I saw Electric Six a couple weeks ago, and it was a little weird, because they were down to five members, and the member missing was... the keyboardist? Quite possibly the most important member of Electric Six...? Somewhat hilariously, they opened the show with "Synthesizer", with Dick Valentine quipping, "in honor of our missing synthesizer player."

So, yeah, it was a strange show. Thankfully, even with 50% of the music missing (by my careful calculations), Electric Six was still able to put on about 90% of the show they normally do. There were songs that did not fare very well without the keyboards, like Down at McDonnelzzz, but the crowd still got just as rowdy for it as they do every other time Electric Six has played it live. They even played "Randy's Hot Tonight," which I would think could not be played without a keyboard player, but you know what, they did it, mostly, they were most of the way there on that one.

Despite my unwavering devotion to the Electric Six Live Show experience, my senses have been dulled by a long series of mediocre Electric Six records to the point I had not actually bothered to listen to their most recent one; or at the very least, I listened to it and immediately forgot it. So when they played the title track to it at this show, Turquoise, and I was treated with a classic Dick Valentine ear-worm, I knew I was going to have to go home and listen to it.

(After they finished playing Turquoise, a very drunk woman turned to my wife and said, "DID YOU KNOW THAT ONE?" and my wife shook her head no, and the drunk woman went, "I DON'T THINK I LIKED THAT ONE." Then she gestured to her husband, very much a dude, and told us, "FIFTEEN YEARS AGO, MY HUSBAND WAS A MAN," and we both reacted with surprise, because we weren't sure what she was telling us, to which she went, "no, I mean, it's okay," and we nodded our heads with concerned expressions.)

If I was more of a serious music writer, one who writes about music–not one who writes music–I would have done some research to pad out my claims here, but, I'm not. So, I will just say, I really like this genre of Electric Six song, which I will call the "bimbos getting philosophical" genre. This song joins the pantheon of greats like, "We Use The Same Products", and "We Were Witchy White Women", where Valentine writes from the perspective of a seemingly shallow or superficially glamorous female speaker, and it ends up landing somewhere unexpectedly existential or melancholy.

Furthermore I love how much this song confuses me, because I can't really come to a solid conclusion on whether this song is anti-masking or pro-masking. It's clearly about COVID–the original album recording sessions were interrupted by the pandemic. Whether "turquoise" is meant to be a metaphor for masking, I can't be certain about whatsoever, so I can't make that claim strongly, but that was my knee-jerk reaction. It's also possible that the song is just making fun of the kind of women who believe in crystals, as if a rock is going to protect her from a global pandemic. But it might just be somewhere in-between, using an exaggerated liberal bimbo character to reflect the general absurdity of the global pandemic back at us in a way that makes us laugh and makes us dance (a little).

Man, Electric Six is a great band.

Change of musical pace today.

There are a few artists now that I consider spectacles, wonders of the music world, that everyone should see at least once regardless of taste or personal ethics. One of those bands is Electric Six, which absolutely floored me late last year. (The other two bands are The Polyphonic Spree, and just recently, Andrew Bird. I thought Local H could be entertaining to everyone but I took a bunch of people to a Local H show once, one girl was a big Neil Young fan, and everyone I brought walked out of the show a few songs in. I was pretty offended.)

Dick Valentine, front man and creative force behind the whole thing, seems like he was born to entertain. I'd presuppose that aside from recording albums and performing on a stage, Dick Valentine is probably retarded, and I don't mean like "ha ha you're an idiot" but that he's actually retarded. I bet God got all fucked up one night and was like "I'm going to take an empty shell of a person and put this amazing gift of entertainment in him, and NOTHING ELSE, BWHAAHA let's see what happens it'll be fun!" Then Dick Valentine was born.

I wrote a review of the show I saw, somewhere, I think, let me find it. Found it! I'll just blockquote it.

I am not an Electric Six fan. I went to go see Local H and took a friend of mine who is a partial-fan of the Six.

Local H rocked. Way better than they were at the Troubadour, but I attribute that to a shitty audience and a shitty venue (the Troubadour can suck cocks and die, i have seen three shows there and they were all bullshit thanks to a lousy fucking crowd and shitty acoustics) but they rocked at the Key Club the same way they did three+ years ago when I saw them touring for PJ Soles. They were great, so great.

But what was better was Dick Valentine walking out on stage in a big red cape and the band launching into some the the loudest danciest coolest rock whatever-the-fuck music I've ever heard. When the bassist took off Valentine's cape just to reveal another one underneath, complete with a big SHOWTIME reveal on the back during the second song, oh man.

We Were Witchy Witchy White Women is the song that made me realize that this band is something significant that I should be listening to. The synth/vocal 'riff' that runs through the end of the song is so amazingly powerful that I could do nothing but stand in awe of the things that were unfolding around me.

Women were dancing, the entire floor was jumping and people were crowd surfing. This is a band that knows how to get people pumped up. Maybe it's because their music appeals to something deeply stupid and primal in all of us, and maybe that's why I never gave them a shot: they do play stupid dancy music, but they're not Andrew W.K., they're sarcastic. They're, or I should say Dick Valentine is a showman.

No amount of listening to Electric Six albums will recapture how amazing they were live. I will just be forced to go see them again and again.

That's all.

Go see Electric Six if you have a chance. They're really quite amazing.