Not for Sparks the slow, lethargic tempo of Legacy Rock! Where an album every 5-10 years has some Senior Citizens of Rock™ attempting to shovel lucre into their coffers before The Reaper removes their right to enjoy the fruits of their labors. Their fifth album in nine years, entitled “Mad!” will be happening on the 23rd of May, and it helps to remember that they wrote a musical with Leos Carax during this period and were the toast of the Cannes Film Festival with the results and have a new film project in the oven with John Woo [“Untitled Sparks/John Woo Project” …for now!] as we type these words.

Not bad for two guys in their late 70s! “Mad!” is currently in pre-order from the Sparks webstore in five formats. All with the exact same music, bless them. Each with twelve tracks of songs that could be from no other hands. Unless there are Sparks copyists I’m unaware of. Let’s familiarize ourselves with the options.

YE OLDE COMPACT DISC

Sparks: Mad! – UK – CD [2025]

1. Do Things My Own Way
2. JanSport Backpack
3. Hit Me, Baby 
4. Running Up A Tab At The Hotel For The Fab 
5. My Devotion
6. Don’t Dog It
7. In Daylight 
8. I-405 Rules
9. A Long Red Light
10. Drowned In A Sea Of Tears
11. A Little Bit Of Light Banter 
12. Lord Have Mercy 

We have a normal CD in a gatefold sleeve. The Monastic option at $15.00.

BLACK VINYL

The basic black PVC LP. “They” say that black wax sounds better than colored vinyl, but then again, “they” say a lot of things, don’t they? Twice the commitment at $30.00.

GATEFOLD BLUE VINYL + LENTICULAR COVER

For $5.00 more you can get the ltd. ed. lenticular cover in blue vinyl. Lenticular art is the type that flickers between as few as two images to show possibly animated image sequences but in the case of this LP we know exactly zero about the cover. Other than the cover IS lenticular printing. And the wax is blue. All for $35.00. If I were a LP buyer, this is probably what I’d shoot for. But I’m not.

DELUXE RED VINYL + CD IN EXECUTIVE PACKAGE

Are you suffering from FOMO?! Then break out the shekels for this limited edition [3000] copy available either in Germany [?] or only in the Sparks Webstore. $60.00 gets you a red wax LP AND a silver disc in a triple gatefold cover stuffed with art prints, fold-out posters and assorted gew-gaws.

COMPACT CASSETTE

Finally, contrarians will be drawn to the cassette version for the same price as a CD at $15.00. WARNING: there are no bundles in the store so choose your purchases wisely.

To celebrate this new dozen songs in the Sparks canon, these two will be taking their band around the world for a series of shows that will probably see the Mael Brothers visiting various cultural oases in their respective concert locales on an as available basis. Nothing new here. But where are they playing, you may ask?

SPARKS – MAD WORLD TOUR 2025

JAPAN

June 08 Kyoto, Japan – ROHM Theatre
June 10 Osaka, Japan – Zepp Namba
June 12 Tokyo, Japan – EX Theater

EUROPE + UK

June 18 London, England – Eventim Apollo
June 21 Manchester, England – O2 Apollo
June 24 Glasgow, Scotland – Royal Concert Hall
June 26 Haarlem, Netherlands – PHIL Haarlem
June 28 Brussels, Belgium – Cirque Royal
June 30 Paris, France – La Salle Pleyel
July 01 Cologne, Germany – Live Music Hall
July 03 Copenhagen, Denmark – The Koncerthuset
July 04 Stockholm, Sweden – Grona Lund Tivoli
July 06 Berlin, Germany – Uber Eats
July 08 Milan, Italy – Teatro degli Arcimboldi
July 12 Bilbao, Spain – Bilbao BBK
July 15 Dublin, Ireland – National Stadium
July 16 Dublin, Ireland – National Stadium
July 18 Edinburgh, Scotland – Edinburgh Playhouse
July 19 Wolverhampton, England – The Halls

NORTH AMERICA

September 05 Atlanta, GA – Tabernacle
September 08 Philadelphia, PA – Keswick Theatre
September 09 Washington, D.C. – Lincoln Theatre
September 11 Boston, MA – Berklee Performance Center
September 12 Brooklyn, NY – Kings Theatre
September 14 Columbus, OH – The Athenaeum Theatre
September 15 Cleveland, OH – TempleLive at Cleveland Masonic
September 17 Toronto, Ontario – Queen Elizabeth Theatre
September 20 St. Paul, MN – Fitzgerald Theater
September 23 Vancouver, British Columbia – Vogue Theatre
September 24 Seattle, WA – Moore Theatre
September 26 Portland, OR – Revolution Hall
September 27 San Francisco, CA – Golden Gate Theatre
September 29 El Cajon, CA – The Magnolia
September 30 Los Angeles, CA – The Greek Theatre

Tickets for North America go on sale this Friday, April 11 at probably 10 AM EDT, but the Maeling List [of which I am technically a member] have a presale happening NOW. I should have gotten notice but the last email I have from Sparks Maeling List is two years old.

I would really love to see Sparks with a full band. It took forever for me to see them since they never used to play dates in the Southeast. But that changed in 2013 when I saw them in Atlanta on their tour with just Ron and Russ onstage. It was splendid and over the last 30 years I’ve become convinced that they are the best band to ever come out of America. Strong words!

We had tickets to see them in 2021, and we bought them in the heady rush of confidence that came after the Covid-19 vaccines appeared about six month prior to the Atlanta gig we planned on seeing. But as the gig approached, the Omicron variant was spreading like wildfire and we thought the better of being in a box with thousands in close quarters and sold off the tickets.

Now they are coming again to Atlanta and are playing at The Tabernacle. The site where we saw Simple Minds in 2018. A fine venue. But this time the fly in the ointment is that I think that by September 5th of this year the world economy could be in a severe Recession if not another Depression due to the US Government’s Macroeconomic Tilt-A-Whirl® that unfortunately, does not come with a complimentary barf-bag.

Spending a minimum of $500 to travel out of town to see even Sparks may not be the best use of my finite finances. Hell, by September, that could cost three times as much as my off-the-top-of-my-head estimate. And I don’t even know how much the tickets are! So it remains to be seen if I will ever see Sparks with a full band. They are 77 and 79 now. How much longer will their show go on, even though I have the fullest confidence that they will be troupers to the very end. Whether we attend the shows or not.

But I will try to buy their CD, even if I buy it locally. It could happen. I bought “Hippopotamus” locally the weekend of release in 2017! If any of the pre-orders have your name on them then DJ hit that button.

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