Media: Press

Murder on the Dancefloor
Bang, November 2003

Interview with Bizarre
Bizarre, February 2003

Keep It Surreal
Daily Telegraph, 23rd August 2003

Our Friends Electric
Guardian, 29th January 2003

Shock To The System
Kerrang!! 25th January 2003

Ire In The Disco
NME, 24th May 2003

Hold Tight!
Q, April 2003

Chancers in the nicest possible way
Scotland on Sunday, 26th January 2003

interview with Time Out
Time Out, 8th January 2003

Rock the Gaybah
X-Ray, May 2003

Electric Six are a fabulous, fried pop anomaly.  New single ‘Gay Bar’, follow up to the massive ‘Danger!...’, has confirmed their rep and confounded the mainstream.  What exactly are these fruits on? 

It’s far too early in the evening for it, but Electric Six are up onstage at LA’s famous Troubador club, being brilliant.  As mere support act to Kiwi garagemeisters The D4, they’ve been forced into action at the savage hour of 9pm.  The room is slowly filling with disinterested Californians who, like the rest of America, are clearly ignorant fo the fact that this lot are the rockingest disco pop phenomenon of the year. 

Jack White or no Jack White (or even, as credited on the record sleeve, John S O’Leary or Bill Clinton), ‘Danger! High Voltage!’ has not registered in the US.  Midway through the set, there is so little atmosphere, X-Ray is practically floating up to the ceiling.

“Girl!” screams singer Dick Valentine suddenly, hair greased down onto his head like a spiv’s.  “I wanna take you to a gay bar!”

As his five cohorts race through the twangy joys of the Six’s next and even greater single, smiles begin to light up through the audience.  By some uncanny slice of synchronicity, the street outside is one of LA’s most notorious cruising areas.

“Let’s start a war,” Valentine continues, “start a nuclear war, at the gay bar, gay bar, gay bar!”

Another minor coincidence: the bombing of Baghdad begins tonight! People are now laughing.

“You’re a superstar,” concludes Dick, “at the gay bar!”

As dancefloor action mobilises the former graveyard in front of him, this much is obvious: the words “one-hit wonder” will not be applying to Electric Six.  The twelve-legged groove machine from Detroit is about to set light to our summer.  ‘Gay Bar’ rules.  It might not get played much on the radio, and it certainly isn’t politically correct, but it is totally unstoppable.  Like The Sex Pistols’ ‘God Save the Queen’, Frankie’s ‘Relax’ and even good old Tatu, it’s a 140-second rockin’ riot which no amount of censorship will be able to withhold.  Heads down, it’s going nuclear…

When they rolled up at the Troubador this afternoon, though, the chaps did not have the joyous demeanour of cresting superstars, nor indeed of people with cartoon names.  They spilled from the doors of their little van like human garbage, all crumpled and greasy.  It was understandable when you realised that they’d spent the last three days driving from Dallas, Texas, to their destination in Hollywood.  Surely people who have had a Number Two single in the United Kingdom’s pop charts make such journeys by private jet? 

“No, man,” croaks gravel-throated guitarist Surge Joebot from behind shades which cover a multitude of evils.  “I’ve just had to borrow five bucks to buy smokes, y’know?” 

Once they wipe off the grime and get the show out of the way, it’s remarkable how high their spirits become, all things considered.  Though we here in Blighty know them for just one song, which we assume to be a debut, the band actually have a five-year history of crushing underachievement behind them.  Their current circumstances must feel like a particularly bumpy return to earth.  Originally they were known as the Wildbunch, and had made three albums to little or no acclaim when ‘Danger! High Voltage!’ brought them to the attention of the Bristol-based hip hop collective of the same name (which spawned Massive Attack and Tricky) and forced them to change their name.

The single, initially released on the Detroit garage label, Flying Bomb, also changed their fortunes radically.  Quite apart from the European deal with XL, it brought them to a loving public overseas.  There was the amazing sight of this gnarly troupe performing live on SM:TV.  Their gigs here were insane.  At the Electric Ballroom in London, their encore of Queen’s ‘Radio Ga Ga’ was greeted by 1500 people clapping in time above their heads, just like in the original video.

No sign of such mania here in Los Angeles, but they are keen to enjoy all the sleaze that the city legendarily has to offer.  As the D4 grind away downstairs to moderate applause, practically the entire personnel of Electric Six barge into the VIP bar’s tiny gents’ cubicle to re-enact one of the more lurid scenes from that Motley Crue book, The Dirt.  The bog would be cramped with just two of them – hulking guitarst Rock & Roll Indian and bassist Disco – in there.

It was at this establishment that the Crue cut their teeth, as did pretty much any LA “hair” band you might care to mention.  The walls of the ground floor bar are plastered with gold discs and presentations from bands expressing thanks to the venue.  One is from Great White, the soft-metal lunkheads who, just a couple of weeks ago, burned down a club in Providence, Rhode Island with their pyrotechnics.  More about them later. 

