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| The Electric Shakes photographed by Paul Slattery |
The Electric Shakes and
Tours are related as Mark Spiers a.k.a Basher plays in both bands (you can read all about the exciting news of the Tours reunion in our feature
here). Mark was only 16 when he played for Tours, at the time he reminded me of another young powerhouse drummer Michael Shrieve who was 20 when he appeared at Woodstock with Santana. The first Electric Shakes self-titled mini album was released back in 2014 and we've featured some of the tracks from that in previous episodes of our Retrosonic Podcast. This year they released a proper ten track LP entitled "Electrohypnosis" and the band have been doing a lot of gigs including just recently supporting ex Kyuss and QOTSA bassman Nick Oliveri. I went down to see them last month at The Fighting Cocks, the legendary SW London Rock hot-spot and I was not disappointed.
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| The Electric Shakes photographed by Paul Slattery |
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| The Electric Shakes photographed by Paul Slattery |
The band describe their music style as 'Dirty heavy garage rock and fuzzed up psyched out punk blues' and I can honestly say that they are not wrong. Their music is a little more heavy rock than most of the bands I go and see, but being a huge Motorhead fan it’s great to see Steve and Eric duelling it out at the front of the stage, Basher keeping himself busy with a sustained attack on the drumkit AND backup vocals. The songs that stood out for me were "The Doctor", a real belter of a song which they follow with the bluesy "The 157". The pace then slows down for the rocking "In The Blood" then right back up to full throttle with "Shot me Down" (which you can hear in Episode of Retrosonic Podcast) a great slice of Punk Rock Psychedelia where Basher and Eric get to do a drum and bass duet and the song at just a tad over three minutes is over too quickly. The band storm into "Magpie" and the then into their superb last number "Blue Meanie" another speedy prime cut of Rock and Roll. What a fast- paced gig, the band do eleven songs and it’s all over in about 50 minutes! This is high energy playing – I’m exhausted just watching them! A really great gig.
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| The Electric Shakes photographed by Paul Slattery |
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| The Electric Shakes photographed by Paul Slattery |
You can buy "Electrohypnosis" and their first album "The Electric Shakes" at their Bandcamp site
here. They will be gigging again soon so check out their web-site
here for more info and news.
- Paul Slattery December 2017
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