Get the most out of your experience with a personalized all-access pass to everything local on events, music, restaurants, news and more. Enter your email or sign up with a social account to get started FACEBOOK TWITTER GOOGLE+ YAHOO!

Don't have an account yet? Sign Up › By Skylaire Alfvegren Brothers Ron and Russell Mael have been called eccentric more times than Dali waxed his mustache. Though born in the U.S.A., a country where one can't be serious if one possesses a sense of humor, they have kept their wits and produced one of the most idiosyncratic oeuvres to have never been appreciated in one place. As Sparks, Ron and Russell have navigated the temperamental, murky waters of pop music for the past quarter-century - winning, losing and occasionally capsizing. Print Article Ron Mael plays keyboards and writes lyrics. He studied industrial design in college and has a dexterous dementia on the ivories. Lyrically, he comes from the "school of Cole Porter," favoring caustic wit over trivial personal problems; his achingly clever lyrics seesaw between superficial gloss, profound sentiment and the incomprehensibly bizarre. Visually, Ron prefers neckties and a menacing glare to stage clothes and flailing extremities, although he has been known to smash his keyboard bench a la Pete Townshend.

You may have seen his old mustache, framed, hanging near the ladies' lavatory at the Hard Rock Cafe. Russell Mael doesn't merely sing, he wraps his roller-coaster falsetto over his brother's impossible lyrics. Russell has the voice of an angel sentenced to Earth for poking fun at his superior. He has sung from the point of view of sperm, Mickey Mouse, suicidal supermodels, a Liberace sympathizer and the suitor of a faded opera star. But it's simply not that simple. Ron and Russell are underappreciated overachievers. If the advancement of pop music was a human-rights issue, they'd be swamped with honorary doctorates and Amnesty International accolades. Sparks kick-started new wave, inspired artists as disparate as Fear and Depeche Mode, did whatever you call what Devo, Ween and They Might Be Giants have done, and did it first. They count Joey Ramone, Bette Midler and Barbra Streisand among their admirers, and they are directly responsible for Bjork and Morrissey choosing music as careers. Not too shabby. Upcoming Events Tickets Thu., Jan.

19, 8:30pm Though they've found far more success in Europe, the L.A. natives have remained based in Los Angeles, perhaps because they're so attached to their cars (Ron has driven the same VW Thing since 1974; Russell won't drive his pristine '57 Thunderbird at night). The Maels are as odd in person as they appear to be on their infamous album covers. Russell radiates the same gregarious, wide-eyed charm, while Ron curls away from conversation. Both are exceedingly witty and well-bred. They seem to spend more time together than most brothers. Sparks came into being while Ron and Russell were attending UCLA in the early '70s. Surrounded by earthy vibes and walrus mustaches, they were often mistaken for Brits, and early gigs found them opening for the likes of Little Feat. "We had a miniature ocean liner made out of papier-mache, and I'd burst out of it wearing a sailor suit to begin our show," says Russell.

"People didn't know what to make of us." Luckily, Todd Rundgren had the foresight to sign the band, then known as Halfnelson, to his own label, Bearsville. Their eponymous debut album went nowhere. When they renamed themselves Sparks, the album was re-released, as Sparks, on Warner Bros. It too died a little death, but was followed by the successful and seminal A Woofer in Tweeter's Clothing. "At the time," says Ron, "our road manager also had a mustache, and he walked into the office [at Warners]. They got up, shook his hand, saying, 'Great record, Ron.' That should've given us a hint about American record companies' general attitude toward us - no clue!" Greater response in England gave the Maels the opportunity to live abroad. "We had always been huge Anglophiles," says Russell, "and to this day there's a greater acceptance of eccentricity in the music scene there." In England, with musicians found through an ad in Melody Maker, they recorded the first of four albums for Island.

1974's Kimono My House contained the frantic "This Town Ain't Big Enough for the Both of Us," hailed by Melody Maker as "the most interesting single of the pre-punk era." Kimono was followed by Propaganda, which birthed two massive hits in the band's adopted homeland and nary a mention Stateside. Writing twisted lyrics and complex guitar rock before there was a snappy name for it, the Maels enlisted producer Tony Visconti to write star-spangled orchestral oom-pahs for 1975's Indiscreet. But Sparks needed a change. The band's constants are a tremulous voice, a manic keyboard and two big, fussy brains, and it stands to reason that such heaving cerebra would tire of the same old plink plink plink. So, in 1979, they "went electronic," recording with producer Giorgio Moroder, the mastermind behind Donna Summer's groundbreaking "I Feel Love." "We thought the combination of the vocal with a really cold electronic sound was amazing," Russell says, "and we were getting tired of our musical surroundings - not the songs, but the trappings of a band." No.

