 | Raritets |
Andy Moore. Born in 1956 in Burbank, California across the street from Disney Studios, Andy Moore grew up in a neighborhood rife with film and TV production. He and a group of friends produced and performed a series of parody skits in grade school, then, forming another group called The Tads, created several original marionette productions out of a garage theater. Starting at age 12, they began producing a series of Super-8 "trick" films (which Andy later learned were remarkably similar to the trick films of Mlis). In high school, he made his first "art" film, a Super-8 account of the demolition of a metal mansion (designed by Richard Neutra for Josef von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich) accompanied by a doleful, repetitive, seemingly endless loop of As Time Goes By. His fellow 10th graders were bored stiff. Later, at UC San Diego, after a brief flirtation with sociology, he re-approached cinema in a more rigorous way, gaining inspiration from the films of Michael Snow, Standish Lawder, Jon Jost, James Benning, Pat ONeill and many others. By 1978 his films were saturated with language, but more recently he has tried to gesture and suggest rather than state explicitly, and to keep his films non-language-specific. Deeply concerned with the grammar of cinema and music, his own films are a blend of structural and personal concerns, and he often starts first with the soundtrack in mind. He has lived in San Francisco for over 25 years with his partner, filmmaker Jack Walsh, and is actively involved with Canyon Cinema and Film Arts Foundation there. He earns a living selling advertising space, as a travel writer for Fodors guidebooks, and doing occasional voice-over work on others films.
"Who''s film was that?"-- Francis Ford Coppola
Recent Screenings:
Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh
Day Then Night (1977) 16mm, B&W, sound, 5.5 min.
Midday in sleepy downtown San Diego. Everything moves sluggishly in the hot sun. Kind of spooky. Multiple drum-rolls signal the time-lapse onset of night, and the hectic breakneck buzz of crass neon, porno marquees, cars hurtling through the bad part of town and hyped-up night life glitz. An impressionistic portrait of urban glitter and grit that moves to a rock beat provided by the group SPARKS, singing In The Future.
This Is Only A Test (1977) 16mm, B&W, sound, 20 min.
A loose collection of unrelated vignettes utilizing various cinematic experiments.
A coupla months back I got the chance to interview Russell Mael of Sparks via telephone for a glossy free Vancouver rag.This was done to promote their new album Hello Young Lovers that recently came out in North America on In The Red Records. It''s their best album in at least twenty years!!!!
I feel very envious for all of you L.A.ers who get to see then perform in May!
This is a lengthier cut of the interview than what was originally printed.
I should note that I have done my best to omit all of my nervous stammering and giggling, yeah, I was star struck.
RD: You are one of the most influential acts ever. And there are new acts coming out all the time that you influence. With your sound, it seems that very early on you overcame your influences. How do you feel that happened?
Russell: Weve never done self-analysis on what we were doing in that sort of way. We liked a lot of other acts. I think we were probably thinking that we were emulating those acts then just by the nature of what we were capable of and what came out when we played music it didnt sound like any of those people. We had our own thing for better or for worse. We always wanted to be someone else but we were miserable failures at being anybody but ourselves.
RD: Youre very impossible to pigeonhole. Is that a benefit?
Russell: We think its the ultimate compliment to not be able to be pigeonholed. Its only a problem for other people like radio programmers and record companies when they want to be able to say what you are. Most reviews you read of bands they tell you what they are a mixture of. If thats what everything is, a distillation of things that have come before it, I think thats bad. Id rather have the original Velvet Underground than someone thats like The Velvet Underground. I think the fact that you cant pigeonhole what Sparks is is an asset.
RD: What was it like having Queen open for you?
Russell: I always like to remind people of that fact that Queen did open for us because sometimes people say, You must enjoy Queen because some stuff occasionally sounds Queen-like and I tell them that Sparks had two albums out prior to Queen even recording an album and that Queen supported us at the Marquee in London.
RD: It seems only natural that Sparks would have a tribute album. 1998s Plagiarism seemed to have started off that way then seems to have quickly gotten hijacked by you guys and producer Tony Visconti where all the interpretations were your own.
