N°109 ELECTRIC SIX - INFECTED GIRLS

A six piece Detroit based band with a lot of musical influences. You can put them in the punk corner and they will be fine. You can place them in a new wave box and they’ll also feel fine. Even disco, rock and metal is a part of their repertoire so the band can be seen as a multi musical ensemble. And yet they’re not that known since they only scored one hit to my knowledge. In 2003 that is and the song listens to the title ‘Danger! High Voltage.’ The electric by the way ties into AC/DC off course.

Although less known they created nine albums between 1996 and 2011. It all started as ‘The Wildbunch’ but they immediately had to change the name of the band because of copy-write issues with another band. All the band’s members have nicknames and nowadays there are six of them. Yet the formation changed over the years quite often and no less than fifteen former Electric Sixers can be named with roaring names as Disco, M. or Rock And Roll Indian. The six current performers are Dick Valentine who formed the band with the three named ex members, The Colonel, Johny Na$hinal, Smorgasbord, Percussion World and Tait Nucleus.

The first album called Fire followed only in 2003 and created the hit single Danger! High Voltage. Even before recording a first album the band split for two years between 1999 and 2001. It is said that Jack White performs or even sings on the single but the band denies the presence of any contribution of Jack White to the single or album. Yet the vocals are credited to a John S O’Leary and apparently this is Jack White’s pseudonym often used whenever he wants to be incognito. The second single from this first album was called ‘Gay Bar’ and also reached the charts.

Producing a second album was a bit normal considering the success of the first one and Señor Smoke was released early 2005. First release on this album was a cover from the Queen song ‘Radio Gaga’ . It created huge controversy amongst Queen fans since Dick Valentine appeared in the music video as Freddie Mercury’s ghost dancing on his grave.

In between albums huge setup changes  were made and for the album Switzerland the last original member leaves Electric Six. Drummer M. leaves the band and is replaced by Percussion World. The only special about this album is that every song has its own low budget music video.

Albums follow a year apart from each other now and the crazy minds of Electric Six came up with a fucked up title for their 2007 album. I Shall Exterminate Everything Around Me That Restricts Me From Being The Master brings a new bassist who’s supposed to be Swedish. In fact it’s Keith Thompson from the former band Johnny Headband. This album contains no less than sixteen songs and was released with the addition of a hidden bonus track…. So they say. Later they’d produced the albums Flashy, Kill and Zodiac but not many singles were released. In 2011 their latest album heartbeats and Brainwaves saw the light.

The variety of styles implicates that the band never reached the limits of the early successes and the lyrical nonsense they often bring implies that Electric Six have a rather thin but steady fan base. I only knew them from their überhitsingle but I’ll be posting a different one just to get to know at least one more song by them. I hope you can enjoy all this craziness.