Paperjam

Electric Six, Coventry Colosseum, Aug 20th

Gigs // Steve // 21st August 2003

Well, they rock. Actually they ROCK. with one foot on the monitor, groin pushed out towards the audience and a moustache last seen on some American rock band of the seventies.

One of them is called Johnny International, which is a name I'd personally die for (those crazy American parents) one of them is called The Colonel, and has that aforementioned moustache. There's a man on the keyboards that looks like he could've been in The Cure with that haircut, stepping out of a timewarp just to be here tonight. And then there is lead singer Dick Valentine, previously rather urbane looking in a seedy John Waters kind of way; tonight the slicked back hair has been replaced by a frizz of blonde-ish hair, and looks like rather like a combination of Chris Morris and Scorpio, the killer out of "Dirty Harry".

After the ghettobass intro tape of fellow Detroit denizen DJ Assault, one two three - they're off into rama-lama rock with "Naked Pictures Of Your Mother". And it's quite entertaining - Dick appears to be utterly mental - he's got energy damn you, so much he's got some spare, and he works it off by doing press-ups and sit-ups half-way through a song. And he waves at the crowd a lot, and he applauds at the end of a song, and he shakes his hair and generally seems not quite able to stand still. Blessed with a huge ROCK voice, he belts out a version of "O, Death" unaccompanied and sounds powerful all night, but doesn't really play up to the rockness as much as his band-mates do, with their feet on monitors, fag smoking and scowling at the crowd.

Predictably the crowd are waiting for the hits (hear them all repeat "gay bah, gay bah gay bah" in a near-Brummie twang around us) and go mental for the discorock top pop hit "Danger! High Voltage". Encore "Gay Bar" pretty brings the house to their pogoing feet, and then they do a cover version of "Radio Ga-ga" and, utterly unprompted, everyone does that double clap / arms aloft thing from the original video for it, which is very concerning. It must be nearly twenty years ago since that came out - are Queen that ingrained in our pop-psyche? Can we get pills for it?

They're decidely odd, on record they have that whiff of a novelty act, a bit too piss-taking, but live they FUCKING ROCK LIKE A BASTARD - two huge hits, at least another single off the album to come ("Dance Commander" - is ok I s'pose) and you wonder where they go next, into oblivion or more pop-stardom? Whatever they do, more crotch grabbing always helps, I find.

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