纪录片自媒体解说素材-新闻动态参考-“火花兄弟”提出了一个问题：我们是否允许我们不喜欢火花？/‘The Sparks Brothers’ Raises the Question: Are We Allowed Not to Like Sparks?
https://cdn.6867.top:6867/A1A/hddoc/news/2022/07/0507/4534ub2swafiebg.jpg“火花兄弟”提出了一个问题：我们是否允许我们不喜欢火花？
‘The Sparks Brothers’ Raises the Question: Are We Allowed Not to Like Sparks?
如果您观看“火花兄弟”，埃德加·赖特（Edgar Wright）的终极邪教摇滚纪录片几乎没有人听说过的最伟大的乐队，您可能会发现自己对Sparks，有关邪教二人组的独特感情，几乎喜欢它们的一切除了，也许是一件小事。雷达。您会喜欢他们以魅力摇滚氛围开始的方式，然后有一个计算机摇滚时刻（他们的1979年Droid合成器专辑“天堂第一号”，由Giorgio Moroder制作的，就像“ Tron”的“ Tron”流行音乐），然后经历了迪斯科电子阶段，然后是80年代的独立摇滚阶段，然后是许多其他阶段。关于自己的幽默。你会喜欢的e在鼎盛时期（如果您能说的话，几乎没有人听说过一个鼎盛时期的乐队），首席歌手罗素（Russell吉姆·莫里森（Jim Morrison）莫普（Jim Morrison Mop）和键盘手的罗恩（Ron）是一个怪胎，身着光滑的头发，戴着扑克面孔的皱眉，被希特勒胡须（Hitler Hustache）缠住了，这似乎是所有的陌生人，因为他没有特别的希特勒（Hitlerian）。 （这只是……看。）您会\u200b\u200b喜欢的事实，每个人都认为他们是英国人（包括英国人），即使他们来自洛杉矶，无论在这个时代，无论如何，都跟随他们的缪斯偏心的毅力，你不禁钦佩。实际上，到“火花兄弟”结束时，只有一件事您实际上可能不喜欢Sparks，而（原谅我）是他们的音乐。我不太喜欢火花。乐队可能有十二阶段，但是火花声音往往落入我承认的两种模式之一，这两种模式都没有漂浮。在70年代的大部分时间里，它们的美学包括听起来很像女王，但皇后的尺寸非常具体。想象一下“波西米亚狂想曲”，如果没有可爱的“妈妈，刚杀死了一个男人……”钢琴和弗雷迪水星歌舞表演民谣，并且如果没有吉他金属炸弹的头部宣传（“所以您认为您可以打我并吐在我的眼睛眼中！”）。想象一下“波西米亚狂想曲”，如果它只是tee歌剧中段；这就是Sparks听起来的样子。然后，他们将自己带入了80年代，并在Drum-Machine Synth Pop（以及音乐视频时代）中进入了自己的时代，这使他们能够展示自己的Dreamboat-Meets-Geek高camp图像）这就是为什么他们的歌曲，尽管拉塞尔倾向于将声音投入风格的高级登记册，但融合到了80年代前40台广播的墙纸上，也就是说，SP的定义方面Arks的歌曲从来都不是有什么。这是不存在的：可以将歌曲提升到一个新的水平的旋律激增 - 在火花的情况下，它几乎永远不会到来。我认为这是三个例外，它们是我认真喜欢的三首Sparks歌曲。在80年代，我记得总是听到“很酷的地方”，这是他们罕见的热门单曲之一，并因其让人迷人的乐观情绪而震撼人心，就像我当时一样诸如“美国的孩子”之类的歌曲。 Go-Go的Jane Wiedlin唱歌的事实并不是很小的后果。当时，她和罗素·梅尔（Russell Mael）是一个项目，他们的二重奏为歌曲带来了其他Sparks歌曲所没有的活泼的浪漫片。他们的1994年单曲“我什么时候可以唱歌”具有讽刺意味，即使这是一个毫不掩饰的宠物店男孩仿制。他们的1979年舞蹈流行音乐《天堂中的第一首歌》有一个振荡的狂喜。，是火花的亮点，我庆祝它们。但是，如果您梳理其余的Sparks Oeuvre寻找其他类似的歌曲，我会说：您找不到它们。半个世纪后Spark仍然是流行音乐界最佳保存的秘密是有原因的。他们的目录可能被称为“寻找钩子的25张专辑”。当然，我不应该这样说。听起来很琐碎，狡猾，不酷。对于我无法参加Sparks古怪的Ma下，我谦虚地表示歉意。 What I think is fascinating and borderline funny about “The Sparks Brothers” is that while it's a sharply crafted piece of pop history (at least for an hour or so, before it slides into a this-album-came-out-then-this -Album-came-out-the the the the-album奉献重复性），这部电影最终开始像克里斯托弗（Christopher）的嘉宾电影的摇滚版本一样播放。所有这些人 - 贝克！迈克·迈尔斯！ Patton Oswalt！ Björk！跳蚤！杰森·施瓦茨曼！瑟斯顿·摩尔！弗雷德·阿米森呢 - 谁是Sparks狂热者，排队为乐队的出色光彩作证。一支花费50年的乐队的无意喜剧几乎连接起来，几乎陷入了巨大的时代，几乎成为了家喻户晓的名字，除了某种无形的力量似乎总是挡在了自己的方向上。他们一直瞄准打击。但是，让我们假设他们拥有那个突破性的怪物，或者甚至足够多，甚至足以像人类联盟或精美的年轻食人或宠物店男孩一样出名。在这种情况下，我们可能正在观看有关它们的纪录片，但它不会像“ Sparks Brothers”之类的纪录片，该纪录片花了两个小时20分钟，将其帽子倾斜到其主题的崇高中心。