Memo to: Jon Meyers, Publisher, The Vinyl District
From: Michael H. Little, Staff Writer
Subject: The Electric Knickers, “You’ve Got Electric Knickers!”
As you well know, I am no band promoter/cheerleader. Frankly, I hope they all fail out of sheer spite. I am, however, a ruthless opportunist. I’ve got scruples, but I don’t let them get in my way. Which is why I want to write a short but gushingly laudatory piece about The Electric Knickers’ “You’ve Got Electric Knickers!”
Here’s the pitch: No one, and I mean literally no one, knows about this brilliant contribution to second-tier Glam. Which gives us the chance to get in on the ground floor. To become known as the best print tastemakers in the music biz by singlehandedly propelling “You’ve Got Electric Knickers!” to the Top of the Pops! Which is where it should currently be sitting! And the band claims it is!
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “I received the exact same memo regarding Black Oak Arkansas a while back, and your ‘gushingly laudatory’ review made us the laughingstock of the online universe. The worldwide mockery and humiliation almost put us out of business.”
To which I can only say, “Is it my fault most sentient beings are totally incapable of recognizing musical genius when they hear it? Your average sentient being can’t stomach Killdozer either!”
Background: The Electric Knickers are the brainchild of one Stephen Evans, who looks like a chubbier version of the homunculus Paul Williams. Only he’s English. And has fewer teeth. And sports an overgrown John Denver bowl haircut and wispy chin merkin. And whose pudginess is accentuated by a pair of silver glam bib overall shorts.
Basically Evans looks like a mangy but friendly garden gnome making a spectacle of himself at one of those sad Finnish Glam Rock Festivals where everyone’s passed out before the headliners (“I give you the Sweet!”) come on.
As for “press,” the only thing I could find was a very brief rave review on the blog Hit the North: Art Dispatches from Glasgow, Edinburgh and Beyond. I’m desperately trying to find more info, but if I don’t that’s even better. It gives us a golden opportunity to be the first to introduce “You’ve Got Electric Knickers!” to a gobsmacked listening public!
Here’s the story: Evans, whose bandcamp page reveals he’s one busy fellow, created several episodes of a mock 1970 children’s television program called Knicker Knock Box. The first episode (“Electricity”) will make your hair stand on end and do the Watusi. It was, or so claims the verbiage at the beginning of the episode, “recently found stored in a pond near Tamworth Services.”
Evans has two unsightly mates, one a bearded chap with glasses (his name is Sean Reynolds, aka Quention Smirhes, and he’s also a filmmaker/musician) who looks like a less dapper Vivian Stanshall and walks around in a sublimely unflattering pair of tighty-whities. The other one I couldn’t even begin to describe. A dirty-faced Blob comes to mind. If the Blob could mumble and never met a face towel. I suspect he lives in a coal mine.
Anyway: On the episode in question, the oddball trio hear “You’ve Got Electric Knickers!” by a band called The Electric Knickers on the radio, and they decide it would be a brilliant idea to play dress up (think Glam gone terribly awry) and lip synch to the song while “playing” their instruments. The setting is pure 1970 Top of the Pops cool. Check it out on YouTube. You will experience an emotion that falls somewhere between aghast and agog.
I can’t stop listening to it.
FYI: Evans sings and plays tambourine, Reynolds/Smirhes plays guitar, and the filthy-faced Blob plays drums. Some hairy abomination covered in band-aids plays bass.
But to get back to what I was saying, the song is tremendous! Golden God Bottom Shelf Glam! Better even than Mud’s “Tiger Feet”! Far superior to anything by The Glitter Band! Parents will love it! Their children won’t be able to get it out of their underdeveloped noggins! The Sweet–who fit the Glam ideal of androgyny and fashion only slightly better than The Electric Knickers–would collectively succumb to envy!
Before I get to the song I want to reaffirm to you that Electric Knickers are a gold rush waiting to happen. You won’t find them on Wikipedia or Discogs. AllMusic has absolutely nothing to say about them. Outside bandcamp, The Electric Knickers are a complete unknown, like a rolling stone.
But we could change all that, drag the Electric Knickers out from the shadows and make them the brightest star in the Glitter Rock Firmament!
And it’s epochal as well as catchier than a first baseman’s mitt, seeing as how T. Rex’s 1971 song “Hot Love” is generally considered to be the first song in the Glitterverse and The Electric Knickers’ “You’ve Got Electric Knickers!” purportedly dates back to 1970. Look at those dates again. Electric Knickers INVENTED GLAM ROCK!
And believe me when I say it’s better than any song ever recorded by Suzie Quatro, better even than “Devil Gate Drive.” Better than “Can the Can” even! And The Electric Knickers weren’t beholden to the evil Chinnichap Conglomeration. Unlike Quatro, the Sweet, Smokie, Mud and so many others, the “Knicks” did it all on their own.
Which is remarkable when you think about it; even the great Mott the Hoople had to rely on a hand-me-down from some sketchy Stardust geezer and mad producer/studio wrecker Guy Stevens.
The song is simplicity itself, Bubblegum Glam (without the ubiquitous Burundi Beat) that succeeds on pure songcraft. The chorus is unimpeachably infectious, and I defy anyone not to sing along:
“Cool, cool, you’re no fool, you’ve got electric knickers.
That’s right, you know what I like, you’ve got electric knickers.
Lean bean, you know what I mean, you’ve got electric knickers.
Stone me, honey bee, you’ve got electric knickers.”
Isn’t it great how they cleverly rhyme “electric knickers” with “electric knickers”?
“You’ve Got Electric Knickers!” is a sure thing, and The Electric Knickers know it. Why, they’ve even plastered the number “1″ on the cover of the single! This one is going to be massive, and by massive I mean more massive than Lorde’s “Royals,” I’m talking smasheroo!
All the The Electric Knickers need is a push! And to quote the great Herbie Mann, we can be the engine that gives the song the “push push” that propels “You’ve Got Electric Knickers!” to immortality!
What else can I say about the song? Evans has a smooth and captivating voice, the backing vocalists are totally Top of the Pops, but why even try to describe it? Better just to include the video in the review and let our readers decide for themselves.
Look, I’ve been wrong in the past but this one’s a sure thing. A sheer heart attack, the fastest dog on the track, guaranteed platinum or your Glitter Band 8-track back.
So really, what do you think?
Memo to: Michael H. Little, Staff Writer
From: Jon Meyers, Publisher, The Vinyl District
Re: The Electric Knickers, “You’ve Got Electric Knickers!”
Three words: Black Oak Arkansas. Oh, and four more: Clean out your desk.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A
