Electric Six brings its goofy dance-rock
Published April 7, 2009
If you thought Electric Six ("Girl, I wanna take you to a gay bar!") broke up long ago, you're not alone. If not, you're probably either one of the band's devoted fans or ... a meathead.
Self-proclaimed Dance Commander Dick Valentine, né Tyler Spencer, clearly understands the conspicuous division that marks the Electric Six audience. He is a strange man, one who jokes without laughing and makes it difficult to tell if those jokes are true.
"These meatheads just want to go to the show and buy the Dance Commander shots," he says. "A lot of the times they like to sing our own songs back to us when we're not onstage. They ask us questions like, 'Hey man, what's your recipe for love?' And they want to hear you say the answer. I weep for the future sometimes."
That's not so surprising considering Electric Six has been labeled a cock-rock standard since 2003's "Gay Bar" and "Danger (High Voltage)," singles that skyrocketed the band's fame and just as quickly made the Detroit-based group into a cartoon that many were unwilling to give a second thought.
Valentine, notoriously blunt and impossible to embarrass, speaks out against such unoriginality or limited outlooks -- whether in the questionable fans who crop up at his shows or the reviewers who can't look past a goofy single from six years ago.
"When we do get a bad review, they always accuse us of being unoriginal, whereas the bad review is always the same," he says.
But Valentine's work speaks for itself. Since 2005, Electric Six has released an album per year. Each stands as its own unique collection of songs chronicling the band's adventures in various musical styles. Although 2007's I Shall Exterminate Everything Around Me That Restricts Me From Being The Master jumps through genres without a second thought, it still retains a sense of the fun and enthusiasm of the band's debut, Fire. On last year's more flamboyantly titled Flashy, Electric Six held back on the synths to put together an album focused more on guitars.
With such prolific output, the band prefers to record a moment in time than slave over a collection of songs to no end. There's even another new record due out later this year.
"I think that's how we've approached every record," Valentine says. "Try not to really over think it -- no concepts or anything. Just the songs you have at the time -- record them, put them out and go on tour. It just quickly and organically happens."
It helps, then, that Electric Six has turned to self-production as a fast and feasible method of recording.
"All you need is a couple weeks off, and you can knock out a record," Valentine says.
Time doesn't seem to be something Valentine has to spare, but somehow he makes do. The years since 2004 have seen Valentine move to Brooklyn, get married and self-produce these recent albums, and last year Valentine, under his birth name, began another band. Evil Cowards -- composed of Valentine and fellow Brooklynite William Bates -- filters the danciness of Electric Six through a different lens.
Armed with synths and drum machines, Evil Cowards affords Valentine a greatly appreciated outlet to keep busy when not recording or touring with Electric Six. For a man who begins to feel "like a loser" after not touring for two weeks, this is crucial.
"It's one of those things where we didn't really have any big plans but got together one day and came up with two really good songs," Valentine says. "From there we kind of realized we needed to do a full record."
Scheduled for release next month on Metropolis Records, Evil Cowards' debut will be followed by light touring on the East Coast and pig masks. Hoping to take photos for each song on the album, Valentine and Bates were disappointed to learn they couldn't wear pig masks and tuxedos (for the instantly catchy "Love Pigs") on the top of the Empire State Building for security reasons.
"Of course you can do a photo shoot not on the Empire State Building, but we were so demoralized by not being able to get to the top of the Empire State Building with our pig masks that we both went into a deep depression and sought counseling," Valentine says. "We decided that the best thing to do was move on, and at that point all we had was pig masks."
Valentine has accomplished much thanks to his day job. Three years after naming a record Switzerland with the intention of getting invited to play there, Electric Six finally made its way to the country.
"One of our guitar players is rocking a really long Grizzly Adams beard and he was ridiculed by the Swiss," Valentine says. "Apparently they don't see beards like that. It took us a while to figure out why they were staring at us and laughing at us, but once he went off on his own one day he figured it out."
The reasoning behind the release of a tour-only collection of b-sides and demos was laziness, as Valentine half-jokingly explains without any qualms.
"Mainly just greed," he says. "We had all this stuff laying around. We knew there's kind of a market for it. It was easy enough to print up. It's another way to exploit our fans."
If the meatheads catch wind of his insults or the devoted fans realize the band's well-meaning exploitation, Valentine just might be screwed. Luckily for the culinary-minded singer, though, he already has some solid (and tasty) back-up plans in place.
"Me and my wife are talking about opening up a creperie," he says. "It's an amazing food. I'm wet with salivation just thinking about it."
Alternatively, the travel-addicted Valentine has considered moving out of the country. Haiti and Qatar seem like good options.
"I think I've become soft living in America all my life," he says. "I like the idea of being on high alert a little bit more. I plan, as I grow older, to become more and more paranoid, so I think Haiti would be a good place to do that."
