Spark Of Influence

Last year, I was crushing pretty hard on 90's Hardcore. I spent a lot of time stuck in daily playlists from that era, and found myself obsessively hunting down records that I thought I'd lost passion for long ago. One of those bands was Sparkmarker. It had been a while since I'd really spent any time with them, and revisiting their discography had me head over heals and hunting down pieces of vinyl that were missing from my collection.

I posted about it at the time, and it created a kind of Butterfly Effect that carried it's way across the Atlantic, influencing Marcus to dust off the Sparkmarker catalog, and buy a piece of vinyl that he had been missing.

And that influence comes full circle, as his blog post sparked me (excuse the pun) to chase the vinyl that he recently picked up.

When I was picking off Sparkmarker targets last year, I decided not to mess around with their split with Mystery Machine. I ignored it for two reasons. First, the Sparkmarker song on this split, Keep The Quarter, shows up later on the band's full length record...and second, I'd never even heard of Mystery Machine before, so who gives a fuck about their song?

Still, Marcus made a point of saying that he'd never even seen the blue vinyl pressing before, and that they didn't seem to come around too often, and of course now that he had one, two more were available on Discogs. I took the bait, and 5 minutes later, there was only one left on Discogs. I'm not going to be left out like a sucker.

Not to let Marcus get one up on me in the Sparkmarker game, I had to grab the clear vinyl pressing as well. It only cost me $3.50, so why not. So within the span of 10 minutes, I'd gone from not caring the least about the Sparkmarker/Mystery Machine split, to owning two copies.

The recording for Keep The Quarter here was done a few months prior to the LP, and this version sounds really cool with the more raw production...and surprisingly, the Mystery Machine song here does not suck. I'm not sure if I'd be interested in hanging with them for a full length, but I dig this song.

Okay, now that I had every 7 inch pressed for Sparkmarker, the only hole in my collection was the 500wattburner@seven LP...and for less than $10, I was able to cross that one off the list.

I was kind of surprised that this was such a cheap find. Sure, I would expect Sparkmarker vinyl to fly under the radar these days...but colored vinyl...from Revelation's weird cousin, Crisis Records? I thought it would still take a bit more effort than that.

Products & Accessories

Sparkmarker were one of those bands that seemed to get a bit of hype in the early 90's...I mean they even put out a record on Revelation's weird side label, Crisis Records...but these days I wonder if anyone remembers who they are.

A couple months ago, when I had a full on obsession over records from 1996, I couldn't get enough of that style of Hardcore, and found myself reaching back a few more years to dust off some Sparkmarker CD's that I had kicking around.

In 1994, Sparkmarker released a CD called Products & Accessories that compiled the songs from their 7 inches onto one convenient disc. At the time, it made more sense for me to buy the one CD instead of chasing four different 7 inches, so that was the way I went. Over 20 years later, I'm correcting the error of my ways, and for the most part, still paying 1994 prices.

The Gerberick 7 inch is one in a series of records where Sparkmarker featured Canadian artists, with this one giving exposure to the strange work of Ken Gerberick. Grabbed this one for $2.00 through Discogs.

The next record in the Canadian artist series featured the photography of Shawn Scallen. In this series, the Scallen 7 inch is my favorite. I remember seeing Shawn Scallen's photos in fanzines from the time and on early Shotmaker records. Great pictures, and a nice clean layout. $3.00 though Discogs.

The Plug 7 inch was released in '92, and preceded the Canadian artist series. It was their second record, but it was where the band really started to come into their own sound. This was the last Sparkmarker 7 inch record that I needed, and so therefore I spent a bit more for it in an effort to complete the collection...breaking the bank at $6.00.

Stuck in '96: Part 4 - Sparkmarker

While technically, their cooler shit was from the early 90's, listening to all these '96 records, it put me in the mood for some Sparkmarker. Since I only own their stuff on CD, I was checking their list of 7 inch records on Discogs. When I noticed they had release in 1996...boom, automatic purchase to fit the theme.

This two song 7 inch was Sparkmarker's only Sub Pop release, and in typical 90's fashion, the packaging is unique and top notch. With the plain white embossed sleeve, and the fold out back cover with the lyrics and photos printed on the tabs, this thing looks great. While both songs here, Sawed-Off But Silent and 2:20 ended up on Sparkmarker's next album, the presentation here was too cool to pass up...plus the less than $3.00 price tag helped make a good argument for grabbing this as well.

Inserting a condom, and safe sex pamphlets, in with your record is so mid-90's. Thankfully the previous owner preferred the natural feel, and kept the full packaging intact. This thing is probably still good to use, right?