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List your top 10 artists as played on Last.fm:

1 XTC
2 Sparks
3 Devo
4 LCD Soundsystem
5 Mansun
6 Telex
7 The Dukes Of Stratosphear
8 Franz Ferdinand
9 Blur
10 Marc Moulin

Now answer the questions according to the numbers:

What was the first song you ever heard by 6?
Moskow Diskow! \o/

What is your favourite album of 2?
Geez, that's hard. Definitely is Propaganda, but Indiscreet is so crazy and funny that I listen to it one more frequently I guess. And No.1 In Heaven is a perfect masterpiece as well. AAAAHHH, I can't decide!

What is your favourite lyric that 5 has sung?
Favourite lyric by dear Paul Draper? I choose Legacy.

How many times have you seen 4 live?
As a band, one. And it was AMAZING.
Saw James Murphy DJ'ing once too, so overall I saw him twice. And he's one of the nicest guys I've ever met.

What is your favourite song by 7?
Aww the mighty Dukes... My Love Explodes is pure joy! And The Mole from the Ministry is also special 'cause it was the first song I ever heard by them. *_*
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http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/48/A_Woofer_in_Tweeter%27s_Clothing_-_Sparks.jpg

ALERT BLOG PROMOTION ATTACK
http://suburbanhomeboy.wordpress.com/
That is my blog where I put album reviews as well as other miscellaneous posts I like it better than last.fm journal but I stay here as well because I'm just that generous.

A Woofer in Tweeter's Clothing is a huge step up from Sparks, even though I guess technically not much has changed. They have found a bigger, more assured sound, and much more variety in styles. Russell is less adolescent-sounding, and he finds a few new voices to play with, but mostly the songs are just better. And here they all are in their majesty and weird:

Girl From Germany

It's just on the edges of commercial-friendly musically, but have to somehow get by the stretchy, affected vocals and painfully chipper, whistly chorus to see that this song is a real lyrical gem. Somehow it feels funny to call it a song about racism, but it really is…

This is the most recent list of my vinyl collection available online. I'll have to go around and edit every other place it's in, but hopefully someone will find enjoyment in and spark a little conversation about select pieces of the collection. Sorted by artist, alphabetical order.

# artist names: (2) [3 total]
5th Dimension - "Age of Aquarius"
10cc - "Live and Let Live" (2 records)

Artists beginning in A: (9) [10 total]

ABBA -"ABBA"
ABBA - "Arrival"
ABBA - "Super Trouper"
ABBA - "The Album"
ABBA - "The Very Best Of Abba" (2 records)
ABBA - "Voulez-Vous"
AC/DC - "Back in Black"
AC/DC - "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"
Willie Alexander & The Boom Boom Band - "Willie Alexander And The Boom Boom Band"
The Association - "Greatest Hits"

Artists beginning in B: (14)

Bangles - "Different Light"
Beatles - "20 Greatest Hits"
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http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/2a/Indiscreet_-_Sparks.jpg

Indiscreet is a trickier proposition for a review than Kimono My House or Propaganda have been. As I have said previously, KMH pretty much knocked me out of my seat the first time I heard it, and I think was gushing into this journal by the third track, something I honestly do very little of at all. I listened to nothing else that evening. As far as immediacy goes, I know of no better album. Propaganda took a little longer, but the ingredients were really very similar, so I knew what to expect and, for the most part, got it. So far, so easy.

Now, I am ashamed but unsurprised that on first listen, I dismissed Indiscreet as "annoying", and moved on. I have had similar reactions to Damned Damned Damned ("just noise"), The Idiot ("tries too hard")and Roxy Music ("pretentious"), all of which have been smashed for six by now. Let me try to remember/justify what I felt then.

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http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c8/Propaganda_-_Sparks.jpg

The songs are Bigger. The lyrics are Stronger. The vocals are Heavenly. Welcome to Propaganda, Sparks's follow-up to Kimono My House (reviewed here). Released in the same year and I guess recorded at the same time, it's slightly surprising that I find it so easy now to acclaim Propaganda as the superior album. But I can respond to each immense track from Kimono with an equal-or-greater from Propaganda and have tracks to spare. Propaganda wins out for consistency, and for I don't know what else. It just does.

I am also starting to think that there is no sound on Earth, or indeed in Space, that can compete with Russell Mael's falsetto at its sweetest, and I think Propaganda is its pinnacle.

Propaganda

"Hello soldier boy,"
Oh boy, she's spewing out her propaganda,
Propaganda
Might makes right, though you're wrong,
You're right to fight her propaganda,
Propaganda, propaganda
"Come to our side", she does say
…

I have been listening to rather a lot of Sparks recently. Even a brief glimpse at my charts will show that this is an understatement. I got into them from last.fm with Falling In Love With Myself Again, and consequently honestly believed that Kimono My House was the greatest album I would ever hear. Even when I'd fallen for Propaganda even harder, there was still, in the back of my mind, the certainty that nothing that came later could be better. If my recent forays into different musics and bands have taught me anything, it's that the light of awesome fades very quickly, and the first five years or so of a band's popularity usually outshine everything that comes after them.

So I was convinced that this glam-pop-rock-extravaganza that is 70s Sparks would be the height of their career. I almost decided not to dabble much further into their work. The torrent (don't worry, I'm in the process of buying this stuff up) I used initially was Kimono My House, Propaganda, Indiscreet and Big Beat. …