Sparks aren't a real thing

There is some part of me that still believes that the band Sparks are some kind of massive practical joke at my expense, because even though they apparently had a long and distinguished musical career, I had literally never heard of them, and then suddenly they were doing the music for a Leos Carax film, and Edgar Wright was doing a documentary about them, and while they are obviously legitimate, I will not be surprised if Ron Mael takes off his post-Morrison fiction suit one day and turns out to be Andy Kaufman all along.

I'm sure that if I go back through my beloved Q and Mojo magazines from the 1990s they will be rife with Sparks, and there is plenty of evidence that they are an actual thing, and that they just never registered with me for some reason. But I prefer the harmless conspiracy theory that everybody is in on the joke except me.