November 24th, 2008 10:52am
Hitting All Your Walls and Working Your Middle
Electric Six @ Webster Hall 11/22/2008
(Flashy intro) / Flashy Man / It’s Showtime! / We Were Witchy Witchy White Women / Down At McDonnelzzz / Gay Bar / Night Vision / Lenny Kravitz / Dirty Ball / Rock and Roll Evacuation / Improper Dancing / Danger! High Voltage / The Future Is In The Future / Your Heat Is Rising / I Buy The Drugs / Dance Epidemic / (Reggae skanking with banter) / Germans In Mexico // Gay Bar Part Two / She’s White / Formula 409 / Dance Commander
Some notes:
* Dick Valentine came out for “Flashy Man” wearing a red cape with the word “Flashy” in silver, glittering script. When they finished playing the song, he removed that cape to reveal a purple cape with the word “Showtime” on the back, which led to them going into “It’s Showtime!” Ah, the old double-cape trick!
* Ever since Barack Obama was elected to the be the next president, I had been wondering what Valentine was going to do about “Rock and Roll Evacuation,” an E6 concert staple that climaxes with the lines “Mr. President, make a little money sending people you don’t know to Iraq / Mr. President, I don’t like you — you don’t know how to ROCK!” Valentine addressed these concerns before performing the song, saying that they are still going to play it, and that in his mind, the song was always going to be about Bush. He then bellowed “Bush!” a few times, sorta like Captain Kirk shouting “Khan!” in the second Star Trek movie, and the band launched into the tune.
* As per usual, the Electric Six audience is a rowdy bunch. In this particular show, there was a lot of stage diving, though mostly from this one woman who must’ve gotten up on stage about 15 times over the course of the set. Later in the show, a big dude tried to get up there, but was promptly taken away by some security guards. After that, a skinny, confused-looking Asian girl in high heels got up there, and Valentine took her and placed her in the corner behind the drums. She came back out, and Valentine put her back there again.
* I very much wish that I could have a recording of every live rendition of “The Future Is In The Future” over the course of an entire Electric Six tour just so I could hear all the variations on Valentine’s mid-song breakdown banter. It always seems to follow the same basic formula — Valentine claims that his drummer was born someplace in the vicinity of the venue and makes some sort of comment on his class relative to that place. At the Bowery Ballroom last year, his drummer was a rich kid from Westchester County who had been given the best drum lessons money could buy, and this time, he was a working class guy from Asbury Park, New Jersey who was buying up real estate on the Lower East Side. I’m definitely underselling these bits in describing them — they are totally hilarious, pointed, and strange.
Electric Six “Flashy Man”
Alexyss K. Tylor’s Atlanta-based public access Vagina Power shows are often concerned — nay, obsessed! — with a sort of absurd hyper-masculinity that is perfectly simpatico with the Electric Six’s long-running satire of grotesque manliness and all its corresponding or conflicting neuroses. The concept of the “Flashy Man” is lifted directly from quotes and samples from Tylor’s most famous clip on YouTube, in which she describes a supremely confident, highly promiscuous, and sexually talented man who seems to exist only to shame and cuckold milder men, and to satisfy women physically, but not spiritually or emotionally. The “Flashy Man” is essentially a soulless man of action, and though we may find a vicarious thrill in his exploits, the undertow of the song comes in realizing that we do not and cannot have his swagger, and that his very existence triggers insecurity and doubt. The inner life of the “Flashy Man” is almost entirely irrelevant — he may bury, obscure or drown out his emotions, but in the song, that’s mostly just a projection of a desire of the non-flashy man, who is hobbled and emasculated by his own humanity.
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