Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed,

or you are the only animal,

who can think, who can reason, who can read.

From KCRW, Santa Monica, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

I am improbably and ludicrously happy today because I am doing an entirely different kind of

bookworm program.

This is going to be about the art of songwriting,

the art of pop songwriting, and I have with me in the studio, Ron and Russell Mail of Sparks.

Let me put it this way. Sparks is my favorite rock group ever. If you're going to find it necessary

to laugh at me or say, no, it can't be true. It is true. It's absolutely true. As far as I'm

concerned, there are very few things that someone can't like. You can dislike some of my

favorite writers, but if you tell me you dislike Sparks,

that's a deal breaker. I don't even want to hear about it, and you won't be my friend.

So here we are. I guess this is one of those claims of conscience.

On Valentine's Day, Sparks is going to be playing at UCLA's Royce Hall.

Just as in England last year, they did a complete retrospective of their 21 albums.

This time it will be the first hit album, Camona My House, and the most recent album,

Exotic Creatures of the Deep. I wanted to begin by saying, well, first, hello, thank you for

coming. Hello. We're ludicrously happy to be here as well.

It seemed to me that Sparks was in many ways a great response to pop, a deep love of pop and a way of making pop still truer?

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