As the drinking and shouting commence in earnest, you notice that the Six are a band of six frontmen.  Not one of them does “quiet and unassuming”.  Perhaps the most retiring of all is Valentine, who is charming but every bit as oddball as his lyrics might suggest.  It’s also fair to say that the strange mind (i.e. Dick’s) which dreamt up the words, “Fire in the Disco, fire in the Taco Bell…fire in the gates of hell!” is struggling to come to terms with its new-found and totally unforeseen celebrity.  Perhaps he feels that he’s been trumped, surrealism-wise, by suddenly being forced to be a good pop star.

When he offers himself up for an interview upstairs in the Troubador’s VIP bar, he has changed out of the revolting suit which is his recognisable stage garb, and his hair and much of his face is covered by an enormous beanie hat.  He’s edgy.  As he answers simple questions about the meaning of ‘Gay Bar’, there is the nagging sense that he isn’t telling the truth. 

“I was listening to ‘Girl U Want’ by Devo,” he tells me, in the Beavis and Butthead voice that he shares with Joebot.  “The first time I heard that song I was 15, and I thought it was saying, ‘She’s just a girl, just a girl in a gay bar!” Actually, no, it’s ‘girl u want’.  It just came from there.  Maybe you hear a song from 100 yards away and it sounds different.  Then you go closer to that song, and it’s like, ‘This doesn’t sound like what I thought it was at all! I’ll just do my song that way!” There’s a billion different ways to approach it.  I just think the key is, don’t even think about what you’re doing.”

Until quite recently, the Six were actually five.  In the name of numerical accuracy, they’ve subsequently recruited a keyboard player called Tait Nucleus, who scampers off early for a night’s kip.  Surge and Drummer M, however, have plenty to say.  Very often, what each member has to say about the band differs wildly.  This is usually because they’re lying.  Here’s Surge and M’s story about ‘Gay Bar’.

Joebot: “It was back in the great undergraduate lesbian boom of the mid 90s.  I was a lesbian baron in those days.  I had a lesbian empire going on.  Meanwhile, our singer came home and found his girlfriend in bed with another woman, and for whatever reason, this upset him.”

M: “She was talking to her girlfriend about what a fool her boyfriend was.”

Joebot: “So he went into a tailspin which spawned a lot of the early Wildbunch material, and ‘Gay Bar’.  Also, Dick Dale had had his song on the Pulp Fiction soundtrack, there was surf in the air.  So it was a collision between the lesbian boom and Pulp Fiction.  That’s the truth.  KD Lang’s ‘Constant Craving’ meets ‘Miserlou’ – that’s ‘Gay Bar’.”

Such extravagant fibbing should come as no surprise from the people who claimed that Bill Clinton plays saxophone on their records, of course, and who still maintain that the remarkably Jack White-esque voice on ‘Danger! High Voltage!’ is in fact that of a burly Irish mechanic from Cleveland.

“I saw this interview with Jack White on MTV when he was rightly denying singing on our song,” comments Surge.  “We feel bad because he’s probably gonna get asked that at least once or twice every year.  I mean, look at us! That’s obviously ridiculous!”

They say that the song’s genesis was haphazard.  Half of them didn’t even want to bother recording it, because they thought it was shit.  In the end, they knocked it out in a spare hour at the end of a studio session.

“Then,” Surge recalls, “Flying Bomb were like, ‘We wanna put out a song with you guys.’  We sent them a batch of tunes, and they came back, ‘We wanna put out a single of ‘Danger! High Voltage!’, and we were like, ‘Oh…(dismissively) what are you picking that song for? Are you sure you don’t wanna put out ‘Dance Commander’ or one of the other ones?”

“It was clearly not our best song,” adds M.  “But, a) they may have seen that it may have jived genre-wise with what was coming up in New York, but b) more importantly, it may have been because Jack…”

Surge interrupts: “Because John S O’Leary was on it.”

“Yes,” M nods, “they have a thing for mechanics.”

Thus, like many of the greatest moments in pop music, did a succession of blunders and happy accidents lead to ‘Danger! High Voltage!’, the phenomenon.  It led to a video, again rather hurriedly conceived, which featured Valentine playing a rather inappropriate Mr Loverman role. 

“It was just a matter of doing something,” Dick shrugs, “and your’e not sure how it’s gonna be received when you’re done.  You know, they’re asking you to make out with a 70-year-old lady…Well, so be it.”

The absence of activity since January, when the song was a hit, may have led some people to assume that the band were back in Detroit, scratching their heads, wondering how to follow their novelty smash.  In fact, Fire, their first album as Electric Six, is packed with possible singles.  ‘Gay Bar’ was the obvious choice, but it’s one highlight amidst a glitterball-spinning, the hustle-doing disco/rock explosion of tunes and good times.  All along, it has been recorded and ready to go; it’s just that events around the world have caused its delay.

