At home, Porsche began conducting his own rudimentary experiments with acids and batteries. The owner gave him a tour, explaining some basic principles of electricity. One day, on a delivery errand to a neighboring town, he saw an electric light plant created to power a carpet factory, and was fascinated by it. Metalwork did not wholly interest the young Porsche. When his older brother was killed in an accident, it was expected that Ferdinand begin to train for the business. Porsche's father, Anton, had a metalsmithing business in Maffersdorf. Later renamed Leberec when it reverted to Czechoslovakia, Maffersdorf was at the time part of Bohemia, an area heavily settled by German-speaking tradespeople and part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. The rise of the German Nazi Party made this "people's car" a government-subsidized reality.įerdinand Porsche was born in the village of Maffersdorf on September 3, 1875. Already a renowned automotive designer, Porsche's dream was to create a small, affordable car for the European mass market. (1875-1951) is also remembered as the visionary who created the Volkswagen Beetle in the 1930s. It's a marquee-name band throwing their weight behind a cult act that clearly inspired them-and the cult act showing who's really in charge.Though he and his son founded the high-performance sports car firm that bears the family name, Ferdinand Porsche Sr. This is not a meeting of equals, and it doesn't have to be. The airy, buzzing funk of "Call Girl" (hook: "why don't you call, girl") is the kind of thing Franz Ferdinand do exceptionally well, although lyrics like "I gave up blow and Adderall for you/ So I'd have dough and spend it all on you" have Sparks' fingerprints all over them. That initial song Ron Mael contributed, "Piss Off", instantly earns its place on the next Sparks greatest-hits collection: it's a jaunty, lyrically withering rocker of the sort they used to crank out in the '70s. When FFS does click, though, it's a little delight. And the chemistry between the two bands isn't so perfect that a second collaborative album would be preferable to whatever either of them has up its sleeve next. Indeed, FFS doesn't always work-the album's middle section keeps falling into the latter-day Sparks snare of hitting on some clever phrase ("the man without a tan," "the power couple's coming around") and repeating it until it's certain that everyone's gotten the point. "Warhol didn't need to ask De Kooning 'bout art/ Frank Lloyd Wright always ate à la carte," Kapranos growls, before Russell Mael joins him with an ionospheric harmony: "Wish I'd been that smart". "Even" isn't what's called for here, though, and they know it: the longest and most elaborate track is a suite called "Collaborations Don't Work". The former's demi-operatic falsetto and pinpoint enunciation are the focal point of his band's arrangements, and the latter's crisp baritone has generally blended in with his group's sound, so their dynamic's not too even either. Every song is also, to one extent or another, a vocal duet between Russell Mael and Kapranos. The central lyrical topic is Ron Mael's favorite subject, the gross stupidity of masculinity the musical hooks are mostly Sparksian rather than Franzian. That's something they've needed for a long time, despite how much fun the Maels' unaccompanied "Two Hands, One Mouth" tour was. Appropriately, the first public sign of their collaboration came when Franz Ferdinand's Alex Kapranos joined Sparks for the latter's "When Do I Get to Sing 'My Way'" on stage a few months ago.Īs much as FFS' members have been going on about how everyone made concessions to the partnership, in practice this is effectively a Sparks record with a particularly sharp, focused backing band. But Sparks are nothing if not ironists, and both bands are long-haulers, and at some point they finally got it together to make an album together, under a name you wouldn't guess would naturally occur to the sixty-something Mael brothers.
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