Electric6, Little Nikita and Skull Disco, Concorde 2 Brighton, 7th July 2004

 

I have to confess that I did not spend £13 on a ticket and £36.99 on a bus ticket to Brighton, 5 Hours on the bus there, 5.5 on the bus back, and two days with wet feet in order to see Electric 6. I don't really like Electric 6. I do however like Little Nikita. A lot. Therefore much money and boredom on the bus was worth it.

Skull Disco were the first support band. They were, to be honest a bit weird, for several reasons. Firstly they were leather clad. Now this is fine if you look like Greg McDonald from The Dawn Parade and have a nice, battered pair of leather trousers. This is not fine if you look as if you could be nearing 50, the leather trousers are shiny, and have a matching waistcoat type thing and hat covering shiny baldheads. Not a good look, but then again we were in Brighton. Aside the strange leather look, Skull Disco's other problem is probably their lack of songs. Well, they seemed to have many songs, but only one bass line. They were quite tedious. But I must congratulate them on making an effort, they tried really hard, and there were certainly people enjoying them, and moshing, totally out of time. They did also make a spirited attempt at audience banter, but it wasn't quite enough to motivate me to dance, or contemplate looking of for them in the future.

When the Skull Disco left the stage, hopefully to try and peel the leather off, Little Nikita graced us with their oh-so wonderful presence. So the Little Nikita Massive (Me, Scott, Ciara, miT, Hannah, Richard and newly recruited Kieran) fought our way to the front, and offered our support in the form of loving chants of "loofah loofah loofah" and "Hanson Hanson Hanson" (for more information of these jokes, join the little nikita forum at www.littlenikita.co.uk * cough plug plug plug cough cough *)


Little Nikita hail from sunny Peterborough, and would be the shortest band in rock, if with wasn't for John of guitar, who is possibly the tallest man in the world (he also has the best side burns and drunk/stoned laugh in the world!). The Rigarlsford brothers Phil (leader singer and guitar) and Marc (drums) and Caz, the world's sexiest bassist, make up the rest of the band.


They kicked their set off with their first single Jesters; moving smoothly in to Mary Kelly, Bring it on and Sneakers. Probably the first thing you notice about Little Nikita is Phil's eyes. He does have eyes like a serial killer. Quite scary! Sneakers will, form the B-side to next single Devil's Disco, which was played next. Devil's Disco has everything a good single should have, a catchy bass line, some catchy (if a little violent at times) lyrics, a good sing-a-long chorus and best of all a dance routine… "One step to the left and 7 to the right" (plus the Macarena through the chorus). Next up it was time for a good bit of Teenage Passion, which quite frankly no one can resist! And then the set closed (all to quickly for my liking) with Scream.

Then came the evening's headlining band Electric 6. As I have already said, I wasn't there to see them; I didn't really like them and wasn't really intending to watch them.
As I suspected, most of the people were there simply for Gay Bar. To give them credit, Electric have been clever enough to leave it until the second to last song, and they were playing without their regular keyboardist, who was ill (something wrong with his pancreas I believe). However, they are actually a very dull band. Their set can be summed up like this:
A lot of boring songs that all sound the same, that aren't gay bar, and you will probably never hear again, High Voltage, more dull, none gay bar songs, Gay Bar, half the audience leave, a few more none gay bar songs.
At least some of the audience banter suggested they are aware that they are dull, "this is a new song, it will bore your dick off"

At the start of Electric 6's set I tried quite hard to be positive, feeling newly refreshed after a trip to the bar, where we all bumped into Dav from Easyworld, who was there to support Little Nikita, but like Dav I wished I'd left after about 3 songs. Instead we carried on until the end, making up new dances to pass the time. The only non- gay bar or high voltage song that has stuck in my head, seemed to feature the line "naked pictures of your mother" but other then that I can tell you very little about electric 6.

Unless you are a hardcore Electric 6 fan, then going to see them live will probably not be the most fore filling experience. However, I can not urge you enough to see Little Nikita (yes I am bias, but bias for a reason) they, in simple terms, rock. And they are lovely lovely people (even Phil with his serial killer eyes, and evil drinking games). Expect Devil's Disco to be out some time soonish (no date as yet, but their website should keep you up to date, where you can also find "the bestest forum on t'internet" and some downloads etc.) and for it to take over the world!

Alex Corwin