It's hard to believe that Sparks have been around for as long as they have (with over thirty years in the business we call show) and that they have had very little mainstream success and recognition.
Perhaps it's their innate eccentricity that has held them back, with the brothers Russell (operatic voice, curly hair) and Ron (synths, Hitler moustache, menacing glares) Mael perhaps that little bit too darn freaky to be as popular as they might have deserved. It's an often-argued case that Queen built a career out of rehashing Sparks songs, leaving the Maels wondering what might have been while they went on to conquer the world, a strong pity when Sparks were clearly the more imaginative of the two. This, however, has not deterred them from crafting continually witty, eccentric mini-masterpieces in the intervening years, of which Waterproof/Dick Around are two.
Waterproof seems like an Edwardian whimsy, with charming little couplets like "The rain just fall off of me/The tears just fall off of me/Cos I'm waterproof, I'm waterproof/The parametric pressure has no relevance to me". It slows down around the two miniute point to a halt, before reinventing itself as a glam rock curiosity.
Dick Around is glorious, with its ridiculously absurd lyric ("All I do is dick around/The sun goes up and the moon goes down/The leaves are green, the leaves are brown/And all I do is dick around", Psycho-esque strings, crashing metal guitars and vocal delivery which is half Bohemian Rhapsody and half Ooompa Loompa singsong.
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