Andrew WK

will never ceased to be amazed at what Schreiber and DiCriscenzo hath wrought, really. it's amazing that two such shitty, shitty writers managed to create a media juggernaut that makes/breaks careers.

Though now I'm curious to see what Ian Cohen's original review of that album was like...

xp I think the same...though with DiCriscenzo I always hold out a tiny bit of hope that he's just trolling everyone, Schreiber is cringe-worthy like 99% of the time

this bonus disc is pretty incredible, by the way. just big sounding live takes and some of the original demos, which are a lot rawer and more deconstructed. the live "I Get Wet" is so incredible

wasn't vice more powerful than pitchfork at the time? i'm surprised there wasn't early pitchfork/awk synergy.

maybe it was a situation where if you were aligned with one, the other was compelled to shun you?

He mentions the Pitchfork re-review in this interview, which is mainly worth watching for the amusing clip from a music-free version of the It's Time to Party video:

http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/red-eye/index.html#/v/1802800834001/andrew-wk-on-red-eye/?playlist_id=86926

I like the new vids from a troll-the-multiple-AWK-conspiracy-nuts angle, but that's about it. Seems like his career has plateaued and he's just willing to coast on this one album from ten years ago.

Though it did give me some hope when i recognized the bald dude w giant sideburns when he was on TV recently. That guy was in his original band from back in the day. Maybe a genuinely new album soon?

Maybe not. Maybe AWK makes all his money purely from appearances and his PartyTM brand.

imagine the kids' show host gig pays pretty well, too

IGW is obviously always gonna be his claim to fame but he's hardly coasting, his last album (Close Calls) was really excellent

that album came out quite a while ago

Yeah that album rules, but it came out 6 years ago!

There was the Japanese-only CD since then but i don't think he wrote any of those songs.

He's done a lot of production work and owns a big nightclub in NYC too.

right, i'm just saying that i do expect more good shit from him in the future

idg why the reissue wouldn't include "we want fun" one of his best songs

rights are prob tied up w/ whoever owns jackass somehow

That song rules!

http://www.avclub.com/articles/master-of-positivity-andrew-wk-makes-us-a-partysta,84493/

Scooter’s one of the greatest groups of all time, in my opinion. In all the history of German musical acts, they have the most Top 10 singles.

nice discussion! good choices from him

re: fight for your right
"For a long time during the era when they first released this song, partying wasn’t necessarily that cool... So I was very thankful to Beastie Boys, like everybody that loves them, for being able to come out so strong with so much excitement and such a celebratory, fun-loving attitude."

there's something kind of revisionist about this... i remember reading the liner notes to an anthology where the beastie boys explain that the song is a pisstake on "partying" (which doesn't make sense unless partying is majority culture), and they regretted how it was taken seriously and also how they themselves ended up being the thing they were making fun of.

and it's not like the world was exactly hurting for party music in 1986

i don't take his cultural analysis all that seriously though. kind of amazed that he's still pushing "aleister x".

re: fight for your right
"For a long time during the era when they first released this song, partying wasn’t necessarily that cool... So I was very thankful to Beastie Boys, like everybody that loves them, for being able to come out so strong with so much excitement and such a celebratory, fun-loving attitude."

there's something kind of revisionist about this... i remember reading the liner notes to an anthology where the beastie boys explain that the song is a pisstake on "partying" (which doesn't make sense unless partying is majority culture), and they regretted how it was taken seriously and also how they themselves ended up being the thing they were making fun of.

― Philip Nunez, Tuesday, September 4, 2012 12:21 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

couldn't you as easily read this as the beastie boys feeling mildly embarrassed about it & wanting to backpedal slightly

yeah assuming you're talking about 'Sounds of Science' it came out not long after they were fake-beefing w/ The Prodigy and publicly renouncing their earlier personae

kind of amazed that he's still pushing "aleister x".

This is painfully OTM. I wish Andrew would get the fuck away from this loser.

ahem

still neat to hear him big up Scooter and the KLF, and he's totally OTM about "Celebration"

only surprised that he didn't manage to work in "gangnam style"

When has partying ever been not cool?

in Mennonite communities like the one Andrew WK grew up in

i would imagine partying in the beastie boys sense was not COOL in teh grunge era

smh at you guys

so did the whole Steeve Mike / conspiracy thing ever reach closure?

he seems to indirectly reference it whenever he's interviewed, dunno if he's just trying to troll people or if there was a legitimate thing here, ultimately I stopped caring about it because it got too confusing

just suffice to say that however AWK got his start, it was sketchy in one way or another

I dug into the whole Steev Mike thing a few years ago before Close Calls finally came out. consensus on the AWK boards was that he wanted out of his contract around the time of The Wolf, but in doing so wouldn't be able to perform as or use the Andrew WK brand for several years until the contract expired (thus the weird solo performances and motivational speaking engagements). 'Steev Mike' was a media prank to keep the flame alive and people interested until he could regain control and Party Hard again.