Russell: If we were going to re-examine some of our older stuff we wanted to figure out ways to do it that were interesting and not just going through the motions. We got Tony Visconti involved to help do a lot of the arrangements on that album and just do stuff that were really different interpretations of it and utilizing Tony for a lot of his strengths, like his orchestrations, hes really great at that. It started off that it was going to have more collaborations to it but we started enjoying some of the ones that werent collaborations, too. So were started shifting more that way.
RD: Your last album Lil Beethoven seems very orchestral artificiale. Was that due to the current technology that you had at your disposal?
Russell: We just wanted to do an album that was abandoning a lot of the conventions in pop music and conventions that we used and to try to explore working in ways that werent relying on verse-chorus-verse and having guitar, bass, and drums on everything, to find ways to keep a lot of the aggression that is there with pop music that we like but replace it other things like using big vocals and having aggressive sounding strings to replace guitars. To find other ways to work that werent relying on the tried and true.
RD: It seems that you set up challenges with yourself to do something different with each album.
Russell: In our little world we try to shake people up a bit and not go through the motions. When youve had twenty albums, Hello Young Lovers is our twentieth album, youve got to-not only for yourself but for the people that are into the band and then also for the people that are hopefully going to discover you and this might be the first album that they come across of yours, its got to be that thats the only thing that matters, that one album and that its something thats really striking and that is hopefully as forward thinking as some of the older things were when they came out. If its not that then it just seems pointless to be making albums.
RD: Youve never rested on you laurels which is so impressive.
Russell: We try. Its a hard thing to do. Thats why the new album took almost two years to record because when you start eliminating things that you dont want to do then you find that its harder to find stuff that you do want to do. It narrows the options and it makes it more difficult.
RD: With technological advances your last two albums sound like they couldnt have happened ten years ago with their sounds.
Russell: One thing is we have our own studio so we can take the time to experiment around and spend an infinite amount of time just working on stuff. Technology helps in a certain way that we can go into the studio and take a normal song, a normal song structure, and later see if we want to adjust the order of sections, take something that was the bridge before now becomes the central part of the song, we can shift things around after the fact. Were not locked into the way we first envisioned the song structure sounding.
RD: What type of programs, etc., were used to make the orchestration?
Russell: Rons actually playing all the stuff. He uses sample libraries of string sounds and all kinds of orchestral instruments. He plays it with a keyboard but its string sounds.
RD: It sounds played.
Russell: It makes it hard when its only one person because he has to layer all of the parts, its a tedious task.
RD: Was the song Rhythm Thief from your last album written as a commentary on the process?
Russell: I dont think it was written as a commentary on the process so much as just a commentary on everything. Everything lacking: Where did the groove go? on the one level was speaking literally about dance music but also obviously talking in a more general way as far as the flair and excitement with other issues in life. Is that All There Is?, a modern version of it.
RD: Ive read that you guys would much rather go to the cinema than the dance club.
Russell: Oh yeah, any day of the week.
RD: How is your new album different from the last?
Russell: Some of the goals we set on Lil Beethoven we decided to take further, we upped the ante at what it had hinted at, the approach that things didnt have to be typical song structures. Things could pop in and out at a moments notice. This album is grander and bigger, a lot of people have said, despite that, its even more accessible in a way. Theres more chanted gang vocals but theres also more melodic singing. Its a real hodge podge but a methodical hodge podge.
RD: A lot of my favourite music dares to experiment but never forgets the hook. Thats one reason why I like you guys so much. I thought that you were from Europe when I first heard you.
Russell:The type of music, I think, is bigger than life and theres an image involved and it seems that all those things are more European in nature and I dont know why that is.
RD: Maybe the levels of lyrical meaning are more appreciated over there.
Russell: Yeah, I suppose so where people actually listen to the words and care. Yeah.
RD: Although Sparks In Outerspace from 1983 sounds very much about California teenage life especially due to the deceptively surface level lyrics.
Russell: I like the lyrics on that, like in Popularity, I think people maybe thought it was so simple and basic that there was nothing there but I think its a really clever lyric. Its really simple but theres some substance behind its simplicity.
RD: And the feel comes across as well. I truly feel like Im driving around L.A. with a bunch of teenagers.
