Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Tuesday Tuneage
Electric Six - "Nuclear War (On The Dance Floor)"
2003

At the end of 1991's Stairway To Hell: The 500 Best Heavy Metal Albums In The Universe, Chuck Eddy posited that a disco-metal fusion was inevitable in the nineties. Among his 25 reasons were Kiss's disco song "I Was Made For Lovin' You" (paired with) Rick James's most metal moment being "Love Gun", Black Sabbath's "Children of the Grave" having the exact same rhythm as Blondie's "Call Me", and Van Halen's "Dance The Night Away" and "Dancing in the Streets." And, he wrote: "In Canada circa 1980, an unjustly noticed pop vanguard starring Loverboy, Bryan Adams, and Aldo Nova took it for granted that metal, disco, and new wave were all gonna be ONE AND THE SAME THING." The conclusion being that not only was disco-metal inevitable, it had been with us all along.

Last decade, Detroit's Electric Six debuted in 2003 with "Danger! High Voltage", the best rock 'n' roll single since "Smells Like Teen Spirit". The album, Fire, was a Revelation (capital "R", New Testament-like). It shares a similar concept to Prince's 1999 album, the lesson seems to be that a nuclear apocalypse is imminent, so let's hit the dance floor and/or sheets. Along with stops at "Taco Bell" and a "Gay Bar" (gays -  along with blacks and Latins - invented disco, and I'm not even going to Wikipedia to confirm this) and a nod to Van Halen's "Panama." Not sure where an extremely pale girl fits in ("She's White" - Detroit bands don't seem afraid of addressing race. See also The Paybacks' "Black Girl" and The Hentchmen's "I'm Through With White Girls", both available on the Sympathetic Sounds of Detroit anthology) but the Six's relentless disco-metal attack pulls it all off seamlessly. Perfect for dance parties in your apartment's living room or getting through a cardio workout. The riffs, beats, jokes, and asides pile up so furiously that there's no conceivable way these guys ever made another album. (They've made many, many more …)