Tracks such as Dance Commander, Nuclear War (On the Dancefloor) and I'm the Bomb suggest that Electric Six have just two musical ideas, both of which are already familiar from their singles. To a bombastic rock backing, singer Dick Valentine adopts the voice of an overbearing, cigar-chewing conservative: "I dropped the bomb on Japan, I was a hostage in Iran, I'm an ugly American."Įlsewhere, however, the well of inspiration runs dry. Naked Pictures (Of Your Mother) appears to tackle the one subject even rock's blackest satirists, Eminem and Marilyn Manson, have steered clear of: US foreign policy. When its humour is at its most provocative, the music seems to rise to the occasion.Īs Gay Bar and She's White barrel along, dropping queasy puns and sharp guitar riffs in equal measure, you feel you are listening to a musical equivalent of Brass Eye: a band for whom no subject is too touchy to satirise. Fire is at its best when it aims for a similar reaction. When Danger! High Voltage! was initially released by a tiny Detroit record company called Flying Bomb, the label was deluged with furious disco-sucks hate mail from local fans, all keen to display the legendary American grasp of irony. The novelty act spectre is unlikely to be entirely exorcised by their debut album, Fire.
Logic suggests that any band that can lose over half of its members at the height of its success and replace them without missing a beat may not actually be a proper band at all. Or perhaps not: in recent weeks, three of the original quintet have been summarily dismissed and replaced by other men with wacky pseudonyms. Perhaps they were in it for the long haul. Rather than suffering the traditional ignominy of the comic follow-up, the Electric Six's second single, a rollicking garage rock track called Gay Bar, also went into the top 10. Even when the joke had worn off, it was hard not to admit that Danger! High Voltage! was a fantastic record: it had a taut, thrilling guitar hook, an explosive chorus and even a sax solo that carried a hint of 2 Tone. They were neither masquerading comedians nor manufactured by a record company, but a band that had been recording for almost a decade as the Wildbunch. On another level, however, the Electric Six appeared to have more depth than their comic novelty forebears. These people, you felt, knew that the moment their single dropped from the charts, a life of obscurity would beckon, punctuated only by appearances at freshers' bops, alongside the Mike Flowers Pops and Doctor and the Medics. They seemed like a band making the most of their 15 minutes of fame. It was made by men with extravagant pseudonyms (including Surge Joebot and the Rock and Roll Indian), camp stage costumes and a tendency to spin ridiculous yarns in interviews. It came with a celebrity connection: the White Stripes' Jack White provided a histrionic backing vocal. It cocked an eyebrow at current musical trends, including garage and punk funk. On one level, their debut British hit Danger! High Voltage! was the archetypal comic novelty single. What kind of parties would you enjoy when we reopen? Let us know.So the continuing interest in the Electric Six seems a fairly odd phenomenon. Through the years, we’ve had GEAR parties (some pix below) as well as other theme parties. And I distinctly recall as I watched the scene a premonition that one of my tasks in life would be, in whatever way I could, to convey this benign hidden world to the wider universe beyond it.
The colored lights the smoke the synthesizers and the legions of men. It was there that I returned Friday night after Friday night to discover who I really was. “I was staggered and more than a little thrilled at how normal everyone looked, how attractive, diverse and mellow.Ģ3 years of repression unwound in that bar…it was there that a man pulled his shirt off in front of me on the dance floor for the first time and I nearly fainted with desire.
Electric six gay bar rock band 4 full#
Did your imaginings/fantasies about a room full of shirtless men grinding in leather harnesses come true? Was it a thrill or a disappointment? Was it like writer Andrew Sullivan’s trip to CAMPUS in Cambridge, Massachusetts: