Whoever puts together the music for the Gilmore Girls is totally interesting.

At the end of the show just now, the soundtrack offered a song I vaguely recognized but wasn’t paying much attention to until I heard, “That’s why I’ve got angst in my pants.”

OMG, SPARKS!!!!!!!!

Sparks was my absolute FAVORITE band when I was a teenager (ok, fine, aside from bowie and iggy, but they’re not really bands, and jethro tull, an anomaly, but mostly I listened to classical or electronic music anyway). I saw Sparks once in Detroit and a couple of totally memorable times in San Francisco. They were fucking brilliant. As far as I know (and, foolishly, I admit to not researching this point before pronouncing on it) their last album was “Angst in my Pants” in 1982, the year I (a) saw them the last time and (b) went to graduate school. Maybe they’ve had a huge, remunerative underground career since then. As I’ve always hoped Wayne Sloan (who opened from them once) did. I doubt it, though.

But this rendition on Gilmore Girls wasn’t they, or didn’t seem to be. So did someone do a cover of Sparks’s “Angst in my Pants”?????? How wild! But there are sooooooooooooooooooooooo many better songs!!!!!!!!! (This Town Ain’t Big Enough for the Both of Us, Moon Over Kentucky, Equator, Propaganda, Thank God It’s Not Christmas, Up Here In Heaven [Without You], Pineapple, Tits, Don’t Leave Me Alone With Her, Whippings and Apologies).

Some critical commentary, to show I’m not alone in my enthusiasm (from a site that demonstates I’m wrong about their last album):

“A Woofer [in Tweeters’ Clothing, their first release] is absolutely depraved, manic, beano, and the sleeper of the year in the creative department. (They)...shoulda been Beardsley’s house band…a music that is truly without precedent. ‘A Woofer’ might be the first neo-Dada concept album…Not a single recognizable riff on the whole album, not a single hackneyed phrase, A Woofer is the weirdest fucking album of 1973 from America’s most advanced band…”
(Dan DeWitt, Creem, 1973)

“A merger of the concepts/vision of the Kinks Ray Davies, the wall-of-sound production style (without the tape echo) of Phil Spector, and the lavish, peppery arrangement tendencies of Walter Carlos’ “Clockwork Orange” album. Add the basic teen-age consciousness of the early Beach Boys and Jan & Dean records plus the energy and exuberance of the early Who…the quintet was voted Best New Group in a recent Melody Maker readers’ poll. Several of the old bands are fading away and we need some reinforcements. Sparks, clearly, is one of the most promising.”
(Robert Hilburn, LA Times, 11 February 1975)

“Sparks combines the music of kiss with the lyrics of Nietzsche…In this era of made-to-order decadance and faddish moral turpitude, Sparks stands out as the genuine article. Ten stars.”
(The Northerner, 19 November 1976)

“Ron and Russell Mael can do no wrong as far as I’m concerned, and Introducing Sparks is only further proof…rock’s second greatest brother team – after Ray and Dave – once again meet the same (high) standards they met with Kimono My House. I know its a cliche, but maybe Sparks really are too good to be popular in America. I hope not.”
(Jon Young, Trouser Press, December 1977)

Which really sucks this season, btw.

now-this  ·  blogarhythms

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