Please note that the new email address is now info@fanmael.nl

An information site about

On January 24, 2022, my Google account was hacked. As a result, the FanMael YouTube account linked to it has completely disappeared. I will create a new account, but it will take a long time to get it back to the way it was unless someone knows an extremely cunning way to get my Google account back. I think I have expanded all options.

January 28, 2022: Started a new account and slowly building it up again.

Please click on the logo below to visit it.

Hello and welcome to FanMael, a website dedicated to the career of the brothers Ron and Russell Mael, better known as Sparks. FanMael was a Dutch-based information centre/fan club for Sparks, that started off as early as 1975. With the increasing interest for Sparks, thanks to the two most recent albums, The Sparks Brothers documentary by Edgar Wright and the movie Annette, directed by Leos Carax, I thought it would be a good idea to revive the site again as many new fans would like to know more about the history of Sparks.

Origin of FanMael

FanMael was originally started by Bart van de Hoogen, in 1975. The magazine was then called Propaganda. I took over in 1979 and until 1990, when I moved to Denmark, I regularly released a Sparks fanzine in Dutch and English. Upon my return to the Netherlands, in 1993, I joined Peter de Wit to help him with his new fanzine. When Peter died in 1996, I continued the fanzine, called FanMael, with long-time Sparks fan and fellow-collector Stef Streur.

In 1998, Carl van Breukelen joined us and with his knowledge about websites, we started one of the first websites dedicated to Sparks. When Sparks launched their official website a few years later, we stopped our activities.

Carl passed away in 2017 and In the years that followed I continued to collect everything related to Sparks and converted my knowledge into lists and documents. I wanted to share the information I've gathered over the years about Sparks with other fans.

As a memory of Peter and Carl and the good old days, I also call this website FanMael, although it looks nothing like the original site. I will try to update it regularly. If you have any questions or comments, I can be reached at info@fanmael.nl.

Ruud Swart