We just got the email from the Sparks mailing list today with the great news that the first three of Sparks 21st Century reissue program has begun today with the first three of the seven titles out today with well curated bonus tracks available as a lure for those who have had them all along. We have all but two of these albums, and one of them is so scarce on the CD [and LP] formats that I will most certainly be buying that one. But I could be persuaded to drop shekels on any of these delights, if we consider the materials added to the programs. Let’s look!

Sparks: Balls DLX RM – UK – CD [2022]

1. Balls
2. More Than A Sex Machine
3. Scheherazade
4. Aeroflot
5. The Calm Before The Storm
6. How To Get Your Ass Kicked
7. Bullet Train
8. It’s A Knockoff
9. Irreplaceable
10. It’s Educational
11. The Angels

CD Bonus Tracks:

12. It’s A Sparks Show
13. The Calm Before the Opera
14. The Angels (Sparks Alternative Version)
15. More Than a Sex Machine (Sparks Definitive Version) (Radio Edit)
16. The Angels (Tony Visconti Version)
17. The Oblongs
18. A Cute Candidate Opening Theme
19. The Race for President

I’ve always loved this album, and bought it on release in 1999 in the red cover. Now it’s got seven bonus tracks to fill it to the gills with stuff. The song they wrote to open their “Balls” tour that was only played live. A few alternate mixes, and most importantly, the songs from a 1999 CD single they self-released that goes for nearly three figures. I’m guessing that few Sparks fans actually have the CD-5 of “In Entertainment We Trust [Music From the Motion Picture ‘A Cute Candidate’]?” I know it’s too rich for my blood.

Sparks: Lil’ Beethoven DLX RM – EU – CD [2022]

1. The Rhythm Thief
2. How Do I Get To Carnegie Hall?
3. What Are All These Bands So Angry About?
4. I Married Myself
5. Ride ‘Em Cowboy
6. My Baby’s Taking Me Home
7. Your Call’s Very Important To Us. Please Hold.
8. Ugly Guys With Beautiful Girls
9. Suburban Homeboy

CD Bonus Tracks:

10. The Legend Of Lil’ Beethoven
11. Wunderbar (Concerto In Koch Minor)
12. Kakadu
13. Suburban Homeboy (Extended Ron Speaks Version)
14. The Rhythm Thief (Instrumental Version)

This album stunned in 2002. It still stuns today, though we have perhaps become normalized to its audacity and reach. The DLX edition of the 2002 CD had three bonus tracks. All available here, without crossing the $50 mark, for a change! Then two extra tracks from the concurrent time period also manifested. “Kakadu” I’d never heard of, but it’s from a German conceptual album from 2001 where various artists were given one word, and one sound, to create a composition from. In Sparks’ case, the word was “kakadu” and the sound? Paper being cut with scissors. They managed to get 5:18 out of it and I’m curious.

Sparks: Hello Young Lovers DLX RM – EU – CD [2022]

1. Dick Around
2. Perfume
3. The Very Next Fight
4. (Baby, Baby) Can I Invade Your Country
5. Rock, Rock, Rock
6. Metaphor
7. Waterproof
8. Here Kitty
9. There’s No Such Thing as Aliens
10. As I Sit Down to Play the Organ at the Notre Dame Cathedral

CD Bonus Tracks:

11. We Are The Clash
12. (Baby, Baby) Can I Invade Your Country (Alternative Lyrics)

As much as I am impressed by “Lil’ Beethoven,” the band’s next opus was even more thrilling. Have Sparks written a better song than “Dick Around?” [a rhetorical question, I know!] This time the bonus tracks are modest. A B-side and the track they recorded for an Uncut cover mount CD of Clash cover songs. They perversely picked a song from “Cut The Crap!”

Sparks: Exotic Creatures of The Deep DLX RM – EU – CD [2022]

1. Intro
2. Good Morning
3. Strange Animal
4. I Can’t Believe That You Would Fall for All the Crap in This Song
5. Let the Monkey Drive
6. Intro Reprise
7. I’ve Never Been High
8. (She Got Me) Pregnant
9. Lighten Up, Morrissey
10. This Is the Renaissance
11. The Director Never Yelled ‘Cut’
12. Photoshop
13. Likeable

CD Bonus Tracks:

14. Brenda is Always in the Way
15. Islington N1
16. Mr. Hulot
17. I Am A Bookworm
18. Where Would We Be Without Books

Sparks produced their third album of their “Lil’ Beethoven” trilogy in 2008, and the capped its release with a mind-melting residency in the UK where they played an album a night with every song they ever recorded on an album played in full! The location of this event? Islington, N1, the bonus CD single given to those who bought tickets for each show in the residency. The CD exchanges hands for three figures, but the song is yours now for a pittance! “Brenda Is Always In The Way” was previously a bonus track on the LP version of the album , and ‘Mr. Hulot” was a B-side to the “Two Hands, One Mouth” pic disc single. The book oriented songs were recorded for KCRW-FM’s “Bookworm” literary radio program.

Sparks: The Seduction Of Ingmar Bergman – EU – CD [2022]

1. 1956 Cannes Film Festival
2. “I Am Ingmar Bergman”
3. Limo Driver (Welcome To Hollywood)
4. “Here He Is Now”
5. “Mr. Bergman, How Are You?”
6. “He’ll Come ‘Round”
7. En Route To The Beverly Hills Hotel
8. Hollywood Welcoming Committee
9. “I’ve Got To Contact Sweden”
10. The Studio Commissary
11. “I Must Not Be Hasty”
12. “Quiet On The Set”
13. “Why Do You Take That Tone With Me?”
14. Pleasant Hotel Staff
15. Hollywood Tour Bus
16. Autograph Hounds
17. Bergman Ponders Escape
18. “We’ve Got To Turn Him ‘Round”
19. Escape (Part 1)
20. Escape (Part 2)
21. “Oh My God”
22. Garbo Sings
23. Almost A Hollywood Ending
24. “He’s Home”

And finally, the last recent Sparks album to get the love has no bonus tracks at all, but it is the one I will actually pre-order first next week, because when “The Seduction Of Ingmar Bergman” appeared in 2009 as a radio play commissioned by Swedish Radio, it could be bought on CD as part of a deluxe 4xLP/CD box [currently $315 on discogs] or as a Swedish Language CD released only in Sweden, [recently $50-70 on Discogs]. The only time I saw a copy was in Wuxtry Athens at the time of release as an LP [currently $145 on Discogs] which I didn’t want to buy. I wanted a CD!

In 2011, Sparks performed the radio play at the L.A. Film Festival and produced a ltd. ed. CD for the Festival. Sold only from their web store. Currently sitting at $349 in Discogs! So do I want to buy it for $14 + shipping from the UK? Whatever the shipping costs turn out to be, it will be a bargain to finally have just this album on CD and no LPs of it. In English. For <$50, so, huzzah!

That’s definitely one CD I am ordering and I wouldn’t look askance at any of the others crossing the threshold of my Record Cell. That’s a full Cd worth of bonus material that would cost much more to track down in the nooks and crannies than to simply re-buy on this series of discs. The Sparks Webstore is mostly sold out of many of these [they came in many different format bundles that may be gone now] but the first three are out today at other retailers as well with the last two being available on May27th and still in the Sparks webstore allotment. Budget accordingly!

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