Author of "The Birth And Impact Of Britpop: Mis-Shapes, Scenesters And Insatiable Ones"
You know when you watch one of those Netflix shows about some cult or other, could be fundamentalist Mormons, or David Koresh and his Branch Davidians, or Jim Jones and the People’s Temple, it doesn’t matter really, but at the start things always look quite attractive…free love, freedom, salvation, outsider status, pissing off your parents. And then the madness starts, the dynamic shifts, the true nature of the leader reveals itself and everyone dies. Unhappy endings.
Standing inside Glasgow’s Royal Concert Hall preparing to see Sparks for the first time I cannot shake the feeling that I am among the true believers, that the people around me feel themselves to be in possession of a truth that those on the outside have not yet had revealed to them. In Ron and Russel Mael they have charismatic leaders, issuing revelatory statements through the medium of song.
Or something.
Oh sure everything looks fun at the beginning; people in cool clothes, lots of band tees, bright eyes, laughter and chatter filling the space…but I’ve seen the documentaries, at some point shit has to get real. By the end of tonight this could all go Heaven’s Gate.
The crowd is an unusual gathering of the unusual, or maybe just the usual gathering of the faithful? Certainly one would not accept anything less than at least a clutch of glorious flamboyants at a Sparks show, subtly flamboyant. And so it is. The usual represented by the blokes squeezing themselves into old tour tees, musos, the sort of men who do not gather and cherish memories of nights like this but who collect and hoard them. But there are also here souls who understand that Sparks is as much an art project as it is a rock and roll band.
In 1991 in this very venue I saw Morrissey on his Kill Uncle tour. It was June, the show rescheduled after a bout of something forced him to cancel the original date in May. That night I witnessed a young man throw himself from the balcony onto the stage and into the arms of Mozzer. I also met the girl who would be my first love. Romantic innit.
Tonight that leap looks much less daring than it did to my 18 year old self. Trick of the light, the passing of time. Same as it ever was.
Sparks were, of course, one of the young Morrissey’s greatest obsessions. Many years after Kimono My House took his breath away he would become friends with Ron and Russell, and they would write the lovingly hilarious “Lighten up Morrissey” to, or for, him.
I wonder if anyone else here tonight was here back in the summer of 1991? Introduced to Sparks thanks to the Pope of Mope’s praise of them.
We’ll never know.
I might fall in love again.
Or I might find myself sipping a glass of Kool Aid and never see my family again.
Things begin with…a beginning. “So May We Start” sees Russell leaping around the stage, fist pumping, voice soaring, body popping. Ron, of course, sits at the keyboard, a vision of stillness…like Monet’s “Water Lilies” in human form. It is difficult to accept that these men have been doing this across 6 decades…from their debut in 1971 they have released new music (new in every sense of the word) in the eighties, nineties, naughties, teens, and twenties, 28 albums in total. The question isn’t about how they start, or if they may, but when will they ever stop?
Never must be the hope of every heart in the hall.
They play five songs from their newest album, “Mad”, which reached number one in the charts in Scotland Russ informs us…but only number two in England, a fact that the home crowd lap up with as much enthusiasm as the Tartan Army would greet a victory over the auld enemy. “Propaganda” (1974), “Kimono My House” (1974), “Gratuitous Sax and Violins” (1994), “Music That you Can Dance To” (1984), “In Outer Space” (1983), “Little Beethoven” (2002), “All That” (2020), “The Girl is Crying in Her Latte” (2023), “A Woofer in Tweeter’s Clothing” (1973), “Introducing Sparks” (1977) are all represented in the setlist too.
But the most remarkable moments still belong to 1979’s “No. 1 in Heaven” from which they played “Academy Award Performance”, “Beat the Clock” and “The No. 1 Song in Heaven”. Listening to these songs you are reminded of the awful unfairness of the universe. Here was an album that provided the template for the electro pop revolution of the early eighties, an album that blended soundtrack, pop, disco, art, performance, and modernity and that delivered something very rare in popular culture…something original. In a better world than this one, something like “No. 1 Song in Heaven” would have been number one…and would still be number one today.
At one point in the show they play “Music That You Can Dance To”, “When Do I Get to Sing My Way”, “The Number One Song in Heaven”, “This Town Ain’t Big Enough for the Both of Us” all in a row. It is the most perfect run of songs I have ever heard at a gig. As the crowd rises to applaud the end of “This Town…” I have to wipe the tears away, I’m not exaggerating. I am in tears. Great fat tears of joy.
When it is all over I am born again.
One of my earliest childhood memories is of seeing “that” Top of the Pops performance with Ron terrifying the viewers with a stare directed to the camera that had everyone wondering, briefly, what exactly he was thinking…and then, just as quickly, deciding it would probably be better not to know. Terrified or not I was intrigued, captivated, maybe converted. Like all memories this one isn’t true, how could it be…I was only one year old when they appeared on TOTP…and yet I must have seen it in the years following, and it left an indelible impression on me.
And then like the worst sort of boyfriend, or the worst congregant, I drifted away from “the one”. Gave my heart to people and things that didn’t deserve it. Poor fool that I was.
Tonight I discovered that there is a cult worth being a member of, one where no awful fate awaits the chosen few, a cult where only blessings and glories lie in store for those who will enter and accept.
Sparks.
For the faithful.
Amen.
Add comment
Comments