Firstly, as the war in Iraq loomed, various conversations took place between record companies and radio/TV stations, from which the perhaps reasonable conclusion was drawn that releasing a single including the words, “let’s start a nuclear war / in the gay bar” might be a tad insensitive in the current climate, if not tempting fate (or even Saddam).  The fact that it also contains the superbly tawdry line “I’ve got something to put in you / in the gay bar!” doesn’t seem to be causing any problems.  Still, the band had to take time out to re-record the offending verse, and only then could they film the attendant video, which apparently will feature a whole gym full of Dick Valentines dressed as Abraham Lincoln – the US President who according to urban myth was gay – all working out on different exercises.  This, too, is apparently okay for broadcast. 

The shock and awe surrounding the Six took another step up, however, after Great White’s pyro catastrophe in Providence.  What with their success in Europe and now making this first ever tour beyond their native Midwest, the band were starting a big push to get ‘Danger! High Voltage!’ on serious MTV rotation.  Suddenly, images of “fire in the disco” are none to welcome.

“Shall we show him the album cover?” asks Surge.  The band’s avuncular manager produces a colour photocopy of the intended artwork.  “I don’t know,” says M, “you tell me – bad timing?” It depicts a man on fire, staggering across an empty dancefloor.  Surge turns to his manager, laughing: “Er, Chris, can we change that?”

It gets worse.  At the Electric Ballroom, they themselves dipped their toe in the murky waters of onstage fireworks – long-since neglected after Kiss took it as far as it could really go.

“We wanted to do it some more,” M confesses, “because no one does that shit any more, and it’s the best!” His smile fades.  “I’m pretty sure we’re scrapping that idea now.  Personally, if I saw pyro at a show, my mind would go elsewhere.  It has kinda lost its charm.” 

You do wonder whether the band have thought there’s a jinx on them, whether this serial inappropriateness in their work may have been sent to scupper their final promotion from rock’s lower divisions.  Does Dick worry that his imagery has collided so drastically with the times? Is KLF-style pop-art mischief part of his agenda?

“Nothing I write has anything to do with anything,” he says.  “I never thought a lyric has to make sense at all.  The song should be catchy, and I think the lyric should just be good.  It doesn’t have anything to do with what’s going on in the world.  That’s the last thing I try and do, make a commentary.  I just do what I can for big business – and our involvement in it.” 

One thing that the band agree on is that they haven’t contrived their sound in any way at all.  It’s hard to know how their current stuff compares with the early Wildbunch records – for whatever reasons, those ones are no longer available.  According to Surge, they weren’t too far away from the Rapture/DFA sound.

“Yeah,” he guffaws, “so we really missed the boat as far as tailoring our stuff to the British market.  Back then, it was herky-jerky kinda stuff, real Fall-esque.  In my opinion, it was so New Wave that it wasn’t rock.  I actually think as it’s gotten dancier, it rocks more.  Moving towards dance rhythms doesn’t preclude rocking.”

‘You Shook Me All Night Long’ by AC/DC – QED!

“I think,” he continues, his bile rising, “that there’s probably a malice within the band towards any sense that you can only do one thing.  Like, ‘I only listen to old late 60s garage punk’ – for example!” A prevalent attitude in Detroit, one imagines.  “Yeah, how boring is that, you know? That stuff is great, but does your mood always dictate listening to that? We’re really big fans of garage-sale and thriftstore record-buying.  Just by sheer accident you end up with five copies of Saturday Night Fever on vinyl.  If you’ve got five copies of that album,” he concludes, dodgily, “it stands to reason that you’re gonna listen to that album five times more than any other album that you own.”

Surge claims that there may even be some Detroit techno in there.  “We’re seeking to enlarge our opportunities within nightlife,” he explains, “and a good way to do that is to introduce those kind of rhythms.”

So, the beats become dancier, Dick’s lyrical pre-occupations took on a disco-inferno motif and the tracks that eventually made up Fire were chosen on the basis of their thematic proximity to what Joebot unrepentantly describes as “the whole nightlife, fire, dancing, taxi-cab, cocaine kinda vibe”.

Minus a couple of ingredients, admittedly, this is the vibe which prevails as the Six party machine steams up onto Sunset Boulevard and, still wearing sunglasses, continues to entertain well into the wee hours, with a total absence of shame.  As their daft aliases suggest, they are a band who see more truth in a Snoopy cartoon than the whole of The New York Times.  Joebot, a voracious fan of both MC5 bootlegs and conspiracy theories, spends some minutes explaining how George W Bush is linked to Adolf Hitler (via his father and ex-Nazi agents in the CIA).

To the bitter end, Electric Six have all bases covered – controversy, surrealism, nightlife and rock & roll misbehaviour.  And they’re flamin’ groovy…

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