Matt quivers with excitement. With speed and efficiency, the worker-bee stagehands set to the task of deconstructing the arcane knobs and joists of the drum kit and instrument stands left behind by the excellent, but forgettable, opening act. Matt is on the main floor of the Black Cat, a decidedly grungy music venue and nightclub off the main drag in the District of Columbia’s stalwart U Street party neighborhood. The low-ceilings and can-lights of the venue offer no respite from the balmy air outside. The ink blot stamped on his hand by the ticket-takers at the front door is already starting to smudge and run in the damp heat.

“I picked a helluvah day to quit drinking”, he mutters, wiping his thumb at the deformed ideograph.

The loose crowd of aimless early attendees clutch tall-boy PBR cans kissed with condensation, mirroring the beads of sweat on their necks that run from their hairlines down to the collars of plaid button-down shirts, and then beyond. Even though Matt is not wearing this same unseasonable hipster uniform, his sweat hotspots nonetheless begin to activate.

The crowd had received the opening band with polite enthusiasm, which Matt mirrors with tempered applause as he settles in. But the audience’s attentiveness slowly gives way to impatience as the worker-bees look to be making slow progress towards re-arranging the stage for the main act: the Electric Six.

If you’ve never heard of Electric Six, you are not alone. A prolific but mostly-unknown electro-disco-punk band from Detroit fronted by singer “Dick Valentine”, Electric Six’s closest thing to a mainstream hit is an unstoppably upbeat and catchy, but borderline novelty song called “Gay Bar” released in 2003. Their sound is loud and aggressive, their lyrics flippant and often dada-esque, and their on-stage personas flamboyant and irreverent.

But above all they are a band that effuses fun and danceability.

This is why Electric Six has been on rotation in Matt’s iPod playlists for years. Even as his friends latched onto and released other trends and fads Matt paid them no mind, dutifully committing each new Electric Six album to memory as the band labored in obscurity. Matt is not interested in a great many bands, so he considers himself to be a true fan of this one.

And now, for the first time in his life, he is standing a mere five feet from the stage where the band will momentarily appear. Five feet! Front-and center! He is close. Somehow closer even than ear buds inside his skull. Matt recognizes now that this is about to be an experience he won’t soon forget. This near to the stage the crowd becomes more dense and clamoring. Matt exchanges sweat with his neighbors as errant forearms collide with wet slaps. The miasma of sweltering irritability remains, but as Matt exchanges fluids and pleasantries with those around him, he can tell that he is surrounded by equally true fans cut from the same cloth as him. Well, mostly.

To Matt’s right is his friend Dave. Although Dave originally introduced Matt to the Electric Six many years earlier, his tastes have moved on to greener pastures, and is in attendance mostly for the nostalgia.

To Matt’s left is his friend Sam. Sam has not once heard Electric Six’s music. He is visiting from out-of-town and Matt wants nothing more than to share his favorite band with one of his favorite people. Sam is just along for the ride.

In all other directions there are appear to be kind-hearted, eager fans, ready to have a good time.

Except one. Right in front.

“You ready to get pushed?” Surly Mr. Burly says with gleeful menace as he jabs at a fan to Matt’s eleven o’clock. “Cus you gonna get pushed tonight. Congratulations!”

Matt grimaces. You’re gonna get pushed? This strikes a nerve. Is this what Electric Six fans are really like?

Matt shakes it off and refuses to allow this ill-omen to budge the position of the needle on his mood-o-meter, which is firmly pinned in the ‘unbelievably excited’, explosive red zone in his mind. Bouncing on the balls of his feet in anticipation, he turns to his two friends, Dave and Sam, to gauge their own moods, but doesn’t get the chance, for the lights go down as the audience’s murmur turns to an ecstatic cheer and Electric Six waltzes onto the stage.

The music is everywhere. The thuds and waves of the opening song hit Matt in the chest like a coordinated flurry of haymakers. The reverberations transform the crowd into involuntary gyrating and dancing machines. The audience has their selves blasted away, burned off in a mad rush of sound and vibration, leaving behind a single-minded purpose: to revel in the energetic thrill of being alive. They jump and dance to the rhythm and hoot and holler along to the lyrics. Or whenever it pleases them. It’s getting pretty rowdy.

Matt shouts his favorite lines at no one in particular, until he realizes the strangers around him are doing the same. He grabs the nearest body and starts sing-shouting at the face attached to. And the body-face shout-receptacle replies in kind. They bond over a mutual passion for the music and the scene. They are pointing, gesturing, moshing, and laughing alongside the others around them. Dick Valentine is eccentric but calm. A smile creeps across his face during songs, even as he politely scolds an audience member to keep his hands off the stage. It’s Surly Mr. Burly. Strike two.

In spite of that, you couldn’t wipe the grin off of Matt’s face with any amount of Sham-Wows. Nor the pooling perspiration.

A song ends. Dick Valentine removes the microphone from its stand. Staring at the floor, he holds it close to his mouth. Uncomfortably close. He waits a moment before speaking.

“So this is uhhh,” he gurgles, savoring the moment, “a song off one of our albums.” It’s a tease. One he’s likely done many times before. Members of the crowd are wide-eyed.

Excited murmerring.

One fan starts, “If this is ‘Gay Bar’, I’m gonna lose my–”

IT IS.

Matt is hit flat in his chest by something big. Something forceful. Something sweaty?

