Maybe the best introduction to Electric Six is to go home pop in your copy of Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle (what do you mean you don’t own Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle?) and watch the scene where Cameron Diaz comes up from the ocean onto the beach, accompanied by the hyperbolic singing of Electric Six’s lead singer Dick Valentine (real name: Tyler Spencer) in “Danger! High Voltage!”
Or maybe a better introduction is the video itself where people’s naughty bits keep lighting up. Either way, Electric Six is all about a good time and (sometimes mildly offensive) fun with hits like “Gay Bar” and “Dance Commander.” Their newest album Heartbeats and Brainwaves comes out in October but they’ve already leaked five tunes, all briny disco and off the wall lyrics. We caught up with lead singer Tyler Spencer before Six’s September 19th concert at The Firebird.
St. Louis Magazine: Kesha named her album I Am the Dance Commander + I Command You To Dance. Were you guys upset about that?
Tyler Spencer: No, not at all. That’s huge exposure. We’re trying to relate to kids. I don’t even know if she relates to kids. I don’t know who relates to her but I know somehow she’s still out there. I heard she actually came to our shows back in the day she was friends with our old bass player, so I think she actually perhaps was trying to give a schoot-oot [writer’s bad transcription of “shout-out” as said in a Canadian accent] as they say in Canada.
SLM: Your other project Evil Coward. Are you guys going to release an album soon?
TS: I don’t know about soon. I’ll go on a tour with Electric Six, and people will come up to me asking me about it, and I tell [William Bates of Fall on Your Sword] there’s interest in Evil Coward. And he’ll go somewhere and say, “Oh yeah, somebody was wondering whether we were going to do the next album.” Then we go drinking and don’t work on it.
SLM: It’s been a while since you were on it, but how did you get on Red Eye with Greg Gutfeld on Fox News?
TS: It came through our publicist, but I got the sense that Greg actually really liked the band. I always found it kind of ironic. He’s a really nice guy. Greg would just kind of hand-pick what acts he wants on the show, whereas if you want to be on Jimmy Kimmel or Conan O’Brien or anything, it’s got to go through publicity channels and pluggers and payola and stuff. I always found it ironic that the program that got a lot of the lesser known bands on television was on Fox News.
SLM: Were you nervous when you first went on the show?
TS: I wasn’t nervous per se, but just cautious, because that conservative humor escapes me. [Laughs.] A lot of times on that set, I fell like the jokes weren’t going over my head, they were going under my head. You just have to be careful about what you say.
SLM: Were you surprised by the success of your first album, Fire?
TS: I was. We’d been at it for six or seven years, and I was probably the one member of that original line-up that thought that it would never happen. Not that I was pining for it to happen, I just didn’t think it was possible. I just didn’t understand how it worked. But we were definitely in the right place at the right time being around the White Stripes. That was 100 percent of it, I think.
SLM: Is there any story behind “Psychic Vision” [a song off the new album Heartbeats and Brainwaves out in October]?
TS: We had the music written, and were just trying to put words to it, and I was actually walking through another neighborhood in Brooklyn at night, and came across this place with a big neon sign that just said “Psychic Visions” and went from there. I thought it was the funniest sign I had ever seen. It was in cursive—purple neon cursive and it was really gaudy.
SLM: What about “I Ain’t Playing No Joker Poker?”
TS: Yeah, I have no idea what that means. [Laughs.] I really don’t.
SLM: You covered the song “Rubber Band Man” [on your previous album Zodiac]. Are you guys big fans of The Spinners?
TS: I do like the Spinners. I wouldn’t say I’m a big fan. I’m not a big Motown fan, but if I heard a song that was Motown and ended up liking it, it always ended up being The Spinners.
SLM: How did you get involved with the “Bite Me” web series?
TS: The writers were fans of the band. I think they just originally wanted to clear usage of our song “Bite Me.” And then we said, “Well, yeah, you can use that song but we actually sometimes—a lot of times actually—do work for hire.” So we showed them the advantages of contracting us to write original songs for them.
SLM: Do you like scary stuff like zombies and horror flicks?
TS: None of that stuff has any effect on me. You could put me in a room, hook me up to electrodes and have me watch horror films and I probably wouldn’t register at all. My biorhythms probably wouldn’t do anything.
SLM: I heard you left Detroit for a while to become an actor.
TS: [Laughs.] I don’t know where you heard that, because it’s not true. I moved to L.A. like three years into doing the band, but it wasn’t to be an actor. I got a job out there.
SLM: Do you have another job in addition to Electric Six?
TS: No, that’s the problem. When I’m off the road, I spend a lot of my time wondering what the hell I’m doing.
[Pause.]
SLM: Okay, well I think that’s it…
TS: [Laughs.] Yeah, on that note! [Laughs.] What is this for, the Riverfront Times?
SLM: No, it’s for St. Louis Magazine.
TS: Oh, okay, that’s cool. Then you don’t have to put that in there. I don’t want to seem like I’m endorsing your competitor… You gotta stress in your article that people have got to come out and see the show. We’ve got to have people at our show. We just have to.
SLM: Oh, what can people expect? Will there be some big surprises?
TS: From our show? No. We’re just a rock and roll band playing songs. It’s not about what they’re going to see. It’s about what I’m going to see and that’s bodies coming through the door so I can pay my mortgage.
Electric Six’s “Danger! High Voltage!” from its first album, Fire.
Fan video of Electric Six’s “Rubber Band Man” dubbed over live footage of The Spinners performing the same.
