Free Andrew WK show tonight

[es9450a]

I was unable to get to the show, but earlier in the evening he was on my campus (AU) doing a radio spot.  What a nice guy.  Signed every autograph, took every picture, etc.  I asked him to sign my shirt, a blank white one, and he wrote "This is Elliot's party shirt!  Your friend, andrew wk 9/10/03"  Needless to say, it's my new favorite shirt.  He also did a few AWK-isms on the radio, including a minute-long ramble about how this is the only September 10th of 2003 that will ever happen in the world, so we have to make it as exciting as possible, as well as a spiel about how he's not a virgin, he has no problem with people who are virgins, but he just enjoys partaking in "the things that non-virgins do."  
 
 Shame his music isn't a tad better.  This is the kind of guy that you want to be a rock star.

[Barcelona]

Don't know who this guy is, but here is a review I saw in today's paper.
 
 http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/11/arts/music/11ANDR.html

[markie]

thanks for the reviews,
 
 Barcelona please can you cut and paste, I can never be arsed to sign up, "For full access to our site, please complete this simple registration form.
                  As a member, you'll enjoy: "

[kosmo vinyl]

we need to setup a shared nytimes id  like they do on board kosmette hangs out on....

[jadetree]

For Andrew, Party Time Seems to Be All the Time
 By KELEFA SANNEH
 
 
 ith Andrew W. K., every sentence demands an exclamation point.
 
 So: When he took the stage at Irving Plaza on Tuesday night, fans were already slam-dancing and chanting his name, which has more syllables than many of his choruses! He smiled and bellowed, "Hello!" Then he stuck the microphone in his pants, for safe-keeping! Then he bashed away at a synthesizer! Then he sang, "It's time to party!" And he was right! Sort of!
 
 Andrew (his real last name is Wilkes-Krier, but he never uses it) became a star by refusing to deviate from this program of mind-numbing geniality. Two years ago he released his breakthrough album, "I Get Wet," which turned him into a kind of hard-rock performance artist. He conducts his public life according to a stringent (if puzzling) set of aesthetic standards: he is never seen without sneakers, a white T-shirt and light blue jeans (usually all grubby); he tries to avoid expressing any feeling besides exuberance; and he never passes up an opportunity to do his dance, an odd mixture of cheerleading and kickboxing.
 
 His band members look as if they were hired by a casting director: Andrew was joined onstage by three amply tressed guitarists (it seems their job is to make the simple guitar parts triply loud), and by a mutton-chopped bassist who mugged and grimaced as if he were trying to woo Olive Oyl.
 
 The most effective songs â?? "Party Hard," "We Want Fun," "She Is Beautiful" â?? were also the simplest, and Andrew filled the space between them with brief motivational speeches. At one point he asked the audience to "enjoy the living heck outta this melody!" Later he played a song he said was "designed at the perfect tempo for very high, very, very powerful jumping." Then he started jumping.
 
 It's possible to detect a sly sense of humor behind Andrew's guilelessness. His greatest hit so far isn't a song but an unforgettable MTV program, "Crashing With Andrew W. K.," in which Andrew spent a few days living with four women at North Carolina Central University, a historically black university. They screamed as they watched him apply deodorant wherever it was needed (including one place it shouldn't have been necessary), they cheered as they watched him clumsily join a step show, and they sang along onstage at one of his concerts. When it was over, one of the women described her guest as "your average white guy"; one hopes she won't be too disappointed when she finds out that's not exactly true.
 
 Compared with adventures like these, Andrew's new album, "The Wolf" (Island Def Jam), is bound to feel a bit flat. The new songs are slower, with keyboard lines straight out of an N.F.L. highlight reel; when he roared, "You can never let down," the crowd seemed flummoxed by the change of pace â?? or perhaps by the tortured syntax.
 
 By the end of the night, though, disorder had been restored: fans climbed all over the stage (and all over Andrew) while he sang "I Love N.Y.C." And although some of the music got lost in the commotion, the exclamation points came through loud and clear.