Surly Mr. Burly has hurled himself backwards into the unprepared crowd in an unsuccessful attempt to crowd-surf. Strike three. As the glasses fly off of Matt’s face he staggers backwards from the force of the blow and the surprise of having his world disappear. Ecstasy turns to alarm, as without his glasses the mob around him sublimates into a technicolor fog. He instinctively dives to the quaking floor in search of his specs. The others have escaped this horror, and above him are stomping and dancing with abandon.

Matt fans out his arms as he gropes at the sticky, trembling floor around him, barely avoiding boots and heels that are crashing down around him, and hoping against hope that an errant foot won’t land with an ominous crack, shattering his sight-machine.

Seconds later he erupts up from the mass of bodies, upper cutting the air with a triumphant fist clasped around the fragile glasses, his cries of success drown in the sea of ubiquitous cheering and adulation. Did the Burly man realize what he has done? Is he planning to apologize for so thoroughly ruining the mood of the show?

Minorly agitated, Matt doesn’t have time or mental bandwidth to worry about such things now. He’s already missed like half of the song! He carefully tucks the recovered specs into his pocket, and turns back to face the stage, adrift in the vibe once more, floating and shouting from song to song.

“This next song is gonna be our last,” the front man says. “You guys have been great!”

In spite of the heat, Matt is shocked to discover that the night has melted away, electrified by moments-come-hours spent dancing and singing in a blur of lights and faces. Knowing that this would be the last song, he plans to really get into it – leaving nothing behind. He gets ready to start jumping as high as he can as the first few notes start to play and–

Someone appears to be climbing onto the stage and pawing at Dick Valentine’s crotch. It’s Surly Mr. Burly, grinning at the crowd, arms raised in a V. At his arrival the sound cut off sharply, the band shaking their heads. They immediately put down their instruments and walk off without playing another note. Strike infinity.

“NO!” someone shouts from the crowd before Matt could even form words.

Girls are rending their garments. Men are gnashing their teeth. Everyone is acutely aware of the heat once again, and that the intoxicating, anesthetic music has been taken away from them by one man.

“Somebody kill that guy!” someone cries out.

Arms from the fans reach up and pull the intruder off of the platform as chants of “Bring. Them. Back! Bring. Them. Back!” are directed quixotically toward the vacated stage.

It’s pointless. A look of defeated helplessness sweeps over the faces of the crowd as their pleading chant loses its verve. The crowd restrains its bloodlust, and can only watch as the asshole who had ruined the climax of the concert is escorted to the door. Electric Six is known for their attitude, not their gratitude, and is unlikely to return to the stage to placate their fans. Others at the venue must have known this too, as pleas for a reprieve give way once more to shouting boos and curses at the offender.

Matt wracks his mind, trying to process what’s happening. He clenches his fists and quivers once more, this time in white hot fury, not excitement. The sensation of the euphoric highs of the show’s stride are twisting and re-purposing into new, previously unexplored heights of rage. Gritting his teeth, Matt scrabbles to find the right words to express himself, but before he could think of anything, his friend Dave finds the perfect expostulation.

“Fuck! That! Guy!” rings out behind Matt in a three-beat cadence. It’s sonorous. A revelation. A cooling breeze of justice across this newly forged hellscape. “Fuck! That! Guy!” Dave chants again.

Fury, defiance, expression, this new chant has it all. This is something that Matt can get behind. This is something that can work! Steeling his vocal chords and projecting despite all the hoarseness and fatigue created from hours of singing, shouting and whooping, “Fuck! That! Guy!” Matt calls out to the stage, lending his voice to his friend’s.

“Fuck! That! Guy!” He hears Sam’s voice behind him shouting too. Like the other two he is invested in the concert now, awash in the emotional tide. For him, it’s not about bringing the band back to the stage. It’s about right and wrong.

Matt grabs his strangers next to him, those he’d been sing-shouting with earlier, gesturing them to take up the chant as well. It spreads like wildfire. Within five repetitions of “Fuck! That! Guy!” most of the crowd is chiming in. Soon all other sounds yield to the exuberant, percussive, and almost tribal cursing. It continues for countless more repetitions, but with no movement on stage Matt can sense the crowd’s enthusiasm is waning. The temperature is rising. He doubles down on the volume, emptying his last energies into a cathartic roar.

“FUCK! THAT! GUY!” He shouts even louder, gathering every decibel he can muster. Even as he feels his throat turning to gravel, he pays it no mind. Vocal chords flagging, he isn’t sure how much longer he could keep it up without permanent damage, but he is resolute, and won’t stop until he is dead or mute. He gives every shout the full blast of his dwindling voice and–

A flit of a curtain. A cautious head peeking out from behind. Then a confident stride. The band has come back onstage! Applause erupts, cheers swell, and Matt’s strained voice cracks with a victorious whoop. He’d done it! They’d fucking done it!

“So we’re gonna do two more songs,” Dick Valentine says, easing the mic once more out of its stand.

Two songs?! Matt, Sam, Dave, the whole crowd, the whole world is a mass of high-fives and redoubled cheering. It’s practically Christmas.

Dick squints down to the two hundred or so hoarse fans, and pauses for a moment. He seems moved by the solidarity.  He counts off for the band, and starts to sing. It’s a breath of fresh air.

“Fuck. That. Guy,” Matt wheezes the night’s mantra, beaming, as he begins to dance all over again.