Review: Sparks + Mr B the Gentleman Rapper at Bristol Beacon - June 2026
Posted on: 22 Jun 2026There’s nothing quite like a bit of ‘chap hop’ to kick an evening off. In rakish whites, banjolele to hand, Mr B (aka Jim Burke) tapped straight into our good humour with his quirky persona and cleverly subversive songs. You can imagine him performing at an old-time music hall. ‘I Can’t be Arsed’ demanded - and was rewarded by – enthusiastic audience participation, and he finished with a cover of Sparks’ ‘Suburban Homeboy’ to boot. The perfect canapé.
The guy behind me in the queue said he’d last seen Sparks in 1974. ‘This Town Ain’t Big Enough…’ was in the charts and they appeared on TOTP for the first time. I remember the buzz at school the next day - especially that line about the cannibals. If they’d just taken their back catalogue for a leisurely stroll tonight, nobody would have held it against them. Instead, they delivered a two-hour power-pop masterclass which gave no quarter to the 157 years they’ve clocked up between them.
In poker dots and fat pink shoes, Russell bounced his way through the entire set, a barely disguised, grin on his face. Any worries his voice would be diminished quickly disappeared – it was clear and strong, including bursts of his unforgettable falsetto, pitch perfect. Meanwhile, Ron played his spooky Chaplin/silly Hitler to the hilt, studiously oblivious to the excitement all around him. In fact, from the waist up, you’d think he was typing the lyrics on a Remmington.
Bob Harris described Sparks as a cross between Frank Zappa and The Monkees. Their USP is a brilliant sense of the absurd coupled with whipsmart lyrics, giving them the edge over other campy kooks filling the charts back when. Performing weird isn’t so unusual; being genuinely eccentric and using it to create such high-quality material marks them out as special. It’s hard to fathom why they’ve always been underrated, given the long list of musicians citing them as an influence.
The many diehard fans sang along to everything; others, including me, only really knew the early hits and hadn’t kept pace with the 26 albums they’ve released so far. That could have made the evening harder to enjoy, but Sparks’ energy and obvious delight was so infectious, it really didn’t matter.
The biggest hits ‘This Town’ and ‘Number 1 Song in Heaven’ lifted the excitement to a new level, both still fresh and urgent, but not saved for the encore. We were treated to gems such as ‘When Do I Get to Sing ”My Way”, ‘Whippings and Apologies’, and (Baby, Baby) Can I Invade Your Country’. For ‘Let’s Get Funky’, Ron emerged from his keyboard: Ron walks! Ron sings (well, talks)! Ron dances! He got some of the loudest cheers of the night which, of course, he made a performance out of ignoring. Almost.
They ended with a sublime ‘All That’, then stood together drinking in the ovation as if blinking in headlights. First Russell, then Ron, thanked us for our love and loyalty, saying how emotional they had found it all. They didn’t want to leave, nobody did.
Sparks’ new album arrives in July: ‘Sparks Live on the Moon’. It’s not so hard to believe.