Rockin' Around The Clock
Created | Updated Jun 16, 2004
Improper Dancing
The Electric Six
Hexagon Theatre, Reading, 03/06/04
By any stretch of the imagination, 2003 was a busy year for Detroit's Electric Six. Not only did they play a massive 148 dates in America and Europe, they also found time to release the critically lauded album Fire, were named artist of the year by their native Detroit Review and shed most of the band that recorded the album - the only survivors being drummer M, keyboardist Tait Nucleus? (now promoted to fulltime band member) and of course frontman Dick Valentine.
To all intents and purposes, Valentine is Electric 6. Rumour persists that the band that recorded the LP were sacked for their refusal to appear in the video for 'Gay Bar', or for a myriad of other reasons. This small mini-tour, culminating in a spot at the Donnington Download Festival sees the band playing some towns that are not normally home to rock stars - Middlesborough, Southampton, Folkestone, Reading and Exeter. Their reward is enthusiastic teenage audiences who are unused to having rock stars performing in their hometowns, mixed with the odd rock refugees sporting old Alice Cooper t-shirts, and of course people like myself and SLG, who fall somewhere in-between...
Flying behind the stage is an enormous silver and black banner proclaiming the name of the band, and illuminated from beneath in red, as it is before the band come on, it is a highly effective piece of set dressing, presumably a remnant of last years festival circuit, but it does not look out of place in the rather more intimate Hexagon Theatre.
Having stood through a seemingly interminable set from support band The Fallout Trust, anything would seem good, But Electric 6 are better than good. They are fantastic. It is apparent from the minute that they walk onstage that this is a band with an individual approach - as the rest of the band are fine tuning, Valentine is stretched out on the floor doing a warm up routine that would do an Olympic athlete proud - calf stretches, sit ups and more are performed before he springs to his feet and announces in a broad American accent that the band are from London, England.
There is not, however, time to dwell on this geographical incongruity as the band launch into 'Electric Demons in Love' from their debut album, Fire. Whilst Valentine holds centre stage in a cream suite, it the black bedecked bassist John R. Dequindre who prowls the stage, wielding his intrument like a weapon and advancing to the corners of the stage to take full advantage of the radio-amplifiers - no messy wires on stage for the band to trip over as they freely charge about the stage swapping places and riffs.
Fully nine out of the thirteen tracks from Fire are performed during the evening, though some are dispatched with little courtesy - 'Nuclear War (On the Dancefloor)' for example is gone in considerably less than 60 seconds, bludgeoned to death beneath a furious assault from Dequindre and drummer M. But not all the material is treated so harshly - an early highlight is the politically incorrect and hilarious 'Naked Pictures (Of Your Mother)';
'I'll make lots of money, I'll make more money than you
I'll drive around in my limo that's what I was born to do
And I might like you better if we f**k together
If it's not to be noted I got somethin' better for ya:'
By now, the teenagers present are enthusiastically attempting to crowd surf and start their own proto-mosh pit, an effort hampered by both security and the ring of immovable over 30's who are refusing to budge in any way. No one really seems to mind though, and by the way the band perform songs such as 'Dance Commander', the whole audience is shaking their thing in some small way, and the temperature has taken a sharp rise. But there is to be no relenting in the pace. Valentine takes a small moment off from breaking microphone stands and writhing to announce that the band came to Reading to get 'progressively hammered'1, before M starts beating out the tattoo that is the beginning of 'She's White'. Valentine looks on proudly before announcing 'That's my Drummer!' And he is clearly very proud of this band, and they of themselves - much of Electric Six's power is drawn from the fact that they clearly believe that they are the best rock band on the planet.
And rock they most certainly do - charging through 'Danger! High Voltage!', the trumpet parts replaced by a rather clever solo from Tait Nucleus? on the keyboards and a new song, apparently called 'MC Sucker DJ's' (no prizes for guessing the object of Valentine's wrath here) and enough other new material that a second album is to be anticipated eagerly.
And neither should it be assumed that Electric 6 are a band who are in any way ironic - their commitment to their music is commendable, and in particular Valentine and guitarist Johnny Na$hional are born entertainers of an older school than much of todays rock artists. Na$hional shines in particular when given any solo, but also when hammering out the opening riff of inevitable encore, 'Gay Bar', during which one loan 14 year old hoists a sign saying 'Take me to gay bar'. One can only wonder what horizons Valentines hymn to the delights of the pink pint has opened for sections of his audience and smile in amazement.
And yet it is their choice of covers that reveals the true colours of this remarkable band. A cover of peaches 'Rock Star' is preceded by the remark 'Marilyn Manson stole this song from Peaches. We're stealing it back'. It is inconceivable that Valentine is not aware that he is quoting U2's Bono from Rattle and Hum, and thus placing himself in the same lineage.
And perhaps finest of all, for their final encore, the band perform a perfectly non-ironic cover version of 'Radio Ga-Ga', which has the entire audience clapping and singing along, and applauding wildly when one chorus is performed by Tait Nucleus? through a vocoder.
It is the perfect finish to a very nearly perfect set, an evening of 'Improper Dancing' with six men who make a damn fine racket. Detroit has been home to some great stars in its time, and now it has six more.
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