Directory of Lost Causes (By Quentin S. Crisp)

When you turn pro, you know, she'll let you know

I've just been leaping around in the kitchen in a manner deranged to the music of Sparks. Well, apart from my evening constitutional, I live a fairly sedentary existence, and we all need exercise, and, furthermore, I can't afford to go to the gym. And that's my excuse. I'm just grateful that there are still some places left in this country that are not fitted with CCTV and that no one came home from work early or anything.

The Sparks album - Kimono My House - was sent to me recently by a friend, with six other CDs. I realise I've come to it over thirty years late, but so far this is my favourite CD of the seven, and I've been playing it constantly. I don't really know much about Sparks, but I'll try and give my impression here in a really trite way - The Smiths crossed with Queen and Talking Heads. I can hear Morrissey's choirboy falsetto in Russel Mael's vocals, and there's a fair resemblance in the witty turn of lyrical phrase, too. I can also hear Queen's creamy guitar and light-opera melodies here. And I can sense David Byrne's nervous quirkiness in the stage presence of the brother's Ron and Russell. I know that Sparks are an influence in the case of Morrissey, and would not be surprised if the same were true of the other two bands mentioned.



Because of Russell's super-high-pitched vocals, it's not always easy to make out the lyrics, and I didn't have much idea what the songs were about until I looked up the lyrics online. At that point, many things fell into place. Certainly the first two songs on the album - This Town Ain't Big Enough For the Both of Us and Amateur Hour - are quite startlingly evocative depictions of awakening sexuality in adolescence, and all the competitiveness, excitement and humiliation that come with this. Reading the lyrics and then re-listening to the songs was like going back in a time-machine to a teenage that I'd almost forgotten, and not necessarily my own, since my own experience was more humiliation than excitement. Nonetheless, the lyrics were as familiar as if they were my own experience:

Zoo time is she and you time
The mammals are your favourite type, and you want her tonight
Heartbeat, increasing heartbeat
You hear the thunder of stampeding rhinos, elephants and tacky tigers
This town ain't big enough for both of us
And it ain't me who's gonna leave

Yes, I recognise the teenage panic of not knowing if you're going to be the one who gets the girl. This agony was to be expressed later in a somewhat more downbeat, but equally witty form in songs by The Smiths such as I Want the One I Can't Have:

On the day that your mentality
Decides to try to catch up with your biology

Come round ...
'Cause I want the one I can't have
And it's driving me mad
It's all over, all over, all over my face...

And if you ever need self-validation
Just meet me in the alley by the
Railway station.

The same theme, as I said, continues in Amateur Hour, and I have to say, I found the lyrics to this hilarious:

She can show you what you must do
To be more like people better than you

Amateur Hour goes on and on
When you turn pro, you know, she'll let you know.

I don't think the Mael brothers were actually teenagers when they wrote this, but the freshness of the expression suggests that they weren't writing entirely from the point of view of outside observers, and that maybe, even if it's buried, this teenage experience continues to be a vital part of us. Certainly, it still sounds vital to me, a thirtysomething old codger and curmudgeon. In recent years I have found music far less physically addictive than I used to and have tired somewhat of guitar bands who trade on the sheer energy of their performance. But I am listening to Sparks now in the way I haven't listened to music for a long time. I find myself really getting off on the energy of it. Just watch this YouTube clip of them performing This Town Ain't Big Enough.... I defy you not to get caught up in the wonderful rising tension of the whole thing:



Anyway, that's why I've been playing Sparks like a teenage guitar-addict recently. It also helps that the lyrics are actually witty, because then I can always fall back on the alibi of irony if I absolutely must. And wit in popular music is so rare, it's a real blessing when it comes; I'm never tempted to scorn it, in the manner of the jealous, as affectation. Some of it actually makes me laugh, which is no bad thing:

You mentioned Kant and I was shocked
You know, where I come from, none of the girls have such foul tongues.

Okay, so it's slightly laboured, but it's still funny. Or how about a verse from Talent Is an Asset, sung from the point of view of parents proprietorial over their little Albert Einstein:

Albert is smart, he's a genius
Watch Albert putter, an obvious genius
Someday he will reassess the world
And he'll still have time for lots of girls.

No? Please yourselves.

I'm going back to do some more dancing. When I turn pro, I'll let you know.