1 in Heaven hit like a bullet, setting the stage for '80s synthpop as the curtain fell on punk. Numerous bands including Depeche Mode, New Order and Pet Shop Boys cited that album as influential, as was the idea of being a duo, of challenging the conception of what a band is. The sedan-size electronic instruments of the time prevented Sparks from touring, so they returned to a rock-band format and a slicker, new-wavier sound, releasing Whomp That Sucker!, Angst in My Pants and Sparks in Outer Space, the latter featuring their biggest American hit, "Cool Places," a duet with the Go-Go's' Jane Wiedlin, which not-quite-rocketed to No. 49 in 1982. These were the halcyon days of early KROQ, a period when Sparks toured and was "as important to L.A. radio as Depeche Mode or the Cure," as one fan put it. Sparks' almost arrogant disregard of trends may have got them ostracized by the American music biz, but it's made for an odd agelessness in their work.

Practically everything they've recorded in the last two decades sounds as if it could've been released at any point therein. They've been more likely to start trends than follow them. "We've never tried to make timeless music like, say, Bruce Springsteen," says Russell. "But we've come to realize that maybe we've had more of an influence on pop music than we thought." Like counterfeit-watch salesmen, Sparks have been forced to display their wares in many different locations. Their 18 records have been released on almost as many labels - Island, Curb, RCA, Atlantic, CBS and Elektra, for starters. This is how the American major labels nurture homegrown genius. Yet Sparks marches on. "We knew we were on the right track when the record frightened our manager," Russell says of Plagiarism (Oglio Records), a 1997 career-spanning collection of 19 songs. Rather than ease out a greatest-hits package, they re-recorded the tunes, either in London with Tony Visconti and a 10-piece orchestra, or electronically in Russell's home studio, surrounded by ceramic busts of Elvis.

Few bands besides Sparks could subject decades of material to wildly opposed styles while remaining faithful to the originals. "When things are sequenced really hard, it has an effect similar to the one power chords had in the '70s," explains Ron. Plagiarism's electronic versions fluctuate from the raucous, nearly gabber techno of "Angst in My Pants" to the Eurodisco flares of "Popularity" and the Erasure collaboration "Amateur Hour." Bronski Beat's Jimmy Somerville duets on "The No. 1 Song in Heaven" (battle of the falsettos), while Faith No More makes a rather loud appearance on "This Town" and "Something for the Girl With Everything." The grandness of Sparks' music has always sounded appropriate for film, but Plagiarism's orchestrated renderings seem especially so. The dramatic melancholy of "Pulling Rabbits Out of a Hat," the ragtimey stylings of "Change," and the marshmallow billows of "This Town" and "Something for the Girl With Everything" could have costume capers, films noir and even romantic comedies fashioned around them. "We asked Tony Visconti to write the string arrangements," says Russell.

"He kept coming back to us and asking, 'Is this too strange?'" Guess so, because "One violinist went home the first day literally in tears." (Ex-Suede guitarist Bernard Butler bowed out as well.) They even redux the wistful sophistication and catchiness of their recent European smash "When Do I Get To Sing 'My Way'?" from their last proper studio album, 1994's Gratuitous Sax and Senseless Violins (Logic), which Germans and U.K. pop fans had the good sense to go crazy over. Sparks fans tend to fall on the obsessive side. Last year, the president of a Dutch fan club disappeared, his visage flashed all over Euro news in a Sparks tour shirt. "They found him floating in a dyke, wearing the same shirt," says Russell.

Their American fans have a justified mania - Sparks haven't played the States in more than a decade, and have had to make do with overpriced imports, Rhino Records' retrospective Profile: The Ultimate Sparks Collection and an Internet charade game known as the "Sparks Fantasy Karaoke Contest." A few Yank fans traveled to England to catch last year's appearances; the same fans are flying to Los Angeles to catch Sparks' upcoming as-of-yet only U.S. appearance (as are others from England and Germany). Ron and Russell would be pleased with a reaction like they've received in Europe, but they want to test the waters before investing in an Airstream. The brothers promise an eclectic live mix. "It's just a question of emphasis, really," Ron says. "There's been something of a time gap, and since Plagiarism is a retrospective of sorts, we don't mind mixing the really old with the really new." The Maels believe idle hands are the devil's playthings. During the year it took Virgin to decide not to release Plagiarism here, the brothers completed a score for Hong Kong director Tsui Hark's summer escapade Knock Off (TriStar) and recorded an entirely new album.

So, in their own peculiar way, Sparks are everywhere. Besides their considerable influence on plenty of new music, there's a forthcoming biography, A Song That Sings Itself. Russell has just finished a duet with up 'n' coming U.K. duo Mulu, and the orchestral version of "This Town" can be heard in a sports utility vehicle commercial in the U.K. But they're putting all that aside. Sparks are here and now, armed and dangerous. Show some respect - and don't mistake them for an English band. Sparks performs at the Key Club on Saturday, November 14; (213) 480-3232. Fans will meet on Friday, November 13, and Saturday, November 14, for the first L.A. "Sparks-O-Rama" at the Red Rock Bar and Eatery (8782 Sunset Blvd.; 310-854-0710) from noon until 4 p.m. Check out for more information.

Question: Musical duo Ron and Russell Mael were better known by what name?
Answer: Sparks