The Crane Pool Forum

Documentary chronicles the head-scratching career of the enigmatic band Sparks, following Ron and Russell Mael from their Beach Boys-esque SoCal childhood onto UCLA film school (somehow not running into Morrison and company) and into a fascinating-but-hard-to-access goofy art rock act, that somehow becomes (a) briefly a teeny-bop British sensation, and later (b) the missing link between nu wave cinema and nu wave music, no matter what David Byrne might say.

The doc was too adulatory. They've done interesting music for many years but what is most interesting about them is their longevity.

I was a big fan of the Indiscreet album when it came out (and to a lesser extent Kimono My House). The doc called Indiscreet their Sgt. Pepper although it wasn't received that way. I went to see them opening for Patti Smith (the Horses tour) in late 1976 and hated them. Their sound had changed (as it was to do many times) and I wasn't fond of that iteration.

That's an ongoing theme — that necessity or just plain creative momentum had them constantly changing their act, which allowed them to move on from failures with aplomb, because they were already making their next thing, but also move on just as quickly from success without mining the vein of gold they didn't realize they had struck, because they were already onto their next thing.

So they ended up sounding like Queen before Queen, The Cars before The Cars, Ultravox before Ultravox, and Erasure before Erasure. This isn't necessarily saying that they were as good as any of those acts, though they might have been if they set up camp and sustained their musical direction (and band lineup) for a few records.

It was fun to see Vince Clarke describe all the two-person acts that consisted of a romantic, emotive singer and a depressed, detached keyboardist, and acknowledging that all the depressed, detached keyboardists were stealing Ron's act.

The lack of copious available video from much of the career was a challenge the filmmakers met delightfully by accompanying the recollections with animations, including great cartoons of depressed, detached keyboardists.

Also notable that despite all the roster changes, so many of the former band members remained fond of the Maels and their time in the act.

Very stylishly done. It was a lot of cool people talking about what they think is cool.

Sparks is a lot of fun however and they came off genuine in their coolness.