A chart triumph for the twisted imagination we’ve collectively lost in the 15-plus intervening years. Their first UK single earned Electric Six second spot in the charts, a a career commercial high, at least on these later forsaken shores.
The Electric Six phenomenon in the UK began when Valentine and his band of batty bastards pitched up with the bonkers video for ‘Danger! High Voltage’, a sinister alt-disco anthem that caught the scene’s imagination simply because it was a rocky pop song in a style we’d never heard before. Don’t you dare tell me 2003 wasn’t a better time. God bless you for that, Dick Valentine, you barmy sod. (That’s your warning for the video below.)įire was a number seven album in the UK. Where a top-five video featuring a man dressed as a kinky Abraham Lincoln singing about same-sex social establishments was taken for it was. Where being a fascist was broadly frowned upon. A place where the creation of a mass market vegan sausage roll wouldn’t have been front page news. The success of Fire in the UK, a victory for the oddballs, would not happen on this scared, lost, increasingly conservative little island today. The humour at the heart of Electric Six might make a retrospective article about that record a light-hearted affair.
What do sarcasm, disco, limitless sexual innuendo and an obsession with nuclear war have in common? Why, it’s the debut album by Electric Six, of course!
