So a week ago Friday, we went to a concert. It's the first one we'd been to since January 2020, when we saw Walk The Moon again in Grand Rapids. This time we were in Royal Oak, one of the cities merged into Detroit, but we were there to see a band we'd already seen before. This time, though, it was Sparks. We'd seen them in November 2013, when they played a smaller venue in Plymouth for their Two Hands, One Mouth tour. This time they were playing the Royal Oak Music Theatre, and with their full normal backing band instead of just the two of them with a keyboard and repeater.
Of course we worried about Covid-19. But we hadn't had any symptoms or heard any reports of anything coming out of Motor City Furry Con. And Sparks insisted on attendees showing proof of vaccination and wearing masks, which, they pointed out, was a request to the audience to keep them-the-band safe. If people won't protect themselves, after all, maybe they'll protect their celebrities.
The venue turned out to be extremely easy to get to: I-96 to where it splits off as I-696, and then about five miles past Marvin's Marvellous Mechanical Museum we turn left and drive not a half mile. The line, meanwhile, went down to the end of the block, wrapped around, went down to the end of that block, wrapped around, and went nearly to the end of that block. I was getting to wonder if we might lap the whole venue. Along the way I signed the petition for a group trying to put a minimum wage hike on the November ballot and hoped my signature was legible enough to count. (The next day we'd be canvassed for the same thing at the farmer's market and I could honestly say I'd signed already.) Making my signature less legible is that I was in gloves. It was colder than we expected, and we didn't anticipate needing to wait outside a half-hour or so while the venue checked everyone's vaccine cards and such. Also while we were waiting, near the entrance to a restaurant, a couple walked past and asked what the line was for. Someone said, ``Sparks'' and the woman nodded and said that was great, almost as though she had any idea why the concert line was wrapping around two sides of the block like this. I don't know if the line was abnormally long or maybe she just hadn't ever been there at maximal line length.
Also while waiting on line ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger texted her brother to say we were about to see Sparks. He never answered, a curious lack of response.
The venue was built in the late 1920s as a movie palace. It's got that look to it still, with fine decorated walls and wooden seats that seem a bit small and tightly packed by modern standards. Also ones lacking seat numbers, so while we might have found our balcony seats by counting it was easier to have the usher show us. There was a bar upstairs too, just a couple rows behind us, but we didn't get anything.
The show opened with ``So May We Start'', a song we didn't know. It's from the soundtrack to Annette, their musical from last year. It had me wonder if they had composed a song for the opening of concerts and apparently no, it's just something they had that was suitable. They then went to ``Angst In My Pants'', and I entertained the thought they might be playing songs in alphabetical order. No; there wasn't any discernable order except maybe a tendency to alternate pacing --- the languid ``Never Turn Your Back On Mother Earth'' followed by the rousing ``When Do I Get To Sing `My Way`' 'followed by the tone poem of ``My Baby's Taking Me Home''. There were almost no songs repeated from their 2013 show, and a pretty good set of songs from their newest albums (``Stravinsky's Only Hit'', ``Johnny Delusional'', the closing song of ``All That'') or from Annette. Someone on a Facebonk group bunnyhugger's on, and who was also at the show, identified the playlist as centered on the songs featured in the documentary The Sparks Brothers from last year and oh, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
The lack of overlapping meant the one song we were most hoping to hear with full band --- ``Big Boy'' --- wasn't played. (Nor was ``The Existential Threat'', a song that's the tune of the pandemic for me, released in May 2020. Here's the official video, CW: animated body horror.) When someone joined the concert late, coming in about twenty minutes in --- and then left before the main show finished, never mind the encore --- bunnyhugger thought of their song ``Miss The Start, Miss The End'', another song they didn't play. Well, they've got 24 studio albums, they can't play everything. Also, they announced having another album coming and that they were working on another musical.
At the ``Two Hands, One Mouth'' tour there were one or two moments where Ron Mael, the keyboardist, stepped out from behind his keyboard and danced in parody of Russell's flash and style. They did that again a couple times, and even, in stunningly funny bit, had him take over singing some. He affected this halting, uncertain performance, like he were just a person who didn't know he was going to be put on stage at karaoke night. One of these was for the song ``Suburban Homeboy'', a satiric (of course) song about very white guys trying to play hip, and it's funny as it is, but to have it done by a person affecting a complete lack of rhythm?
It was wonderful. It felt so very good, so happy. Just joyful and happy and the encore ended with the beautiful ``All That''.
Back to the fursuit parade! These are stills grabbed from the movie I took, which is why the aspect ratio is a little different from normal. Also why the pictures are reasonably clear, instead of underlit and very blurry, because somehow the exact same camera settings work better as a movie than a still picture.
Pakrat taking his turn in he parade. You can see folks having made the turnaround and walking back to the ballroom in the background.
And there's that guinea pig, waving to a person who's just watching his phone. (I imagine the phone's taking a video or pictures.)
bunnyhugger working the crowd, getting ready to do her monologue tonight, asking if there's anybody from Ypsi in the audience today.
Trivia: Strontium in the Earth's mantle is rich in the isotope strontium-86; in the crust, strontium-87 is more prominent. Source: Oxygen: The Molecule that Made the World, Nick Lane.
Currently Reading: Howard the Duck: The Complete Series, Volume 1. Steve Gerber and quite a few artists. This ... oh, you know, it really hits a pop culture vibe that's nostalgic for me, even though I never read these books before, but they're deeply in line with this sort of 70s pop mysticism and I like touching that again.
