Sparks Spectacular 2008 - Excerpts from the 21 Albums in 21 Nights Event

In celebration of the 10 years anniversary of the Sparks Spectacular - 21 Albums in 21 Nights Event - back in May/June 2008, here is a compilation video collecting most of the available footage from those days. For those who are unfamiliar with the Spectacular, Sparks decided to play all of their previous 20 albums - one every (almost) consecutive night - leading up to the premiere of their 21st album “Exotic Creatures of the Deep” on the final night. That meant rehearsing and playing more than 250 songs over the span of just one month. During the months spent creating this video, it slowly dawned on me that this has turned out to be the Frankenstein’s monster of concert videos: pieced together from whatever was available, larger than life, ugly as h*ll from the outside but still filled with infinite beauty if you allow yourself to go along with it. It is a monumental video in celebration of an even more monumental feat by Ron and Russell (and band). Mind you, this video “only” captures little more than half of the entire performance. Also, given the technical standards of those day’s recording devices, the quality is rough. It might mostly be for true fans, even though I myself find it strangely satisfying in all it’s “unpolishedness”. A small word of caution: most of the video material from the first night (the Halfnelson album) is severely impacted by drop-outs and freezes (audio is OK), but the rest of the nights are free from that. So please be patient or skip the first night. Truly there are a lot of hits in here, combined with an almost limtless amount of “deep cuts” that have rarely or never been played live before or after. Please give it a try. And let’s salute the Mael brothers and their supporting cast for pulling off a challenge like this. It will most likely never be equalled by anyone else. Below is the list of albums performed and links to their individual place in the sequence. Listing all songs is not possible. There are around 150 of them, but an overview can be found by navigating to the end-credits. Have fun. Album list: 00:01:14 01. Halfnelson (1971) 00:42:12 02. A Woofer in Tweeter’s Clothing (1972) 01:12:33 03. Kimono My House (1974) 01:43:49 04. Propaganda (1974) 02:10:39 05. Indiscreet (1975) 02:36:36 06. Big Beat (1976) 03:15:58 07. Introducing Sparks (1977) 03:54:28 08. No. 1 in Heaven (1979) 04:28:51 09. Terminal Jive (1980) 04:42:21 10. Whomp That Sucker (1981) 05:03:57 11. Angst in My Pants (1982) 05:37:24 12. In Outer Space (1983) 06:20:19 13. Pulling Rabbits Out of a Hat (1984) 06:38:17 14. Music That You Can Dance To (1986) 06:59:51 15. Interior Design (1988) 07:15:37 16. Gratuitous Sax & Senseless Violins (1994) 08:03:01 17. Plagiarism (1997) 08:41:00 18. Balls (2000) 09:29:42 19. Lil’ Beethoven (2002) 09:59:22 20. Hello Young Lovers (2006) 10:22:14 21. Exotic Creatures of the Deep (2008) 11:31:38 Credits