[ggw]

Music
 Andrew W.K. at 9:30, Preaching the Party Line
 
 By David Segal
 Washington Post Staff Writer
 Friday, September 12, 2003; Page C01
 
 If fun were a religion and moshing a sacred ritual, Andrew W.K. would make the perfect pope. He's got the costume -- the white T-shirt and white pants mark him as the high priest of his grinning flock -- as well as the hair, the smile and the stamina. Best of all, he has a nearly mystical faith in the healing power of sweat-drenched party.
 
 "This is our party!" he shouted at the 9:30 club Wednesday night, as dozens of fans clamored around him onstage. "That's the whole point! To get together as buddies and pals and blow the roof off this mother!"
 
 The mother still had a roof after 60 anarchic minutes of speed metal and singalongs, but that says more about the engineers who built the place than about Andrew W.K. He drove a few hundred fans into a delirious pandemonium, and for long stretches so much of the audience was bouncing on the stage that you couldn't see the band. The usually thick line between onlookers and performers vanished. Amps nearly toppled. Bodies flew in five directions at once. Chaos never looked so entertaining.
 
 Right from the opening chords, Andrew W.K. -- the initials stand for Wilkes-Krier, his last name -- knew exactly how to ringmaster this circus. Instead of chasing away stage invaders, he pleaded for more, and he embraced or head-patted anyone within arm's reach. He stopped the show a few times between songs so fans could wrap an arm around his neck and self-snap a photo. Others just leaped onto his back and rode him like a rented pony.
 
 "This is phenomenal!" he shouted toward the end of the show, while a teenager sat atop his shoulders. "Thank you, thank you a million times."
 
 There might well be life after media darlinghood for Mr. W.K. Two years ago, he released his major-label debut, "I Get Wet," a collection of four-chord guitar anthems that were as happy as beer ads and as simple as soccer chants. The single, "It's Time to Party," summed up the whole story in one line. (Other songs include "Party Til You Puke" and "Party Hard.") The guy, in political parlance, knew how to stay on message, and there was something irresistibly sunny about his music and his attitude. In an endless series of interviews and TV appearances, he seemed smart enough for the whole thing to be an act, but he wasn't kidding, at least not about the Have a Good Time gospel that he constantly preached.
 
 W.K. hasn't matured much -- his new album, "Wolf," could have been called "I Get Wet Again" -- and the novelty has inevitably worn off a little. But the man knows his niche, which is orchestrating mini-riots for 15-year-old boys and girls. On Wednesday night, the frenzy started about four seconds after the show began, when a fan rolled onto the stage and slapped on a werewolf mask he'd brought along in a knapsack. There are stars who might have been annoyed to share the opening number with a jackass in a silly costume, but Andrew W.K. isn't one of them.
 
 "This is incredible!" he shouted when the song was over. "The werewolves have arrived with the full moon!"
 
 The whole hour sounded like subtle variations of the same melody, modified with slightly different lyrics. The pace, on tunes like "We Want Fun" and "Tear It Apart," was always just fast enough for leaping up and down. W.K.'s vocals were always a drill sergeant growl, and aside from a few quick stops by W.K. at the keyboards, guitars dominated every tune.
 
 Order broke down soon after the second song. Midway through "It's Time to Party," fans overwhelmed the stage, at one point knocking the keyboards to the floor. The microphone was grabbed from W.K.'s hands a few times ("Pork chop sandwiches!" somebody yelled). Fans took the singer aside to shout private messages in his ear.
 
 "Everybody, meet Kevin!" W.K. announced after one of these onstage chats. "He drove me to the 7-Eleven the last time we were in town!"
 
 For a party animal, W.K. is surprisingly house-trained. He drank nothing stronger than water, uttered nary a naughty word and urged not rebellion so much as harmony and group hugs. Mostly, he wants everyone to relish the moment and get along well. Even when he was mobbed, or hoisted off his feet, and even when his microphone blinked out of commission when the cord was trampled, he always seemed amused. The need for the pose of aloof cool that is second nature to most rock stars isn't utterly alien to him.
 
 "This is flawless!" he shouted, pumping a fist in the air toward the end of the night. "Holy moly!"
 
 Â© 2003 The Washington Post Company
 
  <img src="http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/images/I63227-2003Sep11L" alt=" - " />