This was supposed to just be an article about douche bags.
It was supposed to highlight a sleazy rapper with a drug-addled party complex that mirrored the underbelly of the equally sleazy frat scene found just a few miles from Phoenix. See, Mickey Avalon has his dual lives: he's a recovering addict, a former prostitute and drug dealer who picked up a crusty melody off the sticky floor of a Los Angeles bar, blew on it, and then wrapped it up in a slinky strip club package and sold it to listeners who wanted to feel just a little bit dirty while listening.
See also: Mickey Avalon: I Don't Just Do What I Think People Might Want
Avalon's lyrics make a nice little parallel to the people that swallow up his music as fast as they pop Adderall during finals week. Those who don blazers and khakis in chapter meetings and double-fist Natties and slap the wine bag are the same who shout "MY DICK" the loudest and dream of chicks with "more junk in the trunk than a Honda" along with Avalon at the first freshman mixer of the year.
That's what this all was supposed to be about (forget Los Angeles, Avalon and the Tempe frat scene are just perfect for each other, you know, if Avalon did the whole college thing), but then he started talking and we started realizing that Avalon actually needs the worst side of frat culture to survive.
It looks like Avalon couldn't give a crap in a construction site Honey Bucket about what people think about him, but he does.
"I don't usually see the bad stuff," he said. "But a few people said my music perpetuates rape culture, and that bothered me. That's not even what it's about, man."
Avalon said he generally does what he likes and what he wants. It's not that he doesn't understand consequences ("There are consequences to some things, like, if you do something illegal you're going to get arrested and all that"), it's just that his music suggests those consequences never come into his head.
That could be why his party tunes appeal to the darker, raunchier, wilder side of a night in Tempe.
He's the guy who wrote the song that literally sounds like your brain when you're blacked out ("What Do You Say"), then got it picked up by one of the most popular comedies of the "we go to Vegas when we're 21 and have a lost weekend" generation (The Hangover, then started getting play.
His audience is full of the guys who have their own raunchy reputations to uphold within their respective circles. While Avalon's in the studio singing about the night before, his listeners just might be the college kids snorting coke off their Xboxes.
Avalon says this next album, while somewhat different in instrumentals and better in quality of sound, will lyrically be of the same concoction. He shared that he was even collaborating with Rome for one of the tracks and is excited for its release--but unless these Sperry-wearers are playing his songs when they're pre-gaming in Vegas, his audience will diminish.
So that's why he understands the ramifications of losing his main audience.
While the frat stars snort coke off their Xboxes to look badass front of their brothers, Avalon has an image to uphold too.
He's the guy who wrote the song that sounds like your brain when you're blacked out ("What Do You Say"), then got it picked up by one of the most popular comedies of the "we go to Vegas when we're 21 and have a lost weekend" generation, then started getting play, and now has to keep his audience interested.
His audience is full of the guys who have their own raunchy reputations to uphold within their respective circles.
Avalon thinks this next album will do the trick -- he shared that he was collaborating with Rome for one of the tracks and is excited for its release -- but unless these Sperry-wearers are playing his songs when they're pre-gaming in Vegas, his audience will diminish.
This was supposed to be an article about douche bags.
It's really just about people needing each other. It's about the line of lost pledges slurping Fireball to fit in while "Mr. Right" bumps in the background, and it's about the guy who created the tune, the guy who needs to stay tapped into this culture he'll see a slice of when he's at Crescent Ballroom in Phoenix next week.
They might just need him for inspiration; ideas of where their nights could go, but he needs them to stay afloat.
Mickey Avalon is playing Crescent Ballroom on Friday, September 19.
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