Tuesday 1 May 2012

Andrew WK - Bitterzoet, 18 April 2012

"YOU DON’T KNOW ANDREW WK" exclaimed our friend at Mokum Groupie in bewilderment. She boldly declared that we MUST come to see his show and that we should not google or research him at all – just go, and experience, and be blown away!


So we did....

The only idea I had going into this show was from the tour poster, which was a rather graphic close up photo of a man’s face (presumably Mr WK himself?) with long hair and a broken nose with thick red blood flowing out . My guess was that the show could be a little heavy. We arrived pretty early at Bitterzort and found a small crowd slowly growing, almost all wearing black and with more long hair and slayer t-shirts than I had seen since I was 17. This was going to be heavy.

The stage at Bitterzoet is a pretty tight fit for most bands, so when Andrew finally made it out to his full size piano and was joined by 3 guitarists, a bass player, a drummer and a backup singer/dancer it was looking ridiculous. The crowd surged forward and then the music started. And it was heavy. But not the kind of heavy I had expected. The 3 guitars made an indistinguishable wall of sound. But his crazy on-again/off-again piano playing, and yelling vocals which were continually repeated by his backing singer were fun and high energy.

And the crowd responded with unadulterated enthusiasm. It was the craziest mosh pit and crowd surfing I had seen in Amsterdam in quite a while and as the show went on they all seemed to feed off each other. The band got loader and pushed harder and by the end of the show the crowd had invaded what little room there was left on the stage. It didn’t matter if you knew their songs or not, this was heavy party music, made by people who are up for a good time, for people who are up for a good time.


Ready to Die - Andrew WK


Mokum Groupie had conducted an interview with Andrew pre-show, so it was a nice little highlight of the night when he spotted her in the crowd and gave a huge shout-out to INTERVIEW GIRL, to which the crowd pointed and cheered in slight confusion.

I still don’t really know much about Andrew WK, but he put on a brilliant high energy show that could not have been more fun. My only advice is to check out when he is player near you next, buy a ticket and just go!!

JP











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