Electric Six Still Wants to Take You to a ‘Gay Bar’
It’s a safe bet that when Electric Six plays at Provincetown Town Hall this weekend, the song “Gay Bar Part Two” will be on the set list.
The original “Gay Bar” was released in 2003 and became a hit in the U.K. and Australia. But in the U.S., the lyrics were censored because they mentioned starting a war in a gay bar — and the song’s release coincided with the start of the Iraq War. Tired of being asked about that one track on their debut album, the band cheekily told an interviewer that their next hit song would be called “Gay Bar Part 2.” So, they wrote and recorded it — sans war references — for their fifth album.
Electric Six vocalist and songwriter Dick Valentine says that both versions — like most of the band’s new wave, punk, disco, and metal-inflected music — are just about having fun.
“The ethos has never changed for me,” says Valentine. “I’ve never wanted to take this too seriously. There are all these musicians who overthink everything and I just think, ‘Man, that is not why I started a band.’ ”
A genre-bending Detroit-based band with more than 20 albums to its credit, Electric Six has an eclectic sound: think Iggy Pop meets Swedish House Mafia. This is rock and roll you can bounce to. While its members are older than they were in their heyday, they still maintain a rigorous tour schedule.
After playing in Provincetown as part of the Outer Cape Music Festival this weekend, the band will head to the U.K., where their fan base is bigger than it is in the States.
“It’s nice to have notoriety someplace you don’t live,” Valentine says. “I get to go to all these amazing places, and I have friends all over the world. Touring with this band is as fun as it’s ever been.”
Electric Six plays at Provincetown Town Hall (260 Commercial St.) on Saturday, June 21. Doors open at 5:30 p.m. Tickets are $50 at outercapemusicfest.com. —Katy Abel
Images of the Fantastical
Yellow tulips loom large and ominous against a purple sky. A bulldog sports a bowtie, and a crow’s feathered wings bulge from its shirtsleeves. Ants wield paintbrushes, Monopoly pieces have lives of their own, and a rabbit with unusually tall ears wears a copper bathrobe.
These are just some of the characters and scenes in “Masters of ConFucquary,” a group show at Bowersock Gallery in Provincetown. It features work by sculptors Joe Lupiani and Jeanne McCartin and painter Steve Bowersock, who is also the owner and curator of the gallery.
Bowersock says the title of the show refers to “a state of beautiful confusion,” and indeed there’s something unsettling about the works in it that speaks to the uncertainty of our time, even as they entertain. Lupiani sculpts anthropomorphized animals from a variety of wood species, like Bowtie Bulldog, with its formal outfit (jacket, striped pants, bowtie, and buttoned-up vest) juxtaposed against its exaggerated jowls and the sad downturn of its eyes.
McCartin is a mixed media sculptor who works with paper clay and acrylic paint. In a recent diorama-like work titled Eris’s Workshop, masks hang from the wall. Although the scene is mysterious, the giant ant adding paint to a mask brings the viewer into the land of fairy tales.
Bowersock’s own work expands the themes that tie the show together: an investigation of the imagination and the surreal stories our brains create. In Take a Breath, he depicts a sunflower against a cloud-spattered sky. The center of the sunflower — the seed head that holds the inflorescence together and allows the plant to reseed — is gone. Instead, a figure sits in the hole that remains, with the sky visible behind it.
The exhibition opens at Bowersock Gallery (373 Commercial St., Provincetown) with a reception on Friday, June 20 at 7 p.m., and the show is on view until July 1. See bowersockgallery.com. —Antonia DaSilva
Taking Shakespeare to the Air at Cape Rep
Kirsten Peacock and Nick Nudler had performed in traditional stagings of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and treasured its comedic story of lovers, fairies, and woodland magic. But they questioned some of its narrative choices — like Titania, the Fairy Queen, forgiving her husband Oberon after their quarrel at the heart of the play — and wanted to explore more deeply.
Their resulting Midsummer Dreamers, debuting at Cape Rep Theatre this week, focuses on a pair of 21st-century lovers who fall asleep and dream the magical story in a way that helps them resolve their own problems. In the dream sequences, Nudler and Peacock are in the air, using stunts on scarves and trapeze to enhance their storytelling.
The duo say that the production is a fresh and “sometimes weird” reinterpretation that stays true to Shakespeare’s text while using it in unexpected ways. The aerial component originated in a four-month intensive course the couple took in Scotland, focusing on combining circus and theater.
“It’s a loving reimagining, with specific plot points moved around, and some scenes shifted,” Nudler says. “Parts of scenes get completely blown out into highly physicalized sequences that I think are more accessible than Shakespeare can feel.”
Nudler and Peacock each play multiple characters of different genders among the quarreling lovers, hapless amateur actors, and mischievous sprites. They divided those by “desires,” with Nudler as the characters who “want more,” and Peacock playing the “super avoidant” ones. Forest magic shifts both camps, however, and Nudler even ends up playing a love scene opposite himself.
“People who know Shakespeare will appreciate shifts we’ve made,” says Nudler. “But if you don’t know the play, you’ll still feel taken on a ride you can follow.”
