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(Click to see all photos. Photo credit: Daniel Cairns, last photo -Gregg Roberts)

We’re reaching almost as far back as the vaults go on this one. Check out these pics from the “first” Andrew W.K. show with the full backing band “AWK”. They played at the London Highbury Garage on the 23rd of October 2001.

Here is a description of the show:

The show was Andrew crammed into a venue of 30 die hard fans and several hundred press waiting to see the man they had heard and read about in the last few months. The night consisted of no support band and Andrew doing a 45 minute set hours after doors opened. Andrew gave a hectic jam packed run through of songs of his albun “I Get Wet” plus a few older songs. Andrew still played I love New York just dedicating it to the people that died in the twin towers disaster saying “I think this song is more relevant now than it has ever been!” and by the crowd reaction I think he was right. You would have all suspected that Party Hard would be the one that got the crowd going tonight well you would be wrong, the crowd loved Party Hard but it wasn’t to the encore starter I Want Fun that the crowd ignited like someone had stuck a firecracker up their backsides.

Andrew W.K. Interviews:

Archived interviews galore, coming soon!!!

Good Manor’s “Never Let Down”

Congrats to Good Manor! We’ll be shipping out our prize pack to them this week. It was close call and it became neck and neck between them and “Party Hard” by Within Our Gates. If you like what you heard, check out their album on iTunes, facebook page, and myspace. Thanks to ALL the participating artists, there were so many good tracks!

The tribute album has been retrieved from the archive over 100 times! We hope everybody enjoyed it. Mac users might have had issues with the “.rar” file format. So here is the album as a “.zip” file.

A FREE DIGITAL ALBUM!

RELEASED: 5/9/11

I’m thrilled to be releasing the third fan-tribute album on this very special day, Andrew W.K.’s Birthday! Thank you to Andrew W.K. for giving us the gift of his music for over a decade. Now, this album is a gift to him from his friends, his fans. Happy Birthday Andrew!

My expectations for this album have really been blown away. I’m so impressed by the talent of the artists, the diversity of song choice and the wide range of styling each artist added to the album. I’m confident in saying that as most listen to these songs, they’ll quickly hear the strongest tribute album to date. Thank you to the contributing artists who made this all possible. After you listen to each track, please vote on your favorite song (to the left) so the winner can get their claimed prize pack from AndrewWKMusic.com.

When In Doubt, Wolf It Out III is a FREE! digital album containing 19 amazing tracks, a .pdf booklet of artwork and additional album info in a .txt file. Here is the final track listing (*original tracks are in bold)

If you know anybody who had considered submitting a cover, remix, an original “party rock” genre song, or even a spoken word piece, please let them know today is the last day to submit their track! If you would be so kind to spread the word. The easiest way to do that would probably be the green arrow button at the bottom of this post, use the “share this” button to share this post. The cutoff will be midnight tonight. Thanks everybody!

Only a few days left so please hurry and submit YOUR tracks for this awesome fan album! There have been lots of developments in the past few days, something I never expected was that we might even hit the 20 song mark if things keep going at this rate. That just blows my mind! I never could have predicted that!

Thanks to everybody that has participated already!

Here’s to hold your appetite:

Just Do It PREVIEW – Wojtek Matusiak

Knowledge is power. This adage is embedded in AndrewWKMusic.com’s slogan; “Archiving All Things AWK”. Though we focus on media content, at the most basic level we are archiving information. The purpose in archiving something is so that you never lose it. Sometimes it seems that if we didn’t archive certain items they would be lost forever. In that case, it might as well never existed in the first place.

We have tried to make it a priority in providing the most accurate information possible, whether that was my own attempts of researching, experience, and piecing things together or if it came from a trusted source. But a new and even better opportunity has arisen lately and here is AndrewWKMusic giving you the inside scoop.

The following is updated information about various aspects of Andrew W.K.’s discography.

Party Til You Puke – EP (2000)

• Party Til You Puke was recorded after the We Want Fun recording sessions
• Party Til You Puke was planned to be released first though because he had been playing solo shows in the style of this release (drum machine and keyboard based backing tracks). So it made the most sense to release it first.
• Unlike AWKGOJ, Party Til You Puke had a promotional push by Pete Larson (Andrew’s manager at the time). There were posters made up and Andrew did his first interview around the time of its release.
• The first manufactured copies of the Party Til You Puke 12″ had been sent to his parents house in Michigan. They were going to be recalled but ended up not needing to be. This was after he had moved around and started working with Island.

We Want Fun – Unreleased LP (to be released January 2001)

• Before the Party Til You Puke EP was released most if not all of the songs off the We Want Fun recording sessions were already recorded
• At the time it was recorded Andrew W.K. had already moved to NY and often traveled back and forth between Providence, Rhode Island where Bulb Records and founder Pete Larson was based at the time (originally based in Ann Arbor, MI)
• Apparently there were multiple versions (at least 2) of the We Want Fun albums, the other “versions” had a bunch of other songs (unreleased) from the same era that Andrew had prepared, and has considered working with to release. For example there is a track called “They Ruined Our Lives”.
• We Want Fun was used as a starting point for the recordings of I Get Wet and The Wolf. Meaning the same elements used in the We Want Fun tracks are embedded in the tracks of his released LPs. The same is true for the Party Til You Puke EP tracks that appear within I Get Wet’s version of Party Til You Puke.
• Andrew did not have the original masters or mixes to work with because he had lost his hard drive of the We Want Fun recording era. But he did have CD versions he had prepared so he had to use rough stereo mixes off of that.
• This era of recording sessions were comprised of the tracks that made it onto AWKGOJ first, then the tracks that were saved for the We Want Fun album, and then additional unreleased tracks.  In short, AWKGOJ and We Want Fun were recorded at the same time (roughly), same setup, same recording system, etc.
• Though We Want Fun was never released, semi-professional duplicated copies were made. The album artwork intended to feature a painting by Andrew W.K. himself of a beautiful girl’s face, wearing sun glasses and a band-aid on her cheek. The band-aid had hearts on it, this painting was going to be the front cover. Later Andrew painted over the same girls face and added half a skull-face with a bloody nose, blood all over the place, one eyeball popped out, the glasses were shattered, and the band-aid was hanging off the glasses. That was going to be the back cover. Andrew eventually cut the painting out of the canvas and gave it to Pete Larson. Andrew still has high quality photos of the artwork though.

