By: Pat O'Brien
There is something to be said for a concert where you are sucked in from the first note of the opening band; it hardly ever happens. More frequently, I find myself talking to the people I'm with or wandering the club. But from beginning of Rock Kills Kid's set to the end of Electric Six's encore, even going to the bathroom was unwise lest you miss something on stage.
L.A.'s Rock Kills Kid got things started. Their ultra-hipster haircuts approached The Bravery for their silliness quotient, but they had some pretty great songs. They are on the pop-punk side, but the lyrics and their capabilities raised the music a couple of levels above the usual suspects of the genre. Jeff Tucker's vocals resembled Simon LeBon's, and Reed Calhoun's keyboards recalled Rio-era Duran Duran as well. The lyrics touched on relationships and breakups, but sometimes offered a bit of a solution or suggested moving on might be the best thing. When they threw in a cover of Echo & The Bunnymen's "Lips Like Sugar" -- and it seemed that much of the 18+ crowd was unfamiliar with it - Tucker quipped "Maybe you guys aren't ready for that, but your parents are going to love it," paraphrasing a line from Back To The Future.
I tend to shy away from New York buzz bands. There is seemingly a new one every 3.7 seconds, and the majority of them are undeserving of the accolades they frequently receive. Prior to seeing The Fever, I had kind of - no, totally - written them off as all hype. I was proved wrong for the second time tonight. After a short intro, lead singer Geremy Jasper hit the stage in style, looking like the bastard son of Mick Jagger and David Johansen. The Fever's sound is a mix of The Beach Boys (seriously), Gang Of Four and The Cars, and it wound up sounding like the most urgent, frenetic music you have heard in your entire life, like the soundtrack to an unidentifiable emergency. Drummer Achilles Tzoulafis was pounding--and I mean pounding--on his drum kit so hard I could see the sweat flying off his afroed head 30 feet from the stage. Even keyboardist J. Ruggerio was pushing himself. Their biggest asset, however, was guitarist Keith Stapleton. His guitar wails, whines and howls (often at the same time), and three songs into their set I noticed something sets them apart from many of their NYC counterparts: they don't have a bassist. The fact that it took me 10 minutes to notice this speaks volumes about their stage presence. Bassless bands often scream "art rock," and while The Fever could definitely be considered "arty," they are a far cry from art rock. People in the crowd were actually dancing, and it was a welcome change. The Fever have a clear destination and they want to take you with them.
The Electric Six must be seen to be fully believed. Listening to their albums is great amusement, but seeing them live raises them to a level nearly without peer. Their sound is often described as disco-punk, and while that's the easiest way to describe it, it is also about 438 other things, all of which push the crowd into a roiling, sweaty mass. Lead singer Dick Valentine (all members have pseudonyms ranging from amusing to ridiculous) looks like a junior high math teacher who decided to start the most insanely fun party band in the world. He's sort of out of shape and has that look like he could be 25 or 45. Keyboardist Tait Nucleus? (Yes, the question mark is part of his name) seems to have arrived via time travel from a 1983 Thompson Twins concert. And guitarist Johnny Na$hinal resembles a cleaner-looking version of Motley Crue's Nikki Sixx.
The make or break part of this band lies in their lyrics. They can either be taken as intentionally, cleverly dumb and occasionally, intentionally offensive, or just plain terrible. I am staunchly in the former camp. Nobody would write the chorus:
Improper dancing
in the middle of the street
improper dancing
in the middle of the street
improper dancing
in the middle of the street
somebody better call the chief of police
and then flail his arms in the air like a mental patient while singing if he didn't expect you to be in on the joke with him.
Electric Six is about fun, but a thinking man's fun. Some people write them off as a joke band, but that's not the case. I prefer to call it seriously un-serious. They want you to party with them, and think about what a dunce the president is and what a mess the country is while doing so. It's a thin line but they walk it perfectly. In between giving speeches explaining how even if we rid the country of George Bush there will be another one to take his place and doing sit-ups and leg kicks during guitar solos, they still manage to make you wish they would never leave the stage. For 75 minutes they are the smartest people you have ever laid eyes on.
Something else I saw tonight that I hadn't seen in years: crowd surfing. I saw no fewer than four people on top of the crowd during their semi-megahit "Gay Bar," which contains the classic line "Let's start a war / start a nuclear war / at the gay bar, gay bar, gay bar." Offensive? Possibly. Hilarious? Definitely. Electric Six were feeling under the weather, they said, but they still put their all into the show and then did an encore that didn't seem tacked on or even obligatory. The set had ended with Valentine on the floor doing calisthenics. The encore began in the exact same way, like a continuation of the "original show" but then the band, save Valentine and Nucleus?, left the stage. Valentine and Nucleus? played a touching ballad, then the rest of the band came out for a cover of Stevie Nicks' "Stand Back." They ended with their own "Dance Commander," a fitting send off for this night of dancing and commander-in-chief bashing.
Location Info:
First Avenue
Artist Info: Electric Six, Rock Kills Kid, The Fever
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