Sparky provides lead vocals and plays, at various times, guitar, bass, drums and keyboards. Sparky performs with his band, the Backorders:
Eric Kampman (keyboards and vocals)
Robin Famous (vocals, guitar, percussion)
Greg Reznick (guitar and vocals)
Mighty Mark Stone (bass)
Jim "Boom Boom" Usher (drums)
Musicians who have appeared on Sparky's albums:
Arlene Lee keyboards
Steve Hanamura drums
Peter Helgeson nothing
Greg Reznick guitar
Bill Bergstrom guitar
Sparky Grinstead's first album, 1979's "Won Out", a collection of pop/rock love songs, gained him a small amount of airplay on college stations around the country. This was followed in 1980 by the single "Wa"/ "Whatever You Want" which in a perfect world would have been a massive hit, but in this rather imperfect one was deemed too odd to make even the most liberal playlists. In '81, possibly in response to the lack of success for his more mainstream music, Sparky saw fit to release "Le Bonx", a mostly instrumental cacophony recorded back in '78 and '79 that may very well have cost him the few fans he'd gained over the past few years, along with a cassette single featuring the songs "What Am I Doing Wrong/" b/w Positive Thinking" which was even weirder. In 1982 he released a single, "Rollin' Home" b/w "Major Networks" a couple of "normal" folk-rock tunes in a failed effort to get back on the radio. 1983 saw the release of "FSGBOC" , a set of mostly acoustic, darkly humorous breakup songs. A fourth album, titled "Rodent to Rodent" was recorded but never released.
Sparky rarely performed live under his own name and his records, when not completely ignored, got precious little airplay and sold not at all. A true original, he followed his muse where it led him and though commercial success proved elusive, he made some very interesting music that is worth a listen. Vinyl copies of his albums are now quite rare and collectible.
In the early 90's, Sparky began performing in the San Francisco area under the name Norman Famous with his band the Backorders, playing songs from his albums and newer material. Although they never recorded a proper album, several videos and bootleg tapes exist of their live performances (see below - a video of an early 90's club performance).
From 1996 to 2001, Sparky played drums and sang for the bay area garage-folk outfit El Sob, appearing on their two releases, Life In Antarctica (1996) and Welcome to El Sob (2001).
In 2002, just as he began recording some new songs, Sparky suffered a paralyzed vocal cord. Unable to sing, he shelved the project and spent the next few years in intense therapy, trying to regain his singing voice.
Today, Sparky is performing occasionally with the Backorders and has started recording again. His three albums were briefly available on CD, but are now out of print. Sparky is currently remastering all of his albums, including the legendary "Rodent to Rodent" for future release. He has recently released his first collection of new material in 26 years, "Winter Comes and Goes", recorded with producer Eric Kampman.
Hey Unc! Happy Thanksgiving to you all! Tell everyone I said hello and Happy Holidays. I'll be there next year, hope to see you. Keep in touch. P.S. it's 80 degrees here :)
Hey Sparky! Good to hear from you. Let's rock em at the Summer Soltice Festival! We will be at the California main stage at 1pm. Where & when will you be performing?
Glad you checked out the tunes! Thanks for the kind words!
Well, we get asked about the name a lot and the story is rather boring, to be honest. We had literally pages of band names to choose from and "Grinstead" is a road in our city, and it was the only name we had that didn't immediately piss us off.
I wish we had a more interesting story, like say, we once slayed a dragon called "Grinstead" but that's really all there is to it.
As a matter of fact, this is what we're going to tell people from now on.
