I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: Sparks-Sparks (1972).

I first got into Sparks when I was working at Tower Records in Paramus, NJ. My coworker Tommy used to play Sparks’ then current album Plagiarism (an album of covers of their own songs!) and it was so weird and intriguing, that I bought it for myself. Since then I have been collecting their back catalog, which isn’t easy as many haven’t been released here.

So what do they sound like? Well, the singer Russel Mael has an astonishing falsetto. Making Rush’s Geddy Lee seem quite butch. Mael leads the band to crazy vocal extremes, making even a normal sounding song seem quite bizarre (This Town Ain’t Big Enough for the Both of Us, for instance). Russel’s brother Ron (known for his Chaplin/Hitler mustache is quite an accomplished pianist, and his sense of songwriting is, while unusual, certainly great. They were quite popular in the UK and Europe, so most people assume they are a Euro band but they hail from UCLA and thereabouts.

So, this album is their debut (when they were called Halfnelson). It was produced by Todd Rundgren (!) and is a bit more rock than their later new wave/disco hits. (And judging from the album cover photos, you can see that at the very least they’re trying to look like rock and rollers (all long hair and open shirts–even if Ron looks like Zappa). And so, this album pretty well lays the ground work for the Sparks of the future: weird, operatic and unexpected.

There are two songs that still make it onto “Greatest Hits” compilations: “(No More) Mr. Mice Guys” (in no way related to the Alice Cooper song, and “Wonder Girl.” Each one displays the signature style of future Sparks classics, but it still has a weird 1970s rock feel to it. It’s a pretty wacky beginning, but really it only hints at the fun to come.

[READ: Winter 2006] Nothing’s Sacred.

Like with Kate Clinton’s book, I found Lewis Black’s book while I was weeding the essay section of our library. I had no idea that Black had written a book, and since I love his rants on The Daily Show, I figured I’d give it a read.

My first surprise was that this was a memoir, not a collection of jokes. Black summarizes his life history: growing up in Washington DC, going to college during the sixties, running a startup theater company for plays that he had written, and finally, working for the government. (!)

The book is generally quite funny. Reading Black’s skewed and angry perspective on everything that he’s been through is quite a treat. It’s not quite as scathingly angry as you might expect from his stand up…which is good as it leads to a good writing style. And, since he was a playwright, it shouldn’t be surprising that he is a good writer. He knows how to temper the anger with some sentiment, even.

I was looking at some reviews on Amazon and there seems to be some complaints that much of this material is bits of his stand up act thrown together. I haven’t seen that much of his stand up, just the stuff on the Daily Show, so this was all new to me. I guess if you’re a big fan you know all the jokes already, which is certainly a catch-22 about memoirs: preaching to the converted most of the time, it’s hard to attract old and new fans.

However, if you’re curious to see what makes Lewis Black tick, it’s a great, fast read.