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Underground > Radio & Music >

Avenue D

Regrettable Juvenilia

12:22 / 07.10.05

I've been meaning to start a thread about Avenue D for... probably more than a year. I just keep forgetting.

It would be tempting to see them (Debbie and Daphne) as a kind of NYC hipster gimmick, but so far, the quality of their material shows otherwise. And all based around one, er, area of study, so to speak, as titles such as 'Do I Look Like A Slut?', 'The Sex That I Need', '2D2F'*, 'Cock Rock' and 'You Love This Ass' might suggest. Although the songs with other titles, like 'Punk Rock Song', tend to be about fucking as well. Their lyrics range from laugh-out loud hilarious through disgusting to genuinely sexy, and every combination of the three. Their music... well, it's ass-shaking music, basically. Gets played in electroclash clubs, but so do Missy and Outkast, so as far as I'm concerned, it's just another branch of hip-hop. And it's getting better and better: I really would not trust anyone who didn't feel at least the vague twitchings of an urge to move their body when the groove of 'Cock Rock' kicks in.

Yet they still have not released an album you can buy in the shops in the UK. Which makes me sad. Thank you God for the internet, without which I would never have heard this wonderful music.

*Stands for "too drunk to fuck", as in "DON'T! GET!"

16:32 / 14.10.05

What's not to love about Avenue D? What I want to know is how they managed the trick you mentioned of sometimes being genuinely sexy when their sound and their act is so over-the-top. That's not easy to do, and I can't think of a similar group that manages it. I haven't heard a single track that isn't deliriously catchy.

05:44 / 18.10.05

I absolutely love 'you love this ass', the acid remix of it is totally ace!!! Funky and nasty the way good music should be

07:29 / 18.10.05

weren't they on that very first 'electroclash' compilation? i'm not at home or i would look it up... 'do i look like a slut?' - brill.

Regrettable Juvenilia

12:46 / 18.10.05

We might have to go to a different medium, nightclub dwight, to find comparisons for the whole genuinely sexy / over-the-top thing.

In some ways I tend to think Avenue D are analogous to someone like Susie Bright, or rather to the kind of writing that can be found in the anthologies of erotica Bright et al edit. We're basically talking pornography here - not all of Avenue D's music is porn, and obviously it's a mistake to focus entirely on the lyrics, but it might be good to think of the precedents in terms of fiction just as it was once helpful (and probably still is for some) to think of certain narrative hip hop songs as analogous to crime fiction. I don't want to present Avenue D as uncomplicatedly progressive in their politics (it's always a little more complicated than that, and here one has to keep in mind possible connections with Vice magazine and - oh God, don't ask - Tha Pumpsta), but I do think of their aesthetic as being somehow connected to that whole DIY/queer/sex-positive/feminist/porn thing...

EG, 'The Sex That I Need' is queer porn, of course, and I suppose that tells you something about Avenue D's intended audience: straight men looking for titillation will have to not be the kind who are put off by an equally forthright/aggressive gay man telling you what he's after.

Also, their criticism of the 'sensitive' emo/indie boy archetype is based on lack of sexual gratification, but the fact that this goes hand in hand with a political aspect is, I like to think, implicit - overall the point is stil the same, which is that that archetype is a cop-out (creates illusion that male privilege is being given up but in fact it's just another assetion, the misogyny of "women are so cwuel to my sensitive male soul" v. misogyny (or 'misogyny') of making records about having actual sex with women).

08:41 / 19.10.05

can we get some examples of their hilarious lyrics? i don't think i know them although 'Do I look like a slut?' sounds familiar.

Regrettable Juvenilia

09:15 / 19.10.05

'2D2F' lyrics here. Best couplet:

"Well I like to party, like to get fucked up
But I'd rather spend the night face down, ass up..."

13:33 / 18.01.06

mailman brought me yesterday Avenue D' 2 new EPs and Dabbie & Daphne rock. whomever's up for Miami Bass-inspired booty electro with nasty lyrics will love this as much as I did.

AS FREE AS WE WANNA BE fuses Dirty South with downtown NY wit, while EURAWSOME is - of course - dancefloor eurotrashdisco. Boy George appears in a raggaeton, amazingly.

song samples and purchase links are at their website's 'Music' session.

just a shame I missed their gig in Brazil a while ago.