Sparks are now about the only band that I try to see every time that they play in London who still play in London who still play in London with some regularity, the rest have either stoped playing altogether or only tour here occasionally.
They somehow manage to play a different venue each time and this comes with different seating/standing options. This was their first visit to Hammersmith Apollo (in recent years at least) and when I booked, which was when the bookings opened, there were only standing places available and so I went for one of those at £45.
I had been seated the last few times that I had seen them so was quite looking forward to a standing show.
You may have noticed that they played two nights and I have only mentioned one. Unfortunately I had a much earlier booking for Glyndebourne on the 19th, otherwise I would have gone to both nights.
Not having a lot else to do on the day I found myself in the queue around 6pm whereas I was already behind a good number of serious fans.
The entry system whereby you had to show tickets on their app twice, once to get into the building and again a few seconds later to get into the auditorium delayed me a little bit more than it should but I still got a place about three rows back, on Ron's side of the stage and with no tall people in front of me.
The picture below shows the view I had.
Sparks came on around 8:30 and after two and a half hours of mostly standing I was ready for some music and some modest dancing.
The first song was no surprise, So May We Start has been the obvious opener since being released in 2021 as part of the Annette soundtrack.
Sparks have an extensive back catalogue, almost thirty studio albums, and are able to pull out any track from any time so each concert is full of some surprises as well as some greatest hits and some newer songs from the latest album.
This time the surprises included three songs from Nº 1 in Heaven played in reverse order of familiarity so that when the third song, the title song itself, it came as surprise. An even bigger surprise were the two songs from 1973's A Woofer in Tweeter's Clothing. That is when I first got into Sparks via John Peel, of course.
In addition to The Number One Song in Heaven, the greatest hits included Reinforcements, When Do I Get to Sing "My Way" and This Town Ain't Big Enough for Both of Us.
I was very happy!
Standing in a cramped area got to me slightly after a while and I slipped towards the back, helped myself to a refreshing pint, and settled down to listen to the rest of the show and enjoy the light show. It was still excellent from their and I liked the different perspective.
Sadly Sparks have yet to announce any more London dates so I will just have to wait until they do.