Ninja Sex Party

Over two years ago, I started to fool around with YouTube. The platform is really great for people to self-publish. With less time and money to actually play a lot of video games, I discovered that I could watch others play them on YouTube via Let’s Play videos. Among the content creators I found, I still watch the Game Grumps (Arin Hanson and Danny Avidan). When I found out that Danny was also in a band, I had to check it out. At the time, he was the singer and one half of a band called Ninja Sex Party. All of their music videos were on YouTube so I could easily see what they were all about. I was an instant fan. Part of that was who the members of the band were.

Leigh Daniel Avidan was always a weird, fun-loving guy. At least, that is what I take away from all of the stories I have heard from him. He loved music from an early age and it shows. While he never had that much formal training, he grew up wanting to do something with music. His parents nurtured that creativity and joyous spirit and Danny first joined The Northern Hues and then later Skyhill as a singer. Both were serious music acts. After he left Skyhill, he searched for a new band to sing for. In the meantime, he started to take classes from Upright Citizen’s Brigade Theatre in New York. While he was there, he met Brian (more on him later) and realized that comedy and music could be his path forward. While Danny seems like a kind soul, the character he portrays is definitely not while still being a fun-loving guy. While in NSP, he dubbed himself “Danny Sexbang”. He is a character who is at once arrogant and pathetic. He brags of how awesome he is but the reality quickly reveals how wrong he is. His character practically begs for sex, gets in trouble for his big mouth, and just ends up being comically bad at everything (except singing, of course). His stage outfit was originally based on Owen Hart’s Blue Blazer persona.

The other half of Ninja Sex Party is Brian Wecht. Brian was a geeky and brilliant guy as he grew up. He was a constant valedictorian who had a wicked sense of humor. He had formal training in music in college but he also really got into quantum physics and eventually got a PhD in particle physics. It was around this time that he met Danny while doing some comedy music gigs and working as a postdoc. While he started NSP with Danny, he was also starting a family and searching for teaching positions. He eventually became a professor in England, a position he eventually quit so he could do NSP full-time. His comedy comes from a sarcastic, dry place as he is well known for playing pranks and taking the piss out of his friends. He is NSP’s keyboardist and chief composer. The character he created is “Ninja Brian”, a silent ninja who covers his face and tends to enjoy murdering people as much as he likes playing music. His silent act is a great contrast to Danny’s loud and boisterous nature kind of like famous acts like Penn and Teller or The Marx Brothers.

The duo started as a comedy music act and they took gigs wherever they could. Eventually, they started writing songs to release on an album. Being friends with a lot of people on YouTube, they made a lot of connections and started to put out music videos. At the beginning, it was just the two of them. Brian was on keyboard and a lot of his sound was similar to stuff being done in Chiptune genre. The music was bouncy and fun. Danny’s vocals are great because he has a really rich voice and at some point he developed a process of doubling his voice by recording multiple tracks. In a time when everybody was being autotuned, he came up with a different method to stand out a bit. Their songs were written together, often with them spitballing song titles or lyrics at each other to see what made them laugh the most. Their songs were full of purposefully juvenile humor, songs about sex from characters who have never had it and were also full of cartoon violence. Their music videos are colorful and often as nonsensical and weird as their songs.

Take on Me

In late 2015, they were really growing their brand. They had three albums out and their style was really evolving and they were gaining legions of fans. I went and saw them in their first official concert at Magfest where they had their biggest crowd yet. At the time, they were just releasing an album of covers of music from the seventies and eighties. In order to do so, they decided to team up with another band named Tupperware Remix Party to provide more to their sound. This added drums, guitar, bass guitar, and a second keyboard to their sound along with background vocals. This added so many new layers to their sound and having a few non-comedy songs to sing at gigs did not hurt either. Their relationship with TWRP only grew and the two bands became intertwined with Danny providing vocals on some of TWRP’s songs. For the first time, the two groups were regularly touring together and that grew their audience even more.

Cool Patrol

Some might look at a band like Ninja Sex Party and roll their eyes and dismiss the band as juvenile. I see them as two guys who love to have fun and put out a kind of humor that is highly accessible. I look at their chief inspirations, Weird Al Yankovich and Tenacious D. While Weird Al wrote clean lyrics, both bands have silly and crazy lyrics. Also, both bands have developed larger than life characters that they play instead of being exaggerated versions of themselves. Their lyrics are clever and the humor behind them is a great example of self-deprecation. Both Danny and Brian are inspired by bands like Lonely Island, Flight of the Conchords, Weird Al, Tenacious D, but also non-comedy bands like Rush. The band continues to work toward getting better and better and it shows with each new release. They have further integrated TWRP as their touring band and they have really stepped up their songwriting. It is clear that Brian and Danny are both ambitious. They recently released a new cover album and are set to release their fourth album of original songs. So go out and check them out. If they are not your jam, then at least let me thank you for allowing me to gush about them a bit.

Tags: A to Z, A to Z Blogging Challenge, A to Z Challenge, Brian Wecht, Danny Avidan, Danny Sexbang, Fan Gush, Music, My Favorite Band, N, Ninja Brian, Ninja Sex Party, NSP