ladies and gentlemen of america, your savior has arrived, and his name is andrew w.k. words cannot express the sheer brilliance/stupidity of this man's work. he's got the strokes beat by miles. seriously, though, this is the first music-related thing i've heard since "smells like teen spirit" that i've been truly and uncontrollably excited about. after hearing his first single "party hard" and reading his website, i ran right down to record and tape traders and purchased his masterpiece. appropriately enough, to get there, i had to weave through crowds of drunken college students wearing hawaiian shirts and shouting every manner of stupid thing. also very appropriately, the night air was warm and smelled of beer and smoke and flowers. the cd cost only 8.99. i was happy. according to the bargain price i paid, the andrew w.k. "phenomenon" has not quite caught on yet. i can't say whether or not it really will, but i sincerely hope that this man gets his fifteen minutes of fame.

now, to back up for a moment. i have the more than sneaking suspicion that there aren't too many people that understand what's going on here with this guy. so it's time for an explanation for the less enlightened.

when i first heard of andrew w.k., i looked him up on google under "Mr. Andrew W.K." (because i was in a particularly silly mood), and the first thing that came up was the website for bulb records, which i suppose was his label before the even bigger, dumber island records signed him. the way the site told the story, the initials "w.k." stood for "white killer." right then, i knew i was in for something brilliant. going to his official website only confirmed my suspicions. this, in fact, is a new level of high art and lowbrow humor.

andrew w.k. is the long-awaited (and correct) answer to the idiotic "party" music that fills the airwaves today. you see, there's absolutely nothing on the radio with any heart or passion in it anymore. don't believe me? pick up a copy of "ten" by pearl jam and compare, say, "jeremy," it to anything off of incubus's latest album ("nice to know you" will do), and tell me which one you believe more. i think even the most dim-witted among us will realize that eddie vedder actually understands and cares about jeremy, while brandon whateverhisnameis is just screaming any old thing over a whole lot of soul-less, over-processed guitars. this isn't an isolated phenomenon; it's all over the radio, from linkin park to creed to nickelback to whatever other alterna-copy band gets on the radio; bands just don't care at all about what they're singing about. it's just a bunch of inane, recycled crap that we've all heard a million times before, produced just a little bit better than the last time they did the same old thing. frankly, i'm sick of it; i've been sick of it for years.

enter andrew w.k., who attempts to make no intelligent explanation for his idiotic music; in fact, he puts himself heart and facetious soul into the complete and total idiocy he's committed to disk. the result is spectacular. he's taken the biggest, dumbest riffs imaginable, riffs you've all heard in one place or another, blown them up to a million times their original size, and buffed them to a high gloss with studio shine; the guitar is so thick, sugary, and shiny that you're virtually guaranteed to go blind if you listen to it for more than two minutes straight. the lyrics are up to par, too; in fact, i think the track listing says it all:

it's time to party

party hard

girls own love

ready to die

take it off

i love nyc

she is beautiful

party till you puke

fun night

got to do it

i get wet

don't stop living in the red

be on the lookout for a pattern; in particular, the last one is, i think, the one that betrays his apparent idiocy. besides the fact that being "in the red" refers to spending money you don't have, the red also refers to the blood dripping out of his nose on the album cover, which they had to cover with a black sticker, which, amusingly enough, was stuck on the plastic wrap, so you could stick it on the jewel case, or maybe your own mouth (it's a joke, people, work with me here). about the cover image, which obviously makes it look like he's snorted way too much cocaine, andrew had this to say: "That's certainly not how the picture was made. I never even thought of that until just now but that doesn't bother me either. You'd have to do quite a lot of cocaine to get that bloody nose though. I know they're just trying to help but I've always said that putting up walls and blocking things period does not help." just try to read that and not laugh; clearly, we are dealing with a superior mind here.

andrew w.k. is like a million television commercials at once, screaming in your face. life is fun, everybody party, who cares if we die or not? the genius here is that andrew w.k. takes everything that advertisers, marketers, and record execs everywhere want you to buy into with their linkin parks and their nickelbacks and executes it more perfectly and more sickeningly than they could ever hope to, and, in the process, blatantly exposes the sorry state of the music industry right now. the triumph here is that this man is doing all the things that a star should do: he's preaching like he's the messiah, proclaiming the doctrine of "partying hard," he's posed on the back of the album standing on a dock, arms folded over his chest, somewhere between jesus christ and serial killer, he's talking big and appealing to the lowest common denominator all at the same time, he's acting stupid to appear as though he's just like the next guy . . . and now i'm just rambling here. the point is, he's playing the pop star, and he's winning. from the racy album title ("i get wet") to the big sticker with "Andrew W.K." written on it that graces the front of the jewel case, thus making the front of the cd more sticker than cover, this man has covered every single base. how can you not love this?

the even funnier thing about andrew w.k. is that the media really seem to believe him when he says that he just wants to party and he's making the loudest, happiest, most exciting music he can make. as far as i'm concernered, this man has everybody fooled, and could well have everybody fooled for a long time, depending on how dedicated/mentally ill he is. but you know, even if he really is serious about this whole thing, it doesn't change my opinion of him one bit. in that case, what he's done is the kind of genius that can only come from the purest and simplest form of obliviousness; think "a dialogue between generations x and y" by that master of the english language who shall remain nameless here. or, more simply, it's very hard to be that good at being that lousy.

maybe this explanation wasn't the best; there's just so much stuff to get into here with this guy. he's reached a new level of humor here, one rivaled only by crazy mike, who walks the streets of baltimore shouting profanity and preaching about the plan for these planets. but it extends beyond humor; the timing, the candor, and the extent to which this man has executed his master plan (or lack thereof, although i suspect better than that) is worthy of the highest praise. at any rate, all the talk in the world can't do justice to the actual andrew w.k. experience. buy the record, look at the website, and marvel or be disgusted (or hopefully both) at the way in which this man has exposed all our petty, shallow, simple-minded, party-centric values and exploited them to the point that we'll walk in to the local target to grab his filthy, filthy record off the shelves with our filthy, filthy hands and toss it in the cart between our nascar t-shirts and our dandruff shampoo.

we do what we like, and we like what we do! long live andrew w.k.!

-david p.