Electric Six, "Dance Epidemic"
Oh, my freakin' gods, this song rocks. It makes me want to strap myself to a Saturn-V rocket and shoot myself right into the heart of the sun. It makes me want to dress in a latex gimp suit and run around Washington, DC, setting off M80s in every sewer grate or mailbox I come upon. It makes me want to fling myself around a dancefloor like a monkey on crack.
I was introduced to Electric Six in 2004 or 2005 by my lovely friend Carolee, who exposed me to the sheer radioactive cloud of awesomeness that was "Gay Bar" (from their debut album Fire)--and I was instantly converted into an Electric Six devotee. If you mix blazing rock/disco/New Wave jams with silly, oftimes sidesplittingly hilarious, and sometimes downright mindblowing lyrics you're prettymuch guaranteed to end up on Pegritz's Favorite Bands list...but no one landed on the list with the atomic, Hiroshima-destroying impact of Electric Six.
Fire was an incredible album, but the band's follow-up effort, 2005's Señor Smoke, was just devastating. From track one, "Rock And Roll Evacuation" through to track fifteen, the unbelievably wonderful "Future Is In The Future," the album is just jam after jam after motherfucking jam--an unrelenting explosion of dance-powered energy, whacked-out but witty lyrics, good times and lightning bolts. To say that "Dance Epidemic" is the best song on the album is really difficult, because every damned track is nuclear war incarnate, but, if anything, "Dance Epidemic" packs just a little more megatonnage than the others.
I mean...listen to this friggin' song! The beat! That buzzing beast of a bassline! Those waxy disco guitars! And Dick Valentine's vocals....By Crom, who can't immediately fall in love with a song that begins with the line "Your body goes to waste every minute you don't give it me"? I'M DYING FOR YOUR SINS ON THE DANCEFLOOR, CAN'T YOU SEE?!?! I just...I just...don't know what to say. Everytime I hear this song I...I don't care if I'm so tired I feel like I've got both feet in the grave, I simply have to leap to my feet and shake my booty so damned hard I throw my back out.
"Dance Epidemic," y'all. It's more contagious than ebola crossed with the common cold.
Too bad the band's three following albums never quite captured the same insane, balls-to-the-wall power of Señor Smoke. But hey...if I managed to ever put out an album like Señor Smoke, I would never make another album ever, because there would be no way I could ever top it.
