2. SparksKimono My House
EC: ‘This Town Ain’t Big Enough For The Both Of Us’. What a single! I can still visualise them doing that on Top Of The Pops when I was a teenager. Sparks were my first gig, you know, in Dundee, in the Caird Hall.
GM: They were supported by Pilot. [Sings] “Oh, oh, oh, it’s magic! You know…”
EC: What a gig!
GM: Quite a good first gig.
EC: Oh, definitely.
GM: You’ve got a good story about Sparks, haven’t you?
EC: Oh yeah! It was ‘A Girl Like You…’ time.
GM: It was this weird multi-bill, radio thing – this very European promotional event. Edwyn had gone to bed, and I was up later in the bar, and had had a couple of drinks. I got in the lift and Sparks were in it too. I said, it’s lovely to meet you, I’m here with Edwyn Collins, and do you know that his very first show ever was seeing you guys with Pilot in Dundee? And they were very nice about me going [feigns drunken chatter] ‘ner-ner-ner’, then the next morning, when we were at breakfast, we saw them walking into the breakfast room. And then they saw us, walked straight across to Edwyn, and one of them went right up to him and said, ‘Hang on. I know your face. [pauses and points] Caird Hall, Dundee!’
EC: Of course!
GM: That was very sweet, wasn’t it?
EC: It was.
