Todays the big day. Wish I was at the release party goin' on right now in London.
But if anybody wanted to buy the cd, they might wanna get to it.
This will probably sell out very quickly.
In case anybody was planning on buyin' this jewel, go to the myspace page & click on the
BUY NOW button which will take you to their paypal page.
AROTF MYSPACE PAGEWhile yer thinkin' about it, here's an early review.
No mention of my track.... he's probably not into ear-bleeding punkrock. HHUMPHH!
Well, at least I wasn't brought up in the "less successful" tracks paragraph.
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Review of A Rainbow Over The freeway by Robert Walsha
This wasn’t supposed to be that good. There was so much stacked against it: tribute CDs
are often more-miss-than-hit affairs and the last (indeed, only previous) Sparks tribute album is a prime example.
Moreover, I’ve always held the theory that the very uniqueness of Sparks made them a nigh impossible band to
cover well. Indeed, how many truly great Sparks cover versions can anyone recall? I rest my case.
Or so I thought. A Rainbow Over The Freeway rather blows that theory out of the water. In spades.
Most of the recordings here are clearly labours of love. It really shows. Throughout, the quality of Ron and
Russell Mael’s songwriting shines through, undimmed even on those recordings that take the songs to far off and audacious places.
Special mention on this front must be made of Derek Paice’s rereading of ‘Frankly Scarlett I Don’t Give A Damn’,
a fabulous collage of sound that, in instrumentation at least, comes over vaguely Four Tet and wouldn’t sound out
of place on a Wire Magazine ‘Very Best Of The Wire Tapper’ CD. For the uninitiated, this is a compliment!
Then there’s Arinar’s splendid take on ‘At Home At Work At Play’. (Curiously, of all the tracks here, this radical beatbox-rap
reworking is the track one could most easily imagine Ron secretly guesting on keyboards - it’s kind of Lil’ Beethoven-goes-rap).
Also great is the silky, sexy electro-pop that is EJ Norman’s ‘Fletcher Honorama’.
Elsewhere, Jello Biafra, ex-of Dead Kennedys, guests and does a pretty decent cover of ‘Happy Hunting Ground’, backed by the Fleshies.
A cover of the early ’80s track ‘I Predict’ is rather less successful, but I guess lessons may be learned here about not making
silk purses out of sow’s ears. By contrast, Big Feat’s wonderfully boppy, spring-coiled take on the great ‘That’s Not Nastassia’ is spoiled
only by the annoying ‘Hang on …’ spoken line at the cut-off.
David Alston’s synth-orchestrated ‘Here In Heaven’ goes all mediaeval chamber music – and works. There’s a great, almost country/folk version
of ‘Slowboat’, beautifully sung and played by Craig Robertson, while the album bows out on a high with The Autons’ rousing, mechanical ‘Hospitality On Parade’.
This collection brings out the sheer quality of Sparks’ music and, coupled with such varied treatments, could even help make the ambivalent
and even downright Sparks-antipathetic realise what they’ve been missing.
You know what, Ron and Russell themselves should feel dead proud of what their offspring have created!
)
