If you don't know who SPARKS are, then one of the following applies to you:

1. you are retarded/deaf and it's not really your fault
2. you are under the age of 3
3. you never sought out any music that was made before the first JANES ADDICTION album and it's probably too late for you.

You may think you don't know who they are until someone says something like, "Dude, remember that song in VALLEY GIRL?" and then you're all like, "Oh yeah, those guys".

Well that's not fuckin' good enough.

SPARKS is the awe-inspiring musical brainchild of brothers Ron and Russell Mael, who have been making challenging, innovative and danceable art-pop for 30 years and counting. Although they hail from the west coast, one would swear that SPARKS is European. Russell's affected warbling vocals bring to mind an early Bryan Ferry on angel dust, and Ron's mongoloid-golfing-Hitler look and quirky keyboards are straight out of the 70's European art-rock handbook.

In many ways SPARKS is a European band. They have had many hits and have toured succesfully throughout Europe for decades while only retaining a (rabid) cult following in America.

Throughout their long career, one can identify three main phases of SPARKS. In the early-to-mid seventies (Phase 1) they helped define the sound of a genre that would become known as "art-rock"; complexly orchestrated songs with weird time signatures and mystifying, often humorous lyrics that seemed to defy classification. However, while some bands tried their best to alienate the casual listener with their "difficult" music, SPARKS always had a strong pop sensibility, and a bizarre sense of humor, which set them apart from almost every other band of that time. Just take a look at the album covers of SPARKS classics like "Propaganda", "Kimono My House", and "A Woofer In Tweeter's Clothing", and you can tell these guys are not King Crimson.

Then came Phase 2: the "New Wave" phase, probably the most familiar to American audiences. The 1982 album "Angst in My Pants" yielded two semi-hits ("I Predict" and "Angst in My Pants"), an appearance on "Saturday Night Live" and a spot on the soundtracks of several teen flicks, like the aforementioned VALLEY GIRL. The album is the most successful union of Art rock and New Wave dance music, ever.

It was at this point that SPARKS began working with disco/techno pioneer Gorgio Moroder. With his help, SPARKS moved solidly into Phase 3: the full-on dance music phase. This may explain why the band is still huge in the club scene in Europe. Those Europeans love to dance.

It's hard to name another band who has so effortlessly made the transition through three decades of changing musical styles, while retaining their artistic vision and insanely individual sense of the bizarre. The only bad thing about SPARKS is that they weren't as big as The Rolling Stones or Blondie or Radiohead...

Maybe that is a good thing.

Click to read the interview.