The Off Topic Topic

[celedhring]

Sparks are awesome. They played like an 80s band in the 1970s. Happy to see them resurface both in the Annette soundtrack and the German nazis.

[Syt]

Ron Mael did appear in an episode of Never Mind the Buzzcocks: https://youtu.be/c1cyLXNd3sw

[Sheilbh]

Sparks are awesome. They played like an 80s band in the 1970s. Happy to see them resurface both in the Annette soundtrack and the German nazis.

And the new Edgar Wright documentary:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOUsIYESOpM

[celedhring]

It's the keyboard player from sparks.

OMG thank you! For decades now every 3 years or so I remember there was this weird pop song in the early 90s that I liked, from this weird duo. I thought they were German or British but could never find them. Turns out they were Sparks. A long search has ended.

Which song? "When do I get to sing my way", maybe? That was their 1990s hit, and the first Sparks song I recall listening to.

[Syt]

It's the keyboard player from sparks.

OMG thank you! For decades now every 3 years or so I remember there was this weird pop song in the early 90s that I liked, from this weird duo. I thought they were German or British but could never find them. Turns out they were Sparks. A long search has ended.

Which song? "When do I get to sing my way", maybe? That was their 1990s hit, and the first Sparks song I recall listening to.

I remember that one from the MTV. From one of the best titled albums ever: Gratuitous Sax and Senseless Violins

[PDH]

Sparks was Queen before Queen (This Town Ain't Big Enough For Both Of Us), then they went new wave after they moved back to Los Angeles (Cool Places), later they muddled around a bit, but in the 2000s they came back with a electro-classical style for a few albums (Lil' Beethoven)  that sort of reinvigorated them.

Great band.

[Tamas]

It's the keyboard player from sparks.

OMG thank you! For decades now every 3 years or so I remember there was this weird pop song in the early 90s that I liked, from this weird duo. I thought they were German or British but could never find them. Turns out they were Sparks. A long search has ended.

Which song? "When do I get to sing my way", maybe? That was their 1990s hit, and the first Sparks song I recall listening to.

Yes, but I only remembered that after googling the band name thanks to Tyr

[Josquius]

You're welcome. Unexpected good deed of the day.

TBH I only really came to know them with FFS. IMO they're one of those bands where most people havent heard of them but have heard and know their hits, they just don't connect the dots that they're the same band.

[celedhring]

Outside of Tamas' forgotten song and maybe now with Annette's "So May We Start" (which I here declare to be a perfect song), I don't think they have had a broad hit since the 1980s.

Sheilbh's linked doc quote about them using throwaway riffs than other bands would have built entire careers around is true though. Great musicians, but probably too quirky/experimental for sustained success outside of the 1970s/80s.

[Sheilbh]

Outside of Tamas' forgotten song and maybe now with Annette's "So We May Start" (which I here declare to be a perfect song), I don't think they have had a broad hit since the 1980s.

Sheilbh's linked doc quote about them using throwaway riffs than other bands would have built entire careers around is true though. Great musicians, but probably too quirky/experimental for sustained success outside of the 1970s/80s.

And I think especially in the US. I've heard that there's loads of people in America who assumed they were British and were then stunned to discover they're from LA - in part because I think they've always been pretty successful in the UK, but I do also think they have a slightly British sensibility (especially in the context of American bands in the 70s and 80s).

Edit: Even just their embrace of high camp

[PDH]

Their trio from the early 2000s - Lil' Beethoven, Hello Young Lovers, and Exotic Creatures of the Deep are all good albums.  They do tend to be too quirky for the mainstream, but I think they have always had enough pop sensibility to be more well known than they ever have been - they just don't fit any marketing idea on what a group should sound like.

[Admiral Yi]

I checked out one of their videos.  Except for skinny Hitler they all have Bay City Rollers hair, so I can understand the confusion about their nationality.

[Syt]

For those of you who want to learn the really true truth about slavery, PragerU will have something later for you today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NO_wmixXBdE&ab_channel=PragerU

Slavery didn't start in 1492 when Columbus came to the New World. And it didn't start in 1619 when the first slaves landed in Jamestown. It's not a white phenomenon. The real story of slavery is long and complex. Candace Owens explains.

EDIT: wait, the full script is in the description:

And now for a brief history of slavery.

Here's the first thing you need to know.

Slavery was not "invented" by white people.

It did not start in 1619 when the first slaves came to Jamestown.

It existed before then.

It did not start in 1492 when Columbus discovered the New World.

In fact, when the intrepid explorer landed in the Bahamas, the native Taino
tribe hoped he could help them defeat their aggressive neighbors, the Caribs. The Caribs enslaved the Taino and, on occasion, served them for dinner.

Slavery existed in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.
The word "slave" actually comes from the Slavs of Eastern Europe. Millions of them — all white by the way — were captured and enslaved by Muslims in the ninth century and later by the Ottoman Turks.
Slavery existed when the Roman Empire controlled the Mediterranean and most of Europe from the 1st through the 5th centuries.

Slavery existed when Alexander the Great conquered Persia in the 4th century BC. It was so common that Aristotle simply considered it "natural." The slave/master model was just how the world operated in the great philosopher's day. 

Slavery existed during the time of the ancient Egyptians five thousand years ago.

As far back we can go in human history, we find slavery.

As renowned historian John Steele Gordon notes, from time immemorial, "slaves were a major item of commerce...As much as a third of the population of the ancient world was enslaved."

Here's the second thing you need to know.

White people were the first to formally put an end to slavery.

In 1833, Britain was the first country in the history of the world to pass a Slavery Abolition Act. They were quickly followed by France, who in 1848 abolished slavery in her many colonies. Then, of course, came the
Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. After centuries of human slavery, white men led the world in putting an end to the abhorrent practice.

That includes the 300,000 Union soldiers, overwhelmingly white, who died during the Civil War.

Am I saying that this makes white people better than anyone else?

Of course not. 

My purpose here is to simply tell the truth, and the truth is that human history is complicated; no one, regardless of skin color, stands guiltless.
Yet today we are never told to consider the murderous Persian Empire or the cannibalism of indigenous tribes of North and South America, or the heinous actions under the imperialistic Muslim, Chinese, Mongol, or Japanese Empires, to name just a few.

Instead, we're told that slavery is a white phenomenon. 
Like all persistent lies, this lie spawns a bunch of other lies. 
On social media I come across extraordinary depictions about how Africans lived liked pharaohs before Europeans came and laid waste to their paradise.

I wish any of this were true. But it's not. It's a fantasy.

The truth is that Africans were sold into slavery by other black Africans.

And in many cases, sold for items as trivial as gin and mirrors.

Whites didn't go into the interior and round up the natives. They waited on the coast for their black partners to bring them black bodies.

The stark reality is that our lives had very little value to our ancestors.

Here's the third thing you need to know.

If you think slavery is a relic of the past, you're wrong.

There are some 700,000 slaves in Africa today. Right now. That's the lowest estimate I could find. Other sources say there are many more.

For context, that's almost twice as many slaves as were ever brought to the United States. Child soldiers, human trafficking, forced labor—these are the conditions that currently exist within the same sub-Saharan region where the transatlantic slave trade originated.

African bodies are being sold today like they were sold then—and no, they are not being purchased by any country of white men. In fact, slavery, by any traditional definition, is exclusively practiced today within nonwhite countries...

[Eddie Teach]

Languish may know all that but the general public often have a more simplistic view on the history of slavery.

[Josquius]

White people invented slavery?
I haven't heard that before. But the opposite of what prager u says is normally right.
What a weird pro slavery rant.