SPARKS

[Andy M]

I don't know about others on this forum, but I get a particular pleasure when I stumble across Sparks in a place I wasn't expecting to find them. I've had this experience twice this week. 'All I Ever ... is Sex" features in an episode of The Decameron, a Netflix comedy series I'm watching set in Italy during the Black Death, not a juxtaposition that would immediately spring to mind..

I've also just finished reading Paul Hanley's excellent Sixteen Again, a homage to Buzzcocks (in particular to Pete Shelley). There's a few references to Sparks in the book, my favourite being a quote from Buzzcocks drummer John Maher: 'There are things about Howard [Devoto]'s words that remind me of Sparks. When I got the Kimono My House album I was looking up stuff in the dictionary and going into school to check the encyclopaedia. It was an education . . .'

Regarding Hanley, it's pleasing to this pedant - always irked when 'This Town . . .' gains a superfluous "the" - that he properly uses the term Buzzcocks rather than The Buzzcocks, and The Fall rather than the Fall (1).

(1) Only to be expected, as he was in the latter group (2)
(2) Hanley's footnotes themselves are a joy to read. Stewart Lee wrote the foreword to PH's book on Hex Enduction Hour, and described Hanley as 'a modern master of the footnote', so don't take my word for it!