on tour with Avenue D in the dirty south
By anders pearson 08 Jul 2002
our friends Debbie and Daphne from Avenue D were invited to perform at july 4th festival in, of all places, Charlotte, North Carolina. Debbie, a couple Charlotte locals that they knew who live in nyc now and a couple other new yorkers got in a van earlier last week for a little trip to the south. daphne and lani had to work till wednesday so Daphne and i took a bus down to DC wednesday night where we met up with lani and daphne’s friend Marin and drove down to Charlotte from there in a borrowed Pulsar.
<p>i think that driving many hours across several states just to see Avenue D play makes us all officially groupies now.</p>
<p>since we left DC at about 11 pm after all working all day, we knew it was going to be a long night. at about 5am, somewhere south of Chapel Hill, and still a few hours from Charlotte, we gave in and got a motel room for a couple hours of sleep. when we got up we continued on and met up with everyone who’d come down earlier. </p>
<p>the whole trip was kind of a redneck safari. the group consisted of: debbie and daphne (from miami but living in nyc), marin (from miami but going to school in austin and living in DC for the summer), me (from maine but living in nyc), lani (from washington state but living in DC), rick and grant (both living in nyc and i’m not sure where they’re from), lauren (from georgia but living in nyc), travis, derek, and autumn (charlotte locals who all live in nyc now). travis and derek basically acted as our tourguides, showing us around the city and introducing us to the cool people they knew there.</p>
<p>on the fourth, the <a href="http://www.fatcitydeli.com/">Fat City Deli</a> had their “family fun picnic” which was a combination music festival (with two stages) and 9 hour long party with food and booze. it’s a pretty cool place; lots of nice graffiti and alternative subculture type people hanging around. you get the feeling that it’s one of the places in charlotte where the few cool people in the city hang out on a regular basis. Avenue D performed at about 6pm on the outside stage. the fact that it was called the “<em>family</em> fun picnic” amused me to no end. Avenue D is <em>not</em> what comes to mind when i think of “family” entertainment. they make 2 live crew sound like someone you’d see at disneyworld. nevertheless, they played, they kicked ass, they shocked and impressed the locals, and, miraculously, the didn’t get arrested for being the most obscene act that the bible belt’s seen in quite a while.</p>
<p>there were more local bands throughout the night. most of them were fairly mediocre punk and garage rock types. a couple really stood out though. Snagglepus sounds kind of like a cross between the B-52s, the Cramps, and Babes in Toyland; fun and loud with some horns and sax. the last band of the night was Babyshaker. everyone was pretty tired by then but they still rocked. they’re pretty straightforward heavy garage rock. sort of reminded me of Kyuss or Queens of the Stone Age. nothing fancy, just solid rythms, loud guitars and catchy melodies.</p>
<p>between the bands, the cool people, and the cheap beer (<span class="caps">PBR</span> for $1.50), it was one of the better parties i’ve been to in a while.</p>
<p>on friday, those of us where were capable of waking up at noon did so and went to the Original House of Pancakes for breakfast. then we did a bit of shopping and drove out to Automn’s parents’ house which is about an hour outside the city and (most importantly) situated on a lake. i didn’t have a bathing suit with me (actually i don’t even own a single pair of shorts) so i sat in the shade and read for a few hours while everyone else went swimming.</p>
<p>when it started getting dark, we headed back to charlotte and went out to see a sketch comedy troupe which derek and travis were performing with. in new york, travis frequently does a drag queen act as “Pearl”, a janis joplin impersonater. we saw him perform it once in new york at one of Avenue D’s early shows. he really is amazing. he’s got the voice and the personality down pat. the comedy show featured Pearl, a talking baby, the song “fuck the goat” and a bunch of other sketches.</p>
<p>after the comedy show we went to a diner called Athens that was about the only thing open by then. <voice type=“comic book guy”>sketchiest. diner. ever.</voice>. seriously, the place was scary. lani and i shared a seafood platter that i’d rather not discuss in too much depth. let’s just say that it included a whole deep-fried horseshoe crab.</p>
<p>then, because all the bars were closed by that point, we went to a house party. the house was owned by a bunch of musicians (including some of the members of snagglepus and babyshaker i think), some of whom have a hip-hop side project called “the McClintock G’s”. they were excited about Avenue D being in town and wanted to get them to do some cameos on a few tracks for them. luckily they had a whole studio set up in one of the rooms of the house. for hours everyone just hung out in the studio drinking. they set down some beats and just set it to record everything. different people would go up to the mic every few minutes and freestyle until they got tired and someone else would take over. some of the funniest stuff i’ve ever heard. </p>
<p>on saturday lani, marin, and i got in the car and started driving north to DC. everyone else was going to take the van back up to nyc later that day. we managed to stop off in Chapel Hill for a break and had dinner with anthony (and said hi to the llama). </p>
<p>on sunday lani and i walked around her neighborhood and meridian park for a bit before she dropped me off at the bus station. greyhound that day was seriously a clusterfuck. everyone and their brother was traveling that day. to make matters worse, apparently there had been a bomb threat earlier that day and all service had been halted for a few hours. the station was full of people who had been trapped there for hours, all semblance of lines and order had vanished, staff were running around trying to get things organized, everyone was pissed off and tired, and they didn’t have enough buses or drivers to take care of the load. it took me about 2 hours just to get on a bus only to discover that they didn’t have a driver for that bus so we sat in the parking lot for another hour before they moved us to a different bus and we finally left. even the drive up to new york was slow. lots of holiday traffic and accidents. at least i was in no real hurry and i had my diskman and some books to keep me occupied.</p>