Artwork for the unreleased We Want Fun album is featured on the back cover of AWKGOJ

• We Want Fun was meant to be Andrew W.K.’s debut album on Bulb Records
• After AWKGOJ and Party Till You Puke were released the next stage was to release the We Want Fun album, by that time though Andrew W.K. had already met his A&R guy at Island Def Jam. Island Records bought out the contract from Pete Larson, which is why it was never released.

I Get Wet – LP (2001 UK & 2002 US)

• AWKGOJ & We Want Fun’s recording sessions were the first time Andrew dived into a recording setting. After only 2 years had passed and it came time to record I Get Wet, he learned much more about how to get the hard hitting sound that I Get Wet features.

The Wolf – LP (2003)

• On The Wolf Andrew didn’t want it to be as hard hitting as I Get Wet. Instead, he wanted it to be more like the feelings on the We Want Fun album.
• The song “Totally Stupid” defined to him the feeling he was trying to get the majority of the time on The Wolf.
• While I Get Wet is moving in a joyful & energizing way, he wanted The Wolf to be moving in every way, he wanted to bring out every emotion, he wanted it to make you cry, but if someone asked if you were sad you wouldn’t really say you were sad.

Close Calls With Brick Walls – LP (2006)

• Close Calls With Brick Walls was an attempt to synthesize both the feelings present on I Get Wet & The Wolf. He wanted the raw energy of I Get Wet to be coupled with the emotional and human feeling of The Wolf. He wanted to talk about being a human being on that album.
• On this album he wanted to be able to hear people playing the music rather than the prior LP’s which made all the instruments sound the same

Raucous – Potential name for new LP (2011?)

• Andrew is in Hollywood recording the new album
• It will attempt to combine everything all the way back to the Party Til You Puke EP. It was a natural desire to do that.
• He wants the emotion from The Wolf, the power from I Get Wet, the electronic manic quality of Party Til You Puke, and the musical arrangement approach of Close Calls With Brick Walls.
• He has a new found appreciation for previous recording approaches, how he did guitars and the way he layered things. It was a methodology of trying to remove instruments and performances and just hear a song and a recording for what it was. To him it’s not important how well he can play the piano. However, certain albums call to have that identity within them and he will make another album like that again (after the Rock n’ Roll album).
• After those two albums, there are another two albums already in the works and lastly an instrumental rock album, which he’s really going to go over the top with. (that sounds so exciting!)
• He’s recently reconnected with Scott Humphrey (the producer of I Get Wet), who he hadn’t seen since 2001. It isn’t specified if he’ll be working on the album or not.

FreeJumps – Promo

• The promo features an exclusive version of the song FreeJumps
• The track was being worked on for I Get Wet with Scott Humphrey, but decided to save it for the next album. There were many songs that didn’t make it onto I Get Wet
• Andrew’s publishing company sent out the sampler to get people excited, some musicians might get angry over releasing unfinished tracks, but he doesn’t really care

Misc

• The first item to ever be released with the “Andrew W.K.” name on it was the Wolf Eyes 12″
• There is some unclarity as to whether AWKGOJ came first or the Party Til You Puke 12″‘ came first
• Andrew W.K. played many of his first shows in Providence, Rhode Island (where Bulb Records was based) and New York City
• It is not always the case that the best stuff is the stuff that ends up hanging around, gets archived, or gets preserved. Sometimes really good things just get lost.

Check out these totally sweet and radical photo sets from the 2010 Warped Tour and also our photo archive section. 

Chicago 2010 – Ryan Mitchell

August 2010 – Monti Smith

Our list of tracks is growing longer and longer thanks to some AWESOME submissions! For example check out this cover of

Ready To Die preview by Emphemetry

Only 7 more days until the cutoff date. Hurry and submit your tracks using the uploader. We’re still awaiting some promised submissions of Violent Life, Kicks and Bricks and an unspecified piano instrumental. I can’t wait for everybody to hear these tracks in full, they’re awesome! I’m so impressed with the talent. Check out the tracklisting so far.

1. This Is Andrew W.K. – Alexx T
2. I Came For You – Jake Waters
3. She Is Beautiful –  freddey
4. Pursuit of Partyness – Michael Ripka
5. Long Live The Party – Mike Harvey
6. We Want Fun – Brian Fukushima
7. Coming Bad – GOJOE
8. Ready To Die –  Emphemetry
9. Dancy Party – Robin Brunelle
10. I Love Party Music – dickalan
11. Party Hard –  Emphemetry

and coming soon…

1. Kicks and Bricks
2. Violent Life
3. Piano instrumental