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There was curiously no mention of the Sparks debut album being "new wave in 1971," or anything like that which is what the WRC seemed to love about it. We didn't get to hear "Fletcher Honorama," my second favorite Sparks tune, either (and you don't want to know what my favorite one is.) It is cute to think that the first publicity they really got had to do with Ron's Hitler mustache, or that their two biggest commercial successes were doing Moroder disco and silly dancey synth pop in 1983. Leave it to this movie to blow through their hated 80s years in five minutes just like that Kinks biography I read barely devoted 20 pages to the entire decade. I certainly hadn't heard of that Van Damme thing, maybe they didn't want to talk about it having already trashed that hideous 70s rollercoaster movie they were in.
If you were to walk up to Pete Townshend or Paul McCartney and mention Sparks, do you think they'd remember them? Or would be surprised to learn that Sparks are still making music?
Outside must be one of the biggest examples of a hugely ambitious album where the ambitions only ended up meaning anything to the person or persons who made the album. By all accounts, Bowie did so much recording making the album that you could release a box set based on it, and since there have been multiple comprehensive Bowie boxes since he died (Divine Symmetry, Loving The Alien), don't be surprised if one somehow gets made for this one, even though the album was no hit (I mean, Loving The Alien is a box set comprising his 80s stuff, and that stuff is generally loathed.)
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