这只是另一个关于一支乐队的文档，使歌曲足以连接到足以连接。作为纪录片的“火花兄弟”是最高遗嘱在时髦的音乐恋物癖中，乐队非常缺乏成功成为其过于酷的室内cachet的定义码。在那些将已故的独立摇滚乐队丹尼尔·约翰斯顿（Daniel Johnston）视为某种被忽视的天才的人中，您看到的是同样的心态。 2005年关于他的电影《魔鬼和丹尼尔·约翰斯顿》也做得很好，但是它有能力认真地将约翰斯顿与布莱恩·威尔逊（Brian Wilson）相提并论，好像两者都以某种方式遭受了精神创伤的事实使他们平等。 Sparks Brothers的版本到了，当有人回想起与宠物店男孩尼尔·坦南特（Neil Tennant）的狂热后台相遇，后者驳斥了乐队和火花的“顽皮”比较，这意味着他想躲避宠物店男孩的事实从火花中提取了他们的美学。两个Deadpan Dudes的图像，一个唱歌，另一个在键盘上保持沉默；将合成器国歌变成聪明的舞蹈流行音乐的想法 - 不可否认的是，在1979年，g首先在那里。但是，即使是这种情况，Sparks也从未像“西区女孩”那样创作出十分之一的歌曲，或者令人难忘。更不用说其他数十种宠物店男孩歌曲是经典的，因为……它们是很棒的歌曲。在“火花兄弟”中，流行音乐伟大以某种方式包括在几乎没有人听到的钥匙中唱歌。这不是乐队的声音，而是他们歌迷稀有的掌声：一只手拍手的声音。
If you watch "The Sparks Brothers," Edgar Wright’s ultimate cult rock documentary about the Greatest Band That Almost No One Has Heard Of, you may find yourself developing a distinct affection for Sparks, the cult duo in question, and liking almost everything about them except, perhaps, for one small thing.
You’ll like the fact that Sparks -- who released their first record in 1971 -- have put out 25 albums, consisting of some 345 songs, and that they did it all while remaining more or less under the radar. You’ll like the way that they started off with a glam-rock vibe, then had a computer-rock moment (their 1979 droid synthesizer album "No. 1 in Heaven," produced by Giorgio Moroder, is like the "TRON" of pop), then went through a disco electronica phase, then an '80s indie-rock phase, then many other phases.
You’ll like the fact that the band’s two members, Russell Mael and Ron Mael, are brothers who have an otherworldly sense of humor about themselves. You’ll like that back in their heyday (if you can say that a band almost no one has heard of had a heyday), Russell, the lead singer, was the pretty one, with a face that launched a thousand swoons framed by a Marc Bolan/Jim Morrison mop, and that Ron, the keyboard player, was a geek with slicked-back hair who wore a poker-faced scowl framed by a Hitler mustache, which seemed all the stranger because there was nothing particularly Hitlerian about him. (It was just…a look.) You’ll like the fact that everyone thought they were British (including the British), even though they were from L.A.
Sparks, whatever the era, followed their muse and went their own way, with an eccentric perseverance you can’t help but admire. In fact, by the time "The Sparks Brothers" is over, there’s only one thing you may not actually like about Sparks, and that (forgive me) is their music.
