Scotland on Sunday

[url=http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/thereview.cfm?id=763032004]Scotland On Sunday[/url] [b]Someone must shoulder the blame for Darkness debacle [/b] SIOBHAN SYNNOT PAGE THREE GIRL UNDERSTANDABLY, there has been a general gnashing of teeth at the news that David Bowie has been forced to pull out of T in the Park with a trapped nerve. Who could replace Dame David as the headline act at Kinross’ Canterbury-like fusion of carnival and spiritual impulses? Not The Darkness that’s for sure. Yet this is the clumsy swap imposed by the organisers. To 30,000 ticketholders this is like losing a tenner and finding a ticket to the Singing Kettle in your pocket. As an event, T in the Park is usually a festival of frothing exuberance set in neo-brutalist surroundings. Or if you prefer, it’s two days of bands in a big field in the height of Scotland’s whimsical summer weather – so those bands better be good. Bowie’s 30-year career may include vertiginous heights and plummeting falls but he remains a far more exciting and invigorating proposition than modishly camp The Darkness, a band who, current releases suggest, consist of one Freddie Mercury fan and three John Deacons. The top spot at music festivals is traditionally reserved for pop music’s shaggiest eminences grise – Paul McCartney played Glastonbury last weekend for instance – and yet often the rock world does not appear to rate long and steadfast service as highly as, say, the gas board or an insurance company. In fact, the longer you linger, the less respected you become; pop’s version of the carriage clock is grudgingly given, with durability generally marked with embarrassing tight-fisted gestures. A star of Hollywood’s Walk of Fame? The stars pay for that honour themselves, and the Rock Circus wax effigies are so nondescript that tourists spend less time recalling greatest hits and more calculating whether you are meant to be Billy Joel or Roger Daltry. Cruellest of all is the TV tribute, which reveal how few rock idols possess portraits in their attics. Nowadays Elton John looks slightly healthier than the late Leonid Brezhnev, and if Iggy Pop has had any cosmetic surgery over the years, it was apparently done at B&Q. Even more weirdly, TV tributes to the Beach Boys suggest that while Mike Love has definitely grown older, some of the others have actually grown younger, and a couple may not have even been born when they made their first record. So, knowing the verbal bottle-offs given to pop’s elder statesmen, it was with some trepidation that I tried to entice friends to come and see Sparks play the Royal Festival Hall last month. “Sparks,” queried one. “Aren’t they dead?” No they bloody aren’t. The Mael brothers appeared eerily unmarked by three decades and 19 albums. Russell is still the handsome-ish one with the helium falsetto, Ron is still the one who memorably scared more prepubescents than the Daleks in the 1970s, although nowadays he has swapped his Hitler moustache for a more raffish tribute to Ronald Coleman. Ron must be close to 60, yet the real signs of ageing lay with the fans; this was an older crowd, a crowd that would not enter a mosh pit unless there was reserved seating. Certainly I cannot remember another gig where the official merchandise stall sold band-branded babygros, while other fans had brought their children along so they could have a designated driver to take them home. Yet by the end of an invigorating run through Sparks’ latest album, L’il Beethoven, the crowd was on its feet (it would have been on its feet sooner, but it has to be careful with its back), and undoubtedly one of the highlights came when the entire crowd – not just the older fans in their fifties, but also the young folks in their thirties – joined together to sing their 1974 hit ‘This Town Ain’t Big Enough For the Both of Us’, united for the moment by the thunder of stampeding rhinos, elephants and tacky tigers, as well as our inability to dance to a guitar solo that involves gunshots. It was a fabulous gig, and the fans were so revved up by the event that we all must have stayed up well past 11.35pm. However, Sparks illustrate the limited options for bands of a certain age and eclectic style. Only a few talents, such as Bowie or the Beatles, get to combine critical approval and album sales. Most have to settle for one or the other. If you are the Rolling Stones, you get a mansion in every continent but also the undying disdain of rock critics. If you are Sparks, you are a critical sacred cow, but a beast unknown to, and ignored by, Busted and Blue’s lucrative fanbase. And if you are The Darkness, your best bet will always lie with a dodgy shoulder and desperate rock festival