LIVE: Electric Six with Enjoyable Listens
Live Review of Electric Six and Enjoyable Listens
Holmfirth Picturedrome,
08/11/25
Review by Dark Juan
Score: All known numbers/10
Well, I did a thing last night. I actually ventured out of Crow Cottage and the Calder Valley, swapping it for the next valley along, being the Holme Valley in Kirklees, to attend an event! What is even more surprising is that I did this in the company of friends, which gives the lie to my frequent declarations of misanthropy and lack of interest in the rest of the human race. Even Mrs Dark Juan deigned to grace me with her presence and join me for an evening of drinking, shenanigans and being utterly traumatised by enigmatic frontmen.
Our evening began by trying to find a car park in the dark in a town that we were not familiar with. This went surprisingly better than you might imagine, and having abandoned the Silver Sturmvogel in the local Co-Op, we ventured forth to locate our friends Doug and Helen, who were apparently in a place called Nowhere.
Have you ever tried to ask a local person where Nowhere is? Dark Juan has, and the response I got was everything you might expect, involving confused looks, apologies and muttering. Probably about grockles and offcomers. However, we persevered, and it turns out that Nowhere is a rather splendid café bar in a charming part of Holmfirth that was until recently (say the last ten years) derelict. Greetings were exchanged and Dark Juan decamped to the bar to order drinks. Dark Juan was then somewhat discombobulated to be addressed by name by the lovely young lady tending bar. Bear in mind that I have never set foot in Nowhere before. It turns out that Doug is the Brew Master for Nowhere and the lovely pint of stout that I was quickly getting outside of was the work of his own giant hands, and he had had a word with the staff beforehand and was greatly enjoying my discomfiture. However, I enjoyed the olives and bread and beer more, so I cock Doug a snook and say fie to him.
After a couple of pints of rather splendid beer and a surprisingly in-depth discussion of Quincy Jones, it was time to find our way to the Picturedrome, a splendid and intimate venue right in the centre of Holmfirth. However, we turned up late and only caught the last couple of songs of the support act, whose name I have totally obliterated from my memory with alcohol. However, with some research and not a little bit of cursing, I remembered eventually (four days later!) that they were called Enjoyable Listens. Anyway, we won’t let a simple thing like a lack of journalistic rigour prevent us, will we? Suffice it to say that they were an engaging prospect, their Divine Comedy like tales of everymen, their gregarious and frankly disturbingly active frontman actively goading the world’s possibly most taciturn bassist. This vocalist was a spasmodic, perverse joy to watch as he pinwheeled around the stage in a tornado of sweat, crooning, a fine suit (Dark Juan does enjoy sartorial elegance), barking orders at the bass player with extravagant gestures and bug-eyed shouting and a truly magnificent moustache. However manful a performance this band put on, though, they were always on a hiding to nothing, as the crowd were there for one thing and one thing only. And that was not idiosyncratic British eccentricity, no matter how artful, or how immobile the bassist while the singer ricocheted off the walls and the equipment in paroxysms of febrile exposition.
What we were all there for was the two hours of joy, fear, and Disco Punk mixed with Garage Rock from Electric Six. Yes, Detroit’s finest have deigned to grace us with their almighty presence, deep in the countryside between Yorkshire and Derbyshire, and Dark Juan is more excited for this than discovering one of his friends is a biermeister. Howls of joy erupt from the capacity crowd as the band, and utterly compelling and clearly batshit mental frontman Dick Valentine takes the stage, centres himself and addresses the crowd.
Tonight, Electric Six are Electric Five as keyboard player Tait Nucleus? is indisposed this evening, although ironically Electric Six were historically a five-piece band until Nucleus? joining as a full-time member made them a sextet. Nevertheless, the band crash into ‘Synthesizer’ and the Picturedrome just fucking ERUPTS! The band are clearly on fine form, even though there’s a little bit of finger trouble from the guitarist closest to me, Herb S. Flavourings (possibly not his real name), causing a bit of a wry grin and a nod of recognition towards Dark Juan before he carries on rocking the joint like the achingly cool motherfucker he is.
There is something for everyone in the setlist the band have chosen, the songs encompassing the whole career of the band from “Fire” through “Senor Smoke” all the way through to current album release “Turquoise”. Although the new songs do not meet with the same fervent… fervour of the crowd as do the classics, they do fit in magically with the oeuvre of the band. I should point out, however, that Dark Juan has been a rabid and particularly enthusiastic fan of Electric Six for many, many years and this was the first time I have been able to see them in the live setting, so I was primed massively for an outpouring of absolute pleasure. That was delivered in spades, to the point that I sit here writing this an utterly broken man, having pogoed myself half to death, moshed until my head nearly fell off and sung myself hoarse, Electric Six having made me forget that I HAVE PASSED MY HALF-CENTURY and I am not the fit young sportsman I used to me when I was organising walls of death in the depths of The Lemon Factory in Swansea at my first ever gig as the second guitarist for Black Rose Park. And breaking ribs doing them too. Hell of a debut, I’m sure you’ll agree.
Obviously, the biggest cheers of the night came for the classics and there were plenty of them, absolutely including their biggest hits and most definitely ‘Danger! High Voltage’, among many others like ‘Dance Commander’, ‘She’s White’ and ‘Down At McDonnelzzz’, which made sure of some rather spiffing crowd interaction! Including Dark Juan who was punching the air with gay and carefree abandon and screaming his cold black heart out. Especially on the popular and sexually charged ‘Gay Bar’ and ‘Gay Bar Part II’, which were pleasingly played back-to-back. Dark Juan appreciates neatness.
Word here must be given about the ringmaster of the whole shebang, Mr. Dick Valentine. A consummate and entertaining frontman, he is also absolutely fucking terrifying, his idiosyncratic pauses breaking up his performances, where he holds himself rigid, a rictus grin plastered on his face, absolutely immobile and unblinking, or becoming motionless, mid-dance move, gaze centred on infinity before snapping back into enthusiastic action at some randomly chosen moment. This is somewhat disconcerting when you are neurodiverse and people not doing what they are supposed to be doing is very disquieting. Like ‘Improper Dancing’ leading to some deeply improper dancing. Just not from the ladies. Which somewhat leads me towards the broad appeal of Electric Six. It is an eclectic crowd that has come to see the masters at work – from young enthusiastically bouncing people, to full-on rockers like me to older folk (also like me) to some appallingly normal people. Seeing all these disparate types together made for an unusual gig experience, especially when the norms got offended at the mosh pit that formed and slightly jostled them. They were roundly abused.
The band left the crowd sweat-soaked and desperate for more, but they returned to the stage for three more songs. The first I have forgotten, although I think it was a magnificent rendition of ‘The New Shampoo’ which has some of the cleverest lyrics in Rock, dressed up in silliness, which happened at some point in the proceedings, as well as a deeply lascivious version of ‘Infected Girls’, before landing an absolutely killer blow and ending the proceedings with ‘I Buy The Drugs’. Oh wait! The first song of the three encores was ‘Dance Epidemic’, which led to an entirely unsurprising dance epidemic in the crowd.
All in all, this night was a fucking ultra-triumph from start to finish and Dark Juan is now prostrate and aching upon his sofa of pain having danced the night away and forgetting he is a half-crippled old man.
Except now, the day after, I have been reminded. I have no hearing whatsoever in my left ear. None of my limbs work as they should. A cup of tea is too heavy to lift.
Ouch.
