Track Listing

1. This Town Ain't Big Enough For The Both Of Us
2. Amateur Hour
3. Number One Song In Heaven
4. Get In The Swing
5. Looks Looks Looks
6. Something For The Girl With Everything
7. Beat The Clock
8. Young Girls
9. Cool Places - Sparks & Jane Wiedlin
10. La Dolce Vita
11. Fun Bunch Of Guys From Outer Space
12. Dance Godammit
13. Tryouts For The Human Race
14. Never Turn Your Back On Mother Earth

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #61858 in Music
• Released on: 2002-09-23
• Number of discs: 1

Customer Reviews

DAZZLINGLY INNOVATIVE MUSIC
Sparks first hit the limelight in about 1974 with the gorgeous This Town Ain't Big Enough, a powerful hook-filled pop song with dynamic falsetto vocals. It was a UK Top 20 hit but didn't do much elsewhere. Other seventies successes included Amateur Hour, Never Turn Your Back On Mother Earth and Something For The Girl With Everything. Sparks continued to make music throughout that decade but remained fairly obscure until 1979 when the groundbreaking electronic synth-masterpiece Number One In Heaven (produced by Giorgio Moroder) gained them critical respect and commercial success again. Tracks like Beat The Clock and Tryouts For The Human Race are drawn from that one while the equally enjoyable Cool Places comes from 1983. These brilliant songs are enough to make This Album's Big Enough a winner, but it would have been even better if a couple of their pop masterpieces from Whomp That Sucker had been included, songs like That's Not Nastassia, Suzie Safety or Tips For Teens. Sparks are masters of unusual but addictive melodies and clever quirky lyrics. That's probably why their music has aged so well. It sounds very contemporary today. If you like pop music with a bit of brain and you haven't heard Sparks before, this album will be a revelation.

Resurrection
This album was the perfect way to resurrect all those Sparks singles I bought on vinyl, which no longer get played.
Sparks were way ahead of their time in terms of synth-pop. What they were doing in the 70's wasn't matched by anyone else until well into the 80's and 90's.
There's a great variety of styles here - the mechanical rhythms in the Giorgio Moroder collaborations, pop, dance and even some big-band swing. They all go to show Ron Mael's underestimated talent for writing music.

Sparks are Flying
This is one of those best of albums that shows a band that went throughdistinct stages in their career and were successful with nearly all ofthem. Unable to make it in their native US, they moved to the UK andrecorded with a british backing band and had their first success with thebrilliant 'This Town Ain't Big Enough for Both of Us'.
The early glam rock gave way to more complex swinging arrangements ontracks like 'Looks Looks Looks', and the music veered from style to stylewith consumate ease. Their most commercially successful period in the UKis covered here too, with the inclusion of the Giorio Morodercollaborations such as 'No 1 Song in Heaven'.
The Mael brothers really made you get up and take notice, whether it wasthe piercing falsetto of Russel, or Ron's predilection for wearing amoustache that meant that every review of them mentioned the nameHitler...