RELATED
SITES:
Ganymede
Ink Syndicate
CannonFilms.com
The Dunsel Report
SYNDICATION:
Atom Feed
BLOG LINKS:
John Gorenfeld
Paul Frankenstein
Jim Steinman
Soul of Trek
True Father
ST XI
ASSORTED
WRITINGS:
"Cannon
Films: The Rise and Fall of Menahem Golan" (2001)
"Fast Company" (2007)
"Last
Man Dancing" (2001)
"Our Alien, HE" (1987)
"Drummer
on Top: The Red Hot Chili Peppers' Chad Smith" (2002)
"Singin'
the Hi-Res Blues" (2003)
BIO:
I
grew up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and now live in Brooklyn, New York.
I have a bachelor's degree in linguistics from Swarthmore College and
a master's degree in journalism from UC Berkeley. Feel free to email
me at patrick@runkle.info.
From
2000 until 2004, I was the editorial director for ArtistPro,
a music-industry trade publisher in the Bay Area. I also was
editorial director for ArtistPro's short-lived national magazine,
which was distributed to all the members of the GRAMMY organization.
(That includes Phil Spector.)
Current
activities include my band, Ganymede, my trips to Canada, and various other things I do. (See above for links.) I also have a large collection of oversize video boxes from the early 80s.
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I haven't written much on this blog about Sparks, the venerated wacky L.A. band fronted by brothers Ron and Russell Mael, but I do want to plug their 2006 album Hello Young Lovers. Actually, the album is not all that strong throughout, but it contains an amazing track 1, "Dick Around," which has to be one of the great pop epics of the new millennium. They made a video for the single edit of the song, which is now on MySpace. Sparks has been great for 35 years now, so if you've never heard of them, as many outside of California have not, you have some serious catching up to do. Of course, I'm a big fan of the band's Giorgio Moroder years, but the rest of the Sparks catalog has its fair share of gems also. And what other band has the claim to fame of having written music for both Hal Needham's Rad and Tsui Hark's Knock Off?
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