The formula for Mickey Avalon's star quality

Mickey Avalon reminds me of the troubled kid in my 6th-grade class whose profane outbursts drained you of any sympathy you had for the kid's hardscrabble background. You just wanted him to shut up.

These days, if you take those outbursts, color them with an emotional biography, add a few humdrum beats and stir in whatever substances are floating around the Sunset Strip, you have a rap star -- which is what Avalon proved to be Thursday night at the sold-out Key Club. Soldiering through a set the night after he was hospitalized for an undisclosed ailment ("Thank God for pain-killing medication," he said), Avalon thrilled a largely female (and also largely medicated) crowd with his seamy urban tales. It might have been tepid for anybody silly enough to be sober, if not for a clever set design and some onstage dancers/role players. Yes, folks, this song is about streetwalkers -- see the streetwalkers?

The show -- which ended with a bunch of people from the crowd joining Avalon onstage to dance to "Jane Fonda" -- flagged only when Avalon was joined by opening act Andre Legacy and Dirt Nasty. Their own 45-minute set of misogynous, amateurish coke rap ranked somewhere below the lowest common denominator, as they covered vital topics such as oral sex, bestiality and cocaine. A pity our jails are so overcrowded.

Photo by Jason Fisher

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A bit later, at the Roxy, Whitestarr was holding forth, playing some new stuff that will appear on an album to be released later this summer. Hit the MySpace page to hear a pretty cool classic-rocker, "Beautiful Thing."

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Touts for Friday, May 18

The Submarines perform with the Section Quartet at the Echo. ... Mezzanine Owls and Eskimohunter join LoveLikeFire for the San Francisco band's residency at El Cid. ... The Germs rock Safari Sam's. ... And the Autumns and the Sugarplastic continue their run of Friday nights at Spaceland. 

Comments

[April]

Is this review an insult or supportive, why don't you learn how to write reviews before you start talking smack about avalon, eh?