Number One Documentary in Heaven

If you were to make a list of all the bands in the history of rock who don't need a documentary made about them, never mind one that runs nearly two and a half hours, SPARKS might be high up there. Most people haven't heard of them, which loses you about 90 percent of your potential audience right from the start, and a good percentage of those who've heard of them and love them aren’t sure they *want* to know too much about them. It could be dangerous. Sparks exist in a kind of unexplainable parallel universe of glam-rock, art-rock and synth-pop hits that some of us may have been collectively dreaming for the past several decades. It isn't unreasonable to assume that knowing anything more than that could wake us up and ruin it. Why chance it?

Director—and superfan—EDGAR WRIGHT solves all these issues with his strange, whimsical documentary THE SPARKS BROTHERS, which premiered at SUNDANCE last month, by making what could easily be mistaken for a made-up movie about a made-up band. Like a way less obvious, and funnier, THIS IS SPINAL TAP. Are we really supposed to believe brothers RUSSELL and RON MAEL when they tell us their father took them to Saturday afternoon matinees without paying attention to whether the movie had started or not? Are we supposed to take it on faith that a half-century later they made a rock opera about INGMAR BERGMAN? Were JOY DIVISION, ERASURE, HEAVEN 17 and basically every other post-punk and synth-pop band little more than Sparks rip-offs? Is JACK ANTONOFF doing an improv bit when he says, "It's the ultimate experience of what you want from your artist—there's just no connection to what is actually going on in the world"?

Yes, yes, sort of and, apparently, no. I think.

Part of the wonder of Sparks is that it turns out you can make that kind of movie simply by asking them to tell their story, which Wright gets them to do with absolute earnestness and near-miraculous patience. This is who they are: either so weird that all of this seems perfectly normal by the time they're done taking you through their entire discography of two dozen albums, one by one, in order, with a handful of failures and a few radical changes of direction along the way, or so normal that they end up seeming incredibly weird. You decide.

The basic question this 100 percent true mockumentary sets out to answer, which it asks as soon as the Maels are done performing the film's theme song (entire lyric: "Fanfare / The opening film fanfare / Documentary film fanfare / Edgar Wright film fanfare"), is: "How can Ron and Russell Mael be successful, underrated, hugely influential and overlooked all at the same time?" You'll be hard-pressed to disagree with any part of that premise by the end.

I found myself asking one or two more questions: In this world of GALLAGHERs, GIBBs and other notoriously volatile brother acts, are the Maels really as inseparable as they appear, and how have they kept their project going for 50 years? My favorite scene is near the end, when we see the two of them, Russell the singer and Ron the keyboardist and primary songwriter, sitting at side-by-side workstations in a Hollywood Hills house, silently communicating as they go about the day, looking like they're solving math problems but more likely composing a song about a hippopotamus. It was at that moment that I understood everything I had been watching for the past two-plus hours was entirely true. And beautiful. Who could possibly have made that part up?

May THE SPARKS BROTHERS be in wide release soon—or at least underground, parallel-universe release. Whichever everyone involved thinks is most appropriate.

Framing Everybody Else

Two reminders that the treatment of BRITNEY SPEARS by the media and the world, as documented in FRAMING BRITNEY SPEARS, wasn't an aberration, a product of a different time, or a lesson. It was a mistake we're bound to repeat, in one form or another, until the end of time. New Zealand's STUFF on the 10 (!!!) years it took REBECCA BLACK to recover from the brutal backlash to her pop hit "FRIDAY," which included both cyberbullying and in-person bullying. And Variety's DANIEL D'ADDARIO on the trainwreck that was CLAUDIA CONWAY's audition on AMERICAN IDOL Sunday night, which I had promised not to write about, but this is about the show, not her. She was a teenager trying her best under the intrusive and unnecessary watch of a production crew and three judges who'll tell you they just wanted to be helpful. One of them, LUKE BRYAN, even voted no—I'd put my money on that being scripted—before the other two sent her on to Hollywood and, no doubt, more intrusive episodes to come.

Etc Etc Etc

The rising price of a DABABY feature: $5,000 in 2019. $300,000 today, he says. Top that, Bitcoin... Life after birth: NETFLIX tells the origin story of the NOTORIOUS B.I.G. in BIGGIE: I GOT A STORY TO TELL, which drops March 1... Texas flood? MIDLAND, MIRANDA LAMBERT, DWIGHT YOAKAM and HANK WILLIAMS JR. are booked for multi-night stands in April at the Texas-sized indoor honky-tonk BILLY BOB'S, in Fort Worth. Lambert told fans her show will be "reduced capacity and distanced with strict COVID protocols"... Reconsider me: TAYLOR SWIFT's rerecorded FEARLESS will be eligible for RE-GRAMMYS next year. The original won the Grammy for Album of the Year in 2010.

Rest in Peace

JOHNNY PACHECO wasn't just the co-founder and creative head of FANIA RECORDS, the dominant label in salsa music. He also helped create salsa itself and, especially in collaboration with CELIA CRUZ, made some of the label's—and the genre's—most enduring records... Pioneering studio console designer RUPERT NEVE is probably responsible, directly or indirectly, for the EQ on whatever record you're listening to right now. Among many other things. "The sound of every record you liked," British singer-songwriter FRANK TURNER said, "was shaped by his work"... RUSS THYRET signed a teenager named PRINCE ROGERS NELSON to WARNER BROS. RECORDS in the late 1970s and eventually became chairman and CEO of the only label he ever worked for. Loyalty and ears. We need more of that, please.

RIP also: Avant-garde jazz percussionist MILFORD GRAVES (note to all streaming services: You're missing most of his catalog)... Dance music artist/DJ ARI GOLD... LA rapper KETCHY THE GREAT, who worked with DRAKEO THE RULER and 03 GREEDO... Classical guitarist/composer JORGE MOREL... LARRY ROBINS, who managed NATALIE COLE and PETER, PAUL & MARY.