Monday, November 10th 2008

Reviews:  Electric Six

One Band’s Sexy Trash Is Another Man’s Treasure

By Johnny Firecloud

The Electric Six show in Los Angeles Friday night was, as expected, a sizzling sex-rock love affair. The band was in top form, rocking in their special Electric way that’s made us such rabid fans here at Antiquiet.

After a well-received but eternal set by openers Local H, Singer Dick Valentine first appeared onstage in a giant red cape with the Flashy (the title of their latest album) sprawled across the back. We discovered after the first song that underneath the first cape was another cape, emblazoned with the word Showtime.

The show was epic, it was awesome, and it lived up to my previous description of them as ‘supreme champions of everything unholy and awesome about rock n’ roll.’

But enough about that. The real gem of the evening was my merch-table discovery of a CD called Sexy Trash, a 30-track collection of odds, ends, b-sides and interludes available exclusively at a club near you when Electric Six rolls through on their Hittin’ The Walls and Workin’ The Middle tour. The songs cover the band’s 11-year career, and a brief description of each song from lead singer Dick Valentine is included on the back.

I know what you’re thinking. Oh hey, a rarities album from a band I’ve never heard of. Great. And you’re right- if you don’t have any idea who Electric Six is, this bastardized hob-knob collection of ridiculous ditties (like the blink-and-miss Filthy Blankets, featuring the words I wanna wrap you up in filthy blankets / get you so unclean) is probably not the place to start.

Need proof? This one goes out to the ladies. It’s called One More Time.

It’s a fucking priceless, epically hilarious track, but to the untrained ear it’s… hell, it’s unlistenable in every way. Valentine’s description: “I was listening to a lot of urban radio and this was my white ass interpretation.” How does that translate to an unfamiliar?

So for the unenlightened, here’s some proper introduction in the name of tact and self-restraint, E6 style:

Dance Commander

Down At McDonnelz

Mr: Woman

Electric Six are designed specifically to appeal to your sense of stomping goofball rock erotica. To allow us all to revel in the blinding light of proud absurdity. To make it alright to do the tootsie-roll in your basement wearing only a lime green terrycloth headband and acid washed Z. Cavaricci pants.

Only Mr. Valentine can pull off such nuggets of abstract love like Who’s Gonna Suffer Your Industrial Accidents? or Who will hinder the investigation the way I do?. It takes a special breed to deliver lines like Japenese, Chinese, it’s all the same / I can’t tell Corey Feldman from Corey Haim / I’m dying in the dark / Come illuminate me, love with the proper inflection and gravity, to truly convey the burning passion behind a song like Immolate Me.

Several lyrics on these tracks tracks, specifically those recorded in the aftermath of the Y2K bug failure, have been recycled and reworked into other songs. Another Song About The Devil is a bastardized, parallel-universe in-utero version of Mr. Woman, with a wildly different chorus. In fact, the only link between the songs are the lyrics to the first couple verses. But it’s still a flashy jam, reminiscent of sexxed up Midnite Vultures-era Beck, which is where he should’ve stayed.

Into the Roppongi is a prime example, and a damn shame this one never saw the light of finalized, advertised day:

Some tracks are absurdly awesome, but like the rest of the album, it’s strictly for the lovers of Six. Like most of the tracks that clock in under a minute, I’m on a Diet is just Dick and an acoustic guitar, transferring sex electrons to a microphone. I put my plug into your socket / All these dollars are burnin a hole in my pocket… it’s an unfinished thought that abruptly ends with Valentine saying I’m gonna sell that to Tenacious D.

Telephone Conversation coulda been a contender. In fact, it might still be. 8-6-7-5-3-0-2.

The demos are, quite simply, fantastic. For one, I Buy The Drugs is a much less intimidating jam than the finished product, something for a saucy Sunday morning amongst friends and pulpy screwdrivers. The Down At McDonnellzz blueprint is only 23 seconds long, but serves as a jagged, synth-dipped intimidating burst of warning of what was to come in the final version.

The final song is Cold Future, a slow-jam tale of regret which Valentine describes as “from a last ditch attempt from Warner Bros. after we had basically turned in Senor Smoke. They said, ‘we’ll get you more studio time… go get us another Gay Bar.‘ I didn’t have another Gay Bar, so I recorded this instead.”

Whatever works. If you’re a fan, find this album. It’s necessary. Simple as that. The easiest way (besides stealing it on the internet, of course) is to hit up the merch booth at one of their shows.