Entertainment For Lively Minds
Has any other band caused such a quandry?
So, Sparks have announced (or are about to announce) that they will be playing 21 gigs within a month next year, most of them in the same London venue and all of them different. Most Sparks fans are not in the first flush of youth (There's no need for a mirrorball at most gigs, the heads of the audience satisfy that requirement!) so they surely don't have the stamina to go out nearly every day for a month - most of them are "school nights" as well.
I know that Suede performed 5 albums in five days recently but has anyone else performed 21 albums? .... or more!
It's easy to decide that I can't go to all of them, even if I decide which ones aren't essential then there'll still be too many so I'm going to miss some that I want to go to so I suppose I need to decide how many first before working out which ones, but how do I decide how many to go to?
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As a verteran of Teenage
As a verteran of Teenage Fanclub's three gigs in three nights at the Camden Underworld, I can sympathise. It started out as a bold plan to do a regular set, an acoustic set and a no-guitars set but, in the end, it was effectively just three Teenage Fanclub gigs, After two songs dicking about with a theremin, Norman said, "You didn't really want to see us without guitars did you?" and everyone breathed a sigh of relief. I saw lots of the same faces there every night, and us regulars could even tell which members of the band hadn't changed their jumpers over the three nights (eh, Norman?).
Mind you, I couldn't bear to see Sparks once, let alone 2 consecutive nights. Entertaining fellows but truly dreadful music.
Silvery
I would recommend checking out Silvery a young Indie band influenced by Sparks and happy to admit it.
You can read about them here
http://piley.blogspot.com/2007/11/silvery-exclusive-interview.html
They play Blow Up Metro on the 13th December
http://www.blowupmetro.com/listing.aspx?style=partial
When Prince ...
... announced all those gigs earlier this year, I was heard to remark "A has-been like Prince will never sell that many tickets". How wrong can you be?
So, at the risk of getting it completely wrong again - Sparks? Big for 5 minutes in the mid-seventies? Can they really attract that many punters?
Sparks
Being, for the most part of their careers, at the forefront of musical invention, Sparks have a HUGE cult followting. Cult artists will more likely atract obsessionism than people like Prince who, obviously, will sell out larger venues many time over than Sparks could, but who's albums would attract only average interest. From perusing the Sparks chat rooms, as well as my own inclinations, I think the majority of these things will sell out. There are a handful of exceptions; Pulling Rabbits, Outer Space, Interior Design and Balls will probably only manage to half fill a venue. The rest will either sell out or be fullish.
John W. : Do as I did; Chose the albums they never really touch on but which are great- Indiscreet, Whomp, Angst...
We're very lucky, are we not.