[…continued from last post]

The second track on side two featured another Disco-segue to keep the dancefloor filled. But “Au Revoir” was absolutely a brilliant Sparks tune that deserved accolades. The steady beat marked it as Disco, but it fully reflected the mind of Ron Mael as it delivered the most breezy and insouciant kiss off song possible. Greatly enhanced by Michael Brecker’s buttery sax and the sweet background trills of Julia and Maxine Waters. Parting is less painful in French, yes? It certainly made for a perfect three minute single, even if it never actually happened.

The chirpy closer, “I Want A Man” was another brief song for this album of long discotraxx. It’s only 4:55 but with the sole lyrical content of “I want a man” and “I want a boy” it still had the feel of a 12″ single. Nöel’s multi tracked wails in the climax were a cheerful and euphoric end to the album proper, but the program had plenty in store on the bonus disc.

Disc two featured nearly an hour of single tracks and lost classics. It got right down to business with another lost Sparks classic that for all the world sounded like a song from the “Hello Young Lovers” album to these ears. “I Just Want To Be Seen With You” was a song that only Ron Mael could have written! The lyrical conceit of a lady compartmentalizing her beaus according to the needs of the moment was pure Sparks material. Albeit with a gender swap.

The synthetic glissandos and march tempo put it at odds with the Discocentric slant of the album. Maybe that’s why it fell to the wayside? But Mein Gott Im Himmel, what a Sparks classic got cast to the four winds here! Listening to Nöel rebuff the money and advances of the subject of the song who doesn’t quite realize that he’s there only for the status he conferred was a pure Sparks moment. The verses where she lists all the other men and the roles they play in the film of her life was so close to the methodology of a song like “Perfume” that it simply must have inspired the writing of the latter number…nearly thirty years later. Hear for yourself below.

Next we got a breather with the quirky Technopop of “My Night” which was shot through with squelchy blasts of laserblast synths over schlagerific synth bass. It reminded me of “Trixie,” the circus-like B-side by Lene Lovich. It’s a bit of fun but perhaps the slightest of the songs here. The the let the pièce de résistance casually drop.

“I Never Want To Be A Mother” is yet another song that only Ron Mael could have written, but without a woman to sing it, it never would have worked in a Sparks context. That said, it’s the most refreshing song imaginable. A paean to the single, unattached, and slightly decadent life of one who lives for the clubs. Who can’t possibly imagine being saddled with a bawling brat expecting to be waited on hand and foot. And it’s as vigorous spit in the eye of social expectation that I’ve ever heard, and probably ever will hear! And it’s given a performance to relish with Nöel biting deep in to the neck of the song with obvious relish. If only for this song, one must rush out and buy this 2xCD package!!

Following this salvo of unreleased tracks, we next had the single mixes of the tracks that were issued in one territory or another. The A-side of “Dancing Is Dangerous [Part 1]” really made the cut as a 7″ for radio play with sense that at almost a third of its album length, the song really was meant for the airwaves. The UK 7″ had a “Part two” on the B-side that was like a dub mix extracted from the discovamp middle section of the song given an artificial coda with the chorus appearing in the climax.

The vampy “The Night They Invented Love” was another nine minute opus given tight popsong focus with the judicious edit here. When the album version is a 12″ single length, a 7″edit is far from a perfunctory space-filler on such a reissue.

The already minimal “I Want A Man” also came up smelling of roses with its five minute length trimmed back by 90 seconds. With so little in the way of lyrics, the lack of instrumental vamping was hardly missed and in fact this may be the preferred version for these ears. There was one more unreleased track, an instrumental mix of “Dancing Is Dangerous” which I can’t see on the flipside to any releases on Discogs. This one simple let the backing vocals tell the story for this 3:49 mix.

Then we had basically half of the entire album with two of the unreleased tracks with the guide vocal demos as sung by Russell Mael. The purest form of Monk-bait up front, right? But these were strictly technical in nature. Russell was almost barely there in terms of performance and verve. He wasn’t even using head voice here! He was singing under his breath as if not wanting to wake a sleeping Ron on the Le Courbusier chaise in the control room. Here he was counting off beats to the bar where no vocals were over extremely minimal 4-track demos that were scanty outlines for the songs these eventually became on the album itself.

Far from being a Sparks album in absentia, these were there for the die-hards who would have been raising pitchforks metaphorically had they found out that these takes existed but were not shared. Well, they shared them, and at the end of the day, this was really Nöel’s album. She was fronting the songs, even if she didn’t write them, and her full-bodied and diverse performance really put these songs across successfully.

It’s fantastic to finally have all of this bounty decades later, and it more than saved me the effort of buying copies of the rest of the vinyl [I already had the “Dancing Is Dangerous” US 7″] and making my own CD. The addition of the three unreleased songs was a two-for-three revelation that more than justified the entire project, as I saw it. And at the end of the day the original five song album was a perfect complement to the already iconic “No. 1 In Heaven” album classic. In this case, showing the breadth and depth that Sparks learned from working with Giorgio Moroder.

As for Nöel herself, her liner notes here were fantastic. relating her story of how she was once attached to a California rock band [Hamlet] working the circuit before singing to a label and finding herself on the outs. A chance meeting with the right photographer put her on the model track and set her waitress days behind her. Now it was Zhandra Rhodes, Karl Lagerfeld, and Fiorucci paying her bills.

Still, the stage and music beckoned. In 1978 she was playing organ and singing in her band, Mick Smiley at a showcase night at the Troubador in Hollywood. Where Sparks were in the audience and they met afterward with a provocative offer. Would she be interested in recording a demo of their new songs to shop to a record label? The next thing was that Virgin bit and though it was at the tail end of Disco, there was still some life left in it by 1979. As for Sparks, they had garnered UK hits from their Virgin debut the year prior so Branson was ready to indulge their ambitions.

The notes tell the story of the album campaign and tour with the singer dealing with track dates and promo glad-handing on both sides of the pond. And the whirlwind was out of fuel by the time 1980 rolled around, but Nöel would resurface in a new band in two years on Scotti Records as Nöel + The Red Wedge, but that’s a story for another day.

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