Midsummer Dreamers runs Tuesdays through Saturdays from June 18 to July 13 at Cape Rep’s Indoor Theater (3299 Main St., Brewster). Tickets are $25-$40 at caperep.org. —Kathi Scrizzi Driscoll
Stories to Support the Outer Cape Community
For more than three decades, the Provincetown Community Compact has supported the Outer Cape community through events including the annual Swim for Life & Paddler Flotilla, multiple Prayer Ribbon installations commemorating the memories and actions of those affected by the AIDS crisis around the country, and more than 1,200 dune shack artist residencies. This week, an event at the Provincetown Theater will raise funds for the Compact to continue its 32-year mission.
Produced by Compact board member Gail Strickland, the second annual Compact Story Night on Sunday, June 22 will feature five speakers who have been affiliated with the organization’s programs over the years, three of whom have participated in the Compact’s Think-Ubator program offering fiscal and other support for nonprofit community initiative projects.
Speakers include Nathan Balk King, a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe who has organized delegations of Native American youth at Model United Nations conferences in New York City; Jaime de Sousa, a founding member of the Provincetown Juneteenth Committee and the Provincetown League of Visionary Revolutionaries; comedian and Summer of Sass founder Kristin Becker; former Provincetown Schools Supt. Susan Fleming; and Jeff Walker, who has participated in the Swim for Life event for 10 years.
The event begins at 6 p.m. with refreshments catered by Angel Foods, and the speakers begin at 7 p.m. General admission is $25; V.I.P. tickets, which include priority seating and ten raffle tickets for three two-night stays in the C-Scape dune shack, are $100. Reservations are suggested. See thecompact.org for more information. —John D’Addario
Coming Back With Spoofs and Sequins
With his favorite target for satire back in the White House, Randy Rainbow is bringing his “National Freakin’ Treasure” show — along with new songs, videos, stand-up material, sparkly costumes, and feather boas — to the Outer Cape just in time for Pride Month.
Rainbow (his real name) is known for the dozens of faux interview videos he’s made over the years, punctuated by parodies of Broadway show tunes and pop songs. He plays every role in each of his videos himself. The video spoofs started a decade ago with jokes about celebrities but began to expand in popularity when Rainbow turned to politics and took aim at Donald Trump and figures like U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Rainbow’s YouTube channel has 897,000 subscribers. (His most-watched video, with 7.7 million views, is “A Spoonful of Clorox,” which skewers Donald Trump’s pandemic pronouncements with a parody of a familiar tune from the musical Mary Poppins.) While his output went from 50 videos during the first few years of the Trump administration to just five in Biden-era 2022, Rainbow has already produced five since Trump’s re-election last fall, including “Fees, Fees, Fees” (a commentary on economic whiplash, based on Sabrina Carpenter’s “Please, Please, Please”) and the Wicked parody “Defy Democracy,” which includes Rainbow switching personas between a green Wicked Witch in flowing black robes, a blonde-wigged Glinda in a pink dress, and a chorus of furry Flying Monkeys.
In addition to his videos, Rainbow has also written a children’s book, Randy Rainbow and the Marvelously Magical Pink Glasses, which was released last month. The anti-bullying story features the many pairs of pink cat-eye glasses Rainbow wears in his videos and live shows, and he says the book was inspired by his supportive grandmother, who taught him “to see the world through humor and joy, even in the worst of times.”
“Randy Rainbow: National Freakin’ Treasure” will be performed at Provincetown Town Hall, (260 Commercial St.) on Sunday, June 22 at 7:30 p.m. as part of the Payomet Road Show series. Tickets are $50-$85 at payomet.org. —Kathi Scrizzi Driscoll
Samantha Fish Wants to Challenge You
Samantha Fish released her latest album, Paper Doll, this year. The nine-song album is the first she’s recorded with her touring band, who she will perform with at Payomet Performing Arts Center on Sunday, June 22. The Texas Headhunters, a blues-rock band, will be the opening act.
Fish, who grew up in Kansas City, Mo., says she has a love of “North Hill Country blues,” a subgenre of blues that emphasizes rhythm and percussion and leans into a steady, hypnotic groove. Paper Doll is certainly rooted in that genre, but it’s not boxed in by it.
“I wanted the guitars to be huge,” Fish says. “I wanted my vocals to soar. I wanted every song to have a great hook. I wanted to create something powerful.”
The album opens with the energetic track “I’m Done Runnin’,” in which Fish sings exuberantly over a rock-country mix of twangy guitars and loud percussion. On the sultry, groovy “Sweet Southern Blues,” her low tones are rich and tender; on “Fortune Teller,” Fish transforms her voice into something breathy and distant as she speak-sings her lyrics.
The album’s title track has a punk sound with its gritty guitar line and stomping percussion. “You pin me up, just to tear me down,” Fish sings. “I’m not your paper doll.” The song is about “society’s impossible standards and expectations,” she says, “especially surrounding women.” In this song — and in her career as a whole — Fish tries to defy the mold.
“I’m always going to challenge myself,” she says, “which in turn might challenge someone else’s notions of what my sound should be.”
Tickets are $35 at tickets.payomet.org. —Eve Samaha
