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Beat The Clock

It was in the wake of The Sparks Brothers and Annette movies last year that I paid a pound for a slightly distressed 7" copy of 'Beat the Clock'. I'm just about old enough to recall Sparks' startling debut appearance on Top of the Pops back in 1974. For all that. their music didn't loom especially large in my childhood, and by the time of their Giorgio Moroder collaboration in 1979 which gave rise to 'The Number One Song in Heaven' and 'Beat the Clock', they weren't my cup of tea.

Notwithstanding the influence their template of emotive singer/expressionless keyboardist had on any number of artists that followed, I was only dimly and sporadically aware of the brothers' career from the '80s onward. It was FFS, their 2015 collaboration with Franz Ferdinand, that brought them squarely back to my attention: I particularly enjoyed the track 'Police Encounters' from that album. 

Their own recent music has something of an operetta-like quality about it that I struggle to enjoy: perhaps, as with 'Beat the Clock', I'll catch up with it in decades to come. Regrettably, this is one of those singles without a proper B-side, but just with an 'alternative mix' of the A-side: what a swizz!

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