Dan Avidan is an American musician, internet personality, comedian, and actor who forms one half of the musical comedy duo ‘Ninja Sex Party’ with Brian Wecht. He is also the co-host of the Let's Play webseries Game Grumps with Arin Hanson. He, Wecht and Hanson are also part of the band Starbomb, while he has been a part of bands like Skyhill and the Northern Hues.
Early Life
Dan Avidan graduated from Jonathan Dayton High School in 1997. He was always artistic, but felt embarrassed to pursue arts because of his illustrious relatives and began pursuing advertising at Boston University. He later studied storytelling and improv at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in New York.
Career
At 15, Dan Avidan’s first band was Vacuum, because “they sucked”. A couple more bands later and after completing his graduation, he joined the Philadelphia-based indie rock band the Northern Hues, which also included Aron Brand, Jeff Rains, Alex Yaker, Justin "J" Earley, and Ian Creech. He wrote songs for them and also provided vocals as they released one self-titled EP and one live track. After the band split up in mid-2005, he formed the Brooklyn-based alternative rock duo named Skyhill with Peter Lennox. While they separated after releasing one full album, Run With the Hunted, they latter reunited to release the single Firefly in 2015 and Howling at the Moon in 2020.
For his next band, he came up with the name "Ninja Sex Party" after "everybody's three favorite things”. He settled on the character "Danny Sexbang" and formed a comedy musical duo with Brian Wecht, aka "Ninja Brian". In his own words, the band was about "a Jewish superhero who wears a unitard, with his best friend, a ninja”. They achieved heavy success with their third album Attitude City and have also released several other albums like NSFW, Strawberries and Cream, Cool Patrol and The Prophecy, apart from several cover albums. In mid-2013, he replaced Jon Jafari after the latter left as co-host of the webseries Game Grumps. Along with Wecht and Game Grumps co-creator Arin Hanson, he also formed the band Starbomb, which has released three albums.
Dino Danny
Dan Avidan’s childhood fascination with dinosaurs, particularly the Stegosaurus, turned into an obsession after he visited “Sophie”, the world’s most complete Stegosaurus skeleton, while touring with his band in London and soon decided that he wanted to take a picture with every existing Stegosaurus skeleton in the world. Excluding some in private collections, he has researched about 50 skeletons on display around the world and is determined to visit them, which he chronicles through the website Dan Avidan’s Dinosaur Adventures (dinodanny.com).
Family Life
Dan Avidan was born as Leigh Daniel Avidan to Debra and Avigdor Avidan. His Israeli father had served in the Yom Kippur War before immigrating to America, where he met Dan’s mother. Dan has a younger sister, Dana Avidan Cohn, who is the executive style director of PopSugar. His maternal grandfather, Bernard Schwartz, assisted in inventing the body electrode.
