So one of the records Will brought today for our weekly music exchange was The Kinks’ 1979 album, Low Budget, an offering he prefaced with the promise of “Ray Davies doing disco”—a combination that quite intrigued me given my lack of familiarity with anything but British Invasion-era Kinks a la classic rock staples like “You Really Got Me.” The record delivered in a big way, particularly the four-on-the-floor groove of lead single “(Wish I Could Fly Like) Superman.” As I listened to the song (and later to the extended remix), I couldn’t kick the feeling that I’d heard a nigh identical brand of disco-fied arena rock before. Finally it hit me: Detroit’s favorite sophomoric dance commanders, the Electric Six, who appeared on the scene some seventeen years after the release of Low Budget. Obviously big guitars over a bass drum beat is hardly a patentable formula (if it were, Rod Stewart would have been so screwed in the eighties), but the similarities between “Superman” and the E6 oeuvre are awfully apparent—though head Sixer Dick Valentine obviously prefers a lyrical palette of sex, fire, and girls to Davies’ flare for social commentary. What do you guys think? Where does this fall on the spectrum between pure pastiche and inspired update?