Sparks-WLP-Bearsville-1st-s/t-Promo Insert-Todd Rundgren-Halfnelson-Shrink-Mint

$

50

SPARKS
SELF TITLED
FORMERLY RELEASED AS HALFNELSON
BEARSVILLE RECORDS
BV 2048
1972

COVER - EX++ / STILL IN SHRINK / TOP RIGHT CORNER HAS TINY BUMPED EDGE / BOTTOM RIGHT CORNER SLIGHT CREASES FROM
                SHRINK PULLING / ALL OTHER EDGES AND CORNERS ARE SHARP / NO CUTS / NO HOLE PUNCHES / NO WRITING / NO RING WEAR /
                NO STAINS / NO SEAM WEAR / NO DISCOLOR

DISC -     NM / A COUPLE SMALL AND VERY LIGHT PAPER SCUFFS / NO SCRATCHES / NO WRITING ON LABEL / NO SPINDLE MARKS ON LABEL

LYRIC
SHEET -  MINT / SHARP EDGES / NO PRESS MARKS / NO FOLDS OR CREASES / NO TEARS / NO STAINS / NO WRITING / NO PIN HOLES

PROMO
ONLY
BIO -        MINT / SHARP EDGES / NO PRESS MARKS / NO FOLDS OR CREASES / NO TEARS / NO STAINS / NO WRITING / NO PIN HOLES


WILL BE PROFESSIONALLY PACKED IN A CARDBOARD RECORD MAILER WITH RECORD SEPARATED FROM SLEEVE AND CARDBOARD BACKING ON EITHER SIDE AND SENT FULLY INSURED FOR YOUR PROTECTION.


Todd Rundgren signed Halfnelson to his Bearsville label and produced their self-titled 1971 debut. Halfnelson/Sparks album was one of Todd Rundgren's first outside production jobs since his own group, Nazz, and the job was excellent.
Todd Rundgren was a producer who had a reputation for imposing his own sound/aesthetic on the musicians with whom he worked, but, basically, that first album is exactly like the demos they made, even though the sound quality was enhanced.

Todd let the band do what it want and didn't tamper with things the way record companies do now, he liked the material enough to sit back and encourage them to do their own thing. Nevertheless lots of harmonies Todd Rundgren opted for were rejected by the band with cries of "slick ballads!".
Todd thought the band to be the weirdest bunch of people he'd never met but thought Sparks was a funny band too...

The first song to be recorded was "High C". This song was to be a lot heavier, but, somehow didn't turn out that way. Nevertheless, "High C" was Ron Mael's favorite tune and one of the better received songs when the band played live during that period. On this album there's also the neato Jim Mankey's bass line and quaint incest Ron Mael's lyrics to "Fa La Fa Lee" sang by a Russell Mael who had a cold ; the sound of thirty pianos tinkling away to Russell Mael's falsetto on "Simple Ballet" (seven takes to get the best performance of him singing "oh, no" preceding the instrumental !), or the near hard rock of "(No More) Mr. Nice Guys" (no relation with Alice Cooper's one) with its definitive guitar solo courtesy of Jim Mankey...
Russell Mael's "Roger" and "Saccharin And The War" were re-vamped from the Halfnelson's demo tape and these two oddest tunes presented him as a shadowed force in the more lunatic aspects of the group. One song, "Big Bands", was in a early incarnation, a ditty called "Summer Days" which Russell Mael wrote and performed on tape for a school film project.

Earle Mankey's "Biology 2" brought a new sound to high school rock : no Wayne Kramer's MC 5 punkiness, but a scientific experiment in dubiously carnal terms. The female voice saying "Ooh, let's do it !" was the then first Mrs Mankey, Alisha. "Biology 2" was the very first song the band heard played on the radio and was the only track from the album to appear on a Warner Bros sampler, "The Whole Burbank Catalog" (Pro 512), compiled by Barry Hansen aka Dr Demento.

This first album was a startling debut, with its crude yet experimental rhythms - the band used to beat on cardboard boxes with reverb on and run it through amplifiers - and ad-hoc inventiveness. Sparks managed to explore a bewildering array of styles using backwards tape loops and generally messing about with whatever lo-tech gadgetry they could find. This was music designed in the recording studio whose intricate arrangements would be nigh-on impossible to perform in concert. Sparks approached things from a recording standpoint and not a "live" one.