Sparks at Royal Albert Hall (29 May 23)

Obviously I was going to go to see Sparks when they announced a couple of concerts at Royal Albert Hall (RAH) and the only question was who to go with on which dates, assuming that I could get tickets.

I do not know if it was because of Sparks' increasing fame or the draw of RAH but getting tickets was much harder than I expected. I was on the RAH website the second public booking opened only to find the stalls and the first two circles already sold out! That left me with the uppermost seated circle where the good news was that the front row was available so I got three seats, Rausing Circle Row 1 Seats 120-22, for £50 each with all fees included. A bit more than I had paid before to see Sparks, Roundhouse a year earlier was £43, but significantly less than the sold out sections. I had not sat in that part of RAH before but was happy with the seat and the price.

Having got three seats it made sense to take Julia and Julie, who I had first met at a Sparks gig.

We all met at South Ken to eat having made our ways there separately; Julia got the tube from Richmond, Julie came down from Oxford and went to V&A first, and I walked there.

We got to RAH just before 7pm and I grabbed a pint before we all went into the hall and continued our chatting until the support came on. Mr.B The Gentleman Rhymer did a fairly short session in a Bonzo Dog style enhanced by including a medley of Sparks songs.

8:30pm at Sparks entered to rapturous applause and much cheering.

The setlist was very different from the last time that I saw them as they had a new album, The Girl is Crying in Her Latte , to promote but the style was just the same and was just what all the fans wanted.

Russel spoke quite a bit and danced a lot, Ron sat mostly motionless rising only twice to sing/speak part of one song and, as expected, to perform the legendary Ron Dance.

It was all excellent, and ended on an exceedingly high note with the sequence When Do I Get to Sing "My Way",  The Number One Song in Heaven and This Town Ain't Big Enough for Both of Us. They could have played just those three songs and I would have been happy.

Somehow they managed to keep that level up with an encore that included My Baby's Taking Me Home and finally finished with All That (from their previous album A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip) which I think will be a mainstay of their set from now on; I had my phone's torchlight on for that one.