Okay, there, I said it. I don’t like Sparks very much. The band may have had a dozen phases, but the Sparks sound tends to fall into one of two modes, neither of which, I confess, floats my boat. For most of the '70s, their aesthetic consisted of sounding a lot like Queen — but a very specific dimension of Queen. Imagine "Bohemian Rhapsody" if it didn’t have the lovely "Mama, just killed a man…" piano-chords-and-Freddie Mercury cabaret ballad refrain, and if it didn’t have the head-banging catharsis of guitar metal bombast ("So you think you can stone me and spit in my eye-ee-eye!"). Imagine "Bohemian Rhapsody" if it were just the twee operatic mid-section; that’s kind of what Sparks used to sound like. Then they ushered themselves into the '80s and came into their own during the age of drum-machine synth pop (and also the age of the music video, which allowed them to showcase their dreamboat-meets-geek high-camp image), which is why their songs, despite Russell’s tendency to pitch his voice into a stylized higher register, blended right into the wallpaper of '80s Top 40 radio.
That said, the defining aspect of a Sparks song is never, exactly, what’s there. It’s what’s not there: the melodic surge that can take a song to the next level — the lift that, in the case of Sparks, almost never arrives. There are, I think, three exceptions to that, and they’re the three Sparks songs I seriously like. In the '80s, I remember always hearing "Cool Places," one of their rare hit singles, and getting jazzed by the new-wave catchiness of its let’s-take-this-town optimism, the same way I would at the time by songs like "Kids in America." The fact that Jane Wiedlin, of the Go-Go’s, sings on it is not of minor consequence. At the time, she and Russell Mael were an item, and their duet lends the song a snappy romantic verve that other Sparks songs don’t have. There’s an ironic enchantment to their 1994 single "When Do I Get to Sing 'My Way’," even though it’s an unabashed Pet Shop Boys knockoff. And their 1979 dance-pop ditty "The Number One Song in Heaven" has an oscillating rapture.
Those, to me, are the Sparks highlights, and I celebrate them. But if you comb through the rest of the Sparks oeuvre looking for other songs like that, I would say: You won’t find them. There’s a reason why Sparks, after half a century, remained the pop music world’s best-kept secret. Their catalogue might be called "25 albums in search of a hook."
I am not, of course, supposed to say any of this. It sounds petty, churlish, uncool. I humbly apologize for the fact that I can’t join in the celebration of Sparks’ quirky majesty. What I think is fascinating and borderline funny about "The Sparks Brothers" is that while it’s a sharply crafted piece of pop history (at least for an hour or so, before it slides into a this-album-came-out-then-this-album-came-out-then-this-album devotional repetitiveness), the movie ultimately starts to play like the rock-doc version of a Christopher Guest film. All these people — Beck! Mike Myers! Patton Oswalt! Björk! Flea! Jason Schwartzman! Thurston Moore! Fred Armisen! — who are Sparks fanatics, lining up to testify to the band’s offbeat brilliance. And the unintentional comedy of a band that spends 50 years almost connecting, almost breaking into the big time, almost becoming a household name, except that some invisible force always seems to stand in its way.
Sparks didn’t revel in their obscurity; they kept aiming for a hit. But let's suppose that they'd had that breakthrough monster, or enough of them, even, to become as famous as the Human League or Fine Young Cannibals or Pet Shop Boys. In that case, we might be watching a documentary about them, but it wouldn’t be a documentary like "The Sparks Brothers," which spends two hours and 20 minutes tipping its hat to the sublime off-centeredness of its subject. It would just be another doc about a band that made songs catchy enough to connect.
Yet the fact that Sparks’ songs didn’t connect — not really — is essential to their legend. "The Sparks Brothers," as a documentary, is the supreme testament of hipster music fetishism, where a band’s very lack of success becomes the defining yardstick of its too-cool-for-the-room cachet. It’s the same mentality you see among those who lionize the late indie-rock noodler Daniel Johnston as some sort of overlooked genius. The 2005 film about him, "The Devil and Daniel Johnston," was also very well-made, but it had the temerity to seriously compare Johnston to Brian Wilson, as if the fact that both suffered from mental trauma somehow equalized them.
"The Sparks Brothers'" version of that arrives when someone recalls a huffy backstage encounter with Pet Shop Boys’ Neil Tennant, who dismisses a "naughty" comparison between his band and Sparks, the implication being that he wants to duck the fact that Pet Shop Boys lifted a dollop of their aesthetic from Sparks. The image of two deadpan dudes, one singing, the other silent at the keyboard; the idea of turning synthesizer anthems into brainy dance pop — there’s no denying that Sparks, in 1979, got there first. But even if that’s the case, Sparks never made a song one-tenth as gorgeous, or as memorable, as "West End Girls." Not to mention the dozens of other Pet Shop Boys songs that are classics because…they are great songs. In "The Sparks Brothers," pop greatness somehow consists of singing in a key that almost no one can hear. It’s the sound not of the band but of their fans' rarefied applause: the sound of one hand clapping for itself.
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