Electric Six, Leeds Met
Electric Six have repetedly been accused of being one hit wonders in the music press, since the failure to follow up on the success of single “Danger, High Voltage!” However, giving them the benefit of the doubt I decided to go for a couple of drinks beforehand to enhance my enjoyment of the disco-rock mutation of the Wild Bunch. Unfortunatly this merely added to my confusion as, in an apparent massacre, some poor soul with a slit up the stomach surrounded by dancing tribesmen was being shown on the big screen during one of the opening songs. Whether this was a political statement or tasteless cult obssessionism on the part of lead singer Dick Valentine was unclear, but also appeared equally unclear to the bemused half-capacity crowd.
The opening songs were poor. They beated out slightly raucous, slightly unimaginative and totally sub-standard songs, that will see their demise over the coming year. New Single ‘Gay Bar’ saw a rare glimpse of what was expected consistently from this band just a few months ago, but this was merely two minutes of reprieve.
Electric Six are inexperienced as a live act, and all the charisma and sex appeal that has been projected to fans by their publicists was simply not there.
In the one enjoyable part of the performance, ‘Danger High Voltage’ proved to be an almost immaculate rose in a sea of thorns and instantly everyone in the crowd lept to life, turning the Met into a huge disco. The highlight of the night, however, was during the after show drinking ritual when we were stumbling down the road and bumped into the support band. After some wrestling, hair pulling and spitting, we appeared dirty enough to impress them into offering us an invite back to the tour bus. Five of Electric Six were also there, with a few bottles of beer, but not actually recognising any of them as Valentine was upstairs asleep, I stumbled around making a number of embarrassing comments before being ejected.
Overall I would say that getting drunk is a lot more fun than watching Electric Six. Dodgy t-shirts were selling for two pounds outside the venue, rather than the traditional fiver. It seems that the chants of ‘It’s my desire, It’s my desire!’ are quickly trailing off into the mist of time.
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