by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

Bang on a year ago at this time, I was in NYC, soaking up the vibe at the inaugural Electroclash festival. DJ/impresario Larry Tee, a longstanding figure in the scene there (he’s worked with Deee-Lite and RuPaul) was gambling on his chimerical concoction of bleepy electro-chic and sexed-up punk power achieving official Next Big Thing status. Lo and behold, it has—witness the mercurial rise of Peaches, FischerSpooner, Le Tigre et al.

Electroclash year two is currently in the offing in NYC, and the moment that’s done, Tee’s headed our way with his posse of switched-on bitches for the Electroclash roadshow. That includes Peaches, Chicks on Speed and WIT, or Whatever It Takes, Larry’s current Svengali-bait, signed to his own young Mogul Electro label.

Get Tee on the blower and he’ll put on this whole catty Queen Bitch routine, but who’s he fooling? The guy’s got a big heart, in the right place. Calculating cleverness and pitch power to rival P.T. Barnum are just useful bonuses. The Mirror hassled Tee for a few choice words on Electroclash the fest, electroclash the genre and the clashes electro has faced this year.

Mirror: A year ago, for all your bluster, I’m sure you were knocking on wood—would Electroclash hit its mark? It seems to me it has. Are you satisfied with the success of round one?

Larry Tee: I sure am! It was the most exciting music around, but it had more impact in that it named the genre, and it brought the first wave of artists to mainstream acknowledgement. It got the word out and inspired a new generation, which seems to be even more wicked and more tuneful than the first bunch. Neon Music, WIT, Mount Sims—Mount Sims is genius, the best tunes I’ve heard since Prince came out. He’s the Prince of electroclash, he’s got that clever phrasing and the most outrageously sexy personality. He’s just got it all.

M: What about WIT? What’s their deal?

LT: Melissa [Burns], who I’ve seen around forever—this voluptuous blonde that I’ve always loved because she was just so funny and smart—she came up to me and said she wanted to do a girl group called WIT, or Whatever It Takes. Their motto was, they didn’t want to let integrity get in the way of their careers. You know I like original ideas, and it just seemed so different from what was happening, but in the same territory, too. Luckily, I got the pleasure of working with her and Christine [Doza], who make up the main group. They usually bring a dancer, too, for that total girl-group va-va-voomness. We put it together as a lark for last year, and then it just exploded. Because people needed a pin-up for this genre. Because you gotta sell some magazines. Actually, Rupert, it’s the Trojan Horse. We wheel this big, beautiful horse up to the gates, and they go, “Yuh-eeah! Look at this big, beautiful horse with bejewelled eyes and beautiful mane!” And then, out pop all these rascals!

E-clash backlash

M: Montreal, like New York, has seen an explosion of electro club nights in the last year, one every night of the week. Naturally, there are folks in more established camps—IDM, house, drum & bass—oozing jealousy. But I get a feeling they could learn a thing or two from electroclash.

LT: Hello? Personality? Content? Revolutionary breakthroughs in combinations of entertainment styles?! There’s a lot that the IDM, house and other scenes could learn from this genre. They suffered from no breakthroughs and no artists you could really become loyal to. I’ve seen so many people that were really against this thing finally shut up, get on board and find something within it that they liked. It’s like anything—people were calling rap dead in ’81. They were! People immediately said, “Ugh, where can this go?” There are negative people, that’s just part of life. But even as it is, it’s had enough of a breakthrough and enough of a fanbase to keep this going and keep it spreading.

M: Which leads us to Larry Tee’s travelling Electroclash circus, set to hit the road any day now.

LT: Sounds exciting, doesn’t it? I got the idea to do an Electroclash tour because electroclash was getting so much press. I was contacted about taking a roadshow across America. And Peaches, WIT, Chicks on Speed and Tracy & the Plastics is such a fun line-up, coming from different places. There’s aggro-sexual Peaches, the performance-art-school-intellectual Chicks on Speed, the girl-group parody WIT—and Tracy’s brilliant! The idea was to try to break electroclash, and these artists, across America, so people would have more options.

M: Sure, but that’s one story in the urban centres. What about secondary cities, the places where Bon Jovi still reigns supreme?

LT: Listen, between Indianapolis and Kentucky, I did a rave that they had 5,000 people at. I think that this format falls right when the rave scene needed some stars—and never had any, unless you want to count Keoki. The alternative rock scene was getting a little same-y, and had stopped writing about things that mattered—they just started writing about love. In this void, this new bastard child plopped down, celebrating the worst of American culture. It was so punk! You know, the gross excess, the unnecessary marketing, the greed and celebrity culture, everything which is rotten about America, they took it and ran. With more than a little irony! To me, that’s rock ’n’ roll right there. This is a really political thing. I don’t know any other genre that is so gender-equitable.

M: Yeah, it could be argued that electroclash opened punk and electronica up to women in a way that neither punk nor electronica ever did.

LT: Never did. Also, have you noticed anybody really lingering on who’s gay and who’s straight? It’s not even an issue in this genre. Whereas the posturing in new rock is just like the posturing in old rock. It’s the same old thing. Is their anything straighter than the faggy Jaggers and Bowies? This scene is really mature on the issue of sexuality. It’s the first time it hasn’t mattered. :

Peaches, Chicks on Speed, WIT,
Tracy & the Plastics, Taylor Savvy and
DJ Larry Tee at SAT
on Monday, Oct. 14, 9pm, $25

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