I imagine this is also why Close Calls took an extra four years to get a U.S. release. I always thought that album was the beginning of a very strange new direction for AWK. The promo videos/cover art creep me out to this day. I do find it strange that he would continuously say things like "I'm not the same guy who made I Get Wet", like he's moved on, but then basically tour the whole album and do a big re-release thing shortly after

Also see the "Who Knows?" DVD. Really creepy in places.

Is that the one with the version of "I Get Wet" that starts on piano then cuts to a live recording? If so I really need that DVD

It is INSANE. Starts off with completely OTT montage of Andrew giving this bio and talking about how he realized the power blah blah while still photos from live tours pan, including on that just zooms in closer and closer onto his face making a silly guitar face until light starts poring out of his mouth. Then some really kickass live shows, all severely schizophrenically edited (noise band influence here) of him playing festivals in Japan, etc. Then all of a sudden it will slow down and he'll start narrating it again. Every time he narrates it sounds like someone they recorded talking high pitched and then slowed it down, or something. Super un-natural. Then every so often there will be a still camera shot of a room with a really bizarre drone playing in the soundtrack and AWK will be, like, crawling across the floor in slow motion and screaming or something. Really bizarre and spooky.

It's probably my favorite piece of the AWK myth. Bridges the gap between 'early' and 'later' AWK, if you think there is such a thing. I just think he's always been a weirdo, some kind of performance artist that tended to hold back in the beginning and then just went off the deep end w CCWBW. And now he's cashing in as a mainstream meme.

I want to hear the Bulb records again.

Sounds amazing. There's a bunch of really creepy AWK videos out there if you know where to look. I remember this one interview that I couldn't even watch; the interviewer spoke in this real monotone voice (I think she was reading submitted questions) and AWK's responses were hurried and he looked notably nervous, like someone was pointing a gun at his head off-camera, it was so weird. At one point he does this really weird nervous laugh that goes on for 15-some seconds. And all the while there was this really unnerving noise going on in the background. Lately his Facebook posts turned a lot darker, going from his standard life-affirming party messages to things like "I just rubbed habanero peppers in my eyes" along with pictures, soon he was posting photos of himself with Taco Bell where he looked in real rough shape, bruises and burns everywhere, like the look of someone who really needed to go to the hospital. But ultimately I think it was all photoshopped. He definitely seems to get a rise out of messing with his audience. I almost wonder if that bizarre "AWK Steev Mike conspiracy" website that sprung up a few years ago was actually his.

ok - can someone pls fill me in on the Close Calls album? Is it some kidn of experimental masterpiece? I don't think I ever heard anything past I Get Wet but I was always puzzled to see him regularly palling around with Current 93 and the like.

It's pretty badass. If you hold it up to some ambient music or krautrock or Japanese psych or whatever, it won't really seem that experimental, but it definitely is in a lot of way. Has some AMAZING tunes, some really cool bizarre experiments, some throw-aways that i really could live without, etc. It's basically a huge FEAST. Eat it up. It's a double album in the White Album tradition. Some quiet and eery studio noodling followed by pop song, etc.

I get "Don't Call Me Andy" stuck in my head all the time.

It's not wildly different from his other stuff but yeah, it's just a neat and experimental hard rock album. I think the lyrics make it seem more "out there" than it really is but it's a great listen. Lots of stuff about self-purification or the search for identity, and some that take IGW's themes to the extreme. Lines like "I'll push you off the roof if you are too afraid to jump". The Mother of Mankind rarities collection that comes with it is really great too. You get to hear him do reggae, there's a great tune that sounds like a IGW outtake, and some really bizarre stuff from early in his career. Also a few songs where it sounds like he's imitating Sparks, I kid you not. All very entertaining. In total there's about 40 songs there and a couple can probably be tossed aside but lots of it is very good.

It's cool IMO, got some good tracks, got some trying-to-be-weird tracks, got some succeeded-at-being-weird tracks. Hard to take in, yeah. It has a thread, too: Andrew WK, Close Calls With Brick Walls

I noticed a weird thing on the two live tracks at the end of The Wolf, where it sounds like his vocals are pulled from two different performances, just piled on top of each other. The live tracks on the IGW 10th anniversary remaster do the same thing, though at some points it sounds like everything is doubled, especially on "I Love NYC" which is really disorienting, in a cool way. But it sounds like there's two AWK's on stage the whole time.

maybe... there are?

LOL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_JhQVUklEI

The small golden eye dog.

With a body shaped like a cat.

http://andrewwk.com/cms/andrewwk/news/i_330.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJRkR-Km2gg