Russell: Ironically that album did really well in Los Angeles, too.
RD: Youve met Serge Gainsbourg.
Russell: Yeah, we did. We were lucky to have gone to his last tour in France, we went backstage. It was a really great experience.
RD: Gainsbourg is a man whose songs have often been lyrically misconstrued. How often has Sparks been misconstrued?
Russell: I think that people have trouble sometimes because they think were funny. Thats one thing that bothers us when people only see that one side. They say, Oh, theyre really funny. We dont think were funny. Sometimes theres fun or amusing elements to the lyrics but theres usually another side to it. Theres something more there. If someone does misconstrue it that way we think its unfortunate because were not trying to be a comedy act.
RD: Many of the songs have character vantage points that get deep into the emotion of the character. One really gets the feel that the character may be a tad unsavoury but is still opening their heart.
Russell: A lot of times Ron uses other characters to convey what ever is going on in the story.
RD: Tell me about vocal training and what do you do for your voice?
Russell: I dont have any formal training. I really try to take good care of myself physically. Lots of water. I keep my fingers crossed.
RD: Sparks can never break up due to you and Ronald being brothers.
Russell: We cant break up. You can scratch that one.
RD: When are you playing Vancouver?
Russell: Were going to try to play more dates in North America. Im hoping well get there one day.
RD: Can my act open?
Russell: (amusingly) Yeah, speak to my agent, yeah - http://www.lostinthegrooves.com/.
Boston University Metropolitan College, Art History Undergraduate Courses:Art and Popular Culture
Drawing on highly diverse materials and art forms from the visual arts, music, literature, and contemporary criticism, this course examines the blurring boundaries between art and popular forms of culture in the closing moments of the twentieth century. The course draws from an array of writers, artists, genres, and icons, including Radiohead, David Lynch, Walt Disney, Laurie Anderson, Dr. Seuss, Walter Benjamin, Andy Warhol, Art of Noise, Richard Linklater, The Simpsons, Bjork, William Wegman, Umberto Eco, The Wizard of Oz, Postmodern Gothic, SPARKS, and many more - http://www.bu.edu/met/academic_courses/undergraduate_courses/art_history/index.html.
All of this is by way of introducing two songs by Nico: one from Chelsea Girls which is a Velvet Underground song in all but attribution, the other from The Marble Index. That album was one I''d heard of quite a bit before I finally picked up a copy: I can''t remember what I''d heard of it, specifically, or what I expected (I suppose something similar to the Nico tracks on the June 1, 1974 live album). But what I got was something utterly unlike anything else I''d listened to previously - and aside from its (much inferior, to my ears) followup Desertshore, unlike anything I''ve heard since. There is, of course, Nico''s brooding, deep voice, nearly a baritone; and that spooky harmonium that drones under most tracks, which are built on two, maybe three chords, sometimes only a single chord. But the most striking thing about the recording is John Cale''s absolutely flabbergasting arrangements, here represented by "Evening of Light," probably my favorite track on the album. I could talk straightforwardly about what instruments are where, and what they do, but you can hear that - so instead I''ll just say that it sounds rather like a music-box diorama that quickly turns hellish, one that presents an earth-shattering battle between a brontosaurus and a pterodactyl rather than the expected delicate Victorian porcelain-laced figures in a pas de deux.
"It Was a Pleasure Then," from Chelsea Girls, is a bit more...human...with Lou Reed''s spiky guitar explorations and John Cale''s abrasive viola scrapings evolving in a straightforwardly improvisatory manner. What''s striking about this song for me, though - given the usual Nico voice and its smoky depths - is her clear, almost flute-like soprano register, which she uses a few times in the song to pipe out mysterious little melodies. It''s not the sound one thinks of where her voice is concerned, yet its tone melds quite well with Reed''s and Cale''s instruments - and its flutey timbre connects the track sonically to the rest of the album, even though otherwise the song''s arrangement is quite different from most of its other tracks.
Russell Mael''s strangled pronunciation hints that he once received elocution lessons from Nico, but perhaps the real reason for his plummy delivery is that it''s hard to sing straight when your tongue is buried in your cheek.