Even the campy raunch fails to charge up Electroclash II

Brooklyn-based DJ Larry Tee wants people to get excited about the emerging genre of electroclash, which blends ‘80s new-wave dance music with modern electronica and an often campy appreciation of pre-AIDS sexual abandon and the Reagan era’s fashion-victim style. But his Electroclash II tour Saturday at the Henry Fonda Music Box Theatre didn’t sell out like the first version, which came to the same venue only five months ago.

The program featured Tee and local electroclash DJ Santo playing long sets in between brief performances by three high-concept live acts that provided a few surprises, if not an abundance of hooks. (Most of the fun stuff, however, was too raunchy to even vaguely describe in a family newspaper.)

Opening act My Robot Friend featured raw sexuality blurting from a singing, dancing “cyborg” wearing an elaborate costume festooned with lights. But after 15 minutes on stage, he wandered into the lobby, somewhat truncating any statement he might’ve been making.

Most entertaining was female duo Avenue D, who exuberantly pranced about half naked in so-’80s pink and black, coming off like primordial Beastie Girls with their mischievous, lascivious rapping. Amid all the talk, however, they offered a “Lysistrata” reference in an antiwar number that provided the evening’s most political moment.

Brooklyn girl group W.I.T. was the only returning act, and the trio’s deliberately vapid supermodel shtick was much the same. But whatever wry purpose they had in doing the Cars’ “Just What I Needed” was undermined by knowing that Backstreet Boy Nick Carter’s been doing the tune in his solo shows.