It Is Difficult To Find Any Information On The Time I Didn't See Andrew W.K. At A Synagogue

In 2009, you had to work to hear Andrew W.K. He'd started underground, in the world of Michigan noise, blown up in 2001 as a New York-based rock intensity machine and then, following the 2003 release of his second full-length LP, he scattered.

Andrew's 2006 album, Close Calls With Brick Walls, was only put out in Japan and South Korea. I imported a copy that year, but the record didn't actually reach American stores until 2010. He put out a few one-off singles you could track down online with some minimal scavenging, an album of Japanese covers I still haven't heard and a split EP with Narduwar. He opened a music venue in New York and spoke at colleges. He played Warped Tour.

I have never lived in New York and have never had a desire to go to a Warped Tour. Last decade's emo reconsideration was a lie, you do not, under any circumstances, "gotta hand it to Thursday and brokeNCYDE." One day you will be dead, why would you make concessions to the time you enjoy among the living to hear "Don't Call Me White" by NOFX? You must have some hobbies, the tour posters that double as catalogues of dudes who had been or would be outed for sexting teenagers cannot be enough to draw you away from them.

Anyway, so after his period of omnipresence, Andrew was still around, but his shows were inaccessible to me and his records were rare. In 2009, he released 55 Cadillac, an album of mostly improvised, mostly solo piano improvisations (the last song is a power ballad), and I was thrilled when he announced a short tour to support it. There were something like a dozen dates and Andrew was coming to the 6th & I Synagogue in Washington, D.C. with a string quartet.

The show was great. If I remember correctly, they did a chunk of improvisation, a few classical pieces, 4'33", and then four or five of Andrew's older songs, stripped down to piano and strings. I've only seen 4'33" performed live once, and it was at an Andrew W.K. show. I loved it.

But I had to work. In the lead up to the concert, Andrew changed the venues of his Washington show (a synagogue) and his Toronto show (a church), writing:

I am truly sorry for any inconvenience experienced by those who already purchased tickets for the DC and Toronto shows. I sincerely hope you're able to attend at the new venues.

A couple days ago I had a really intense personal experience and it made it very clear to me that I cannot and should not play in religious buildings on this tour. Please understand, I have nothing against religion or temples of any kind. In fact, I love going to churches and hearing music there - but I can't play my music there after what happened the day before yesterday.

The best I can do to describe my experience is to say that the world opened up to me, and I received it, as Spirit and Love and of course, a lot of fun and pleasure. It was a sexual feeling, and I just didn't feel right about bringing that into a holy place, like a church or synagogue. My choice to move the venues is out of respect for this feeling, for myself and my body, and for the buildings themselves.

Fortunately, even though this was all last minute, we were able to keep the tour more or less intact, and will still play every city or region, as planned. Once again, I'm really sorry for any trouble this causes, but it was something I felt very strongly about. Thank you always for your love and belief in the feelings I work to bring you.

Andrew's sexual experience was so profound it moved his soul to a new plane and his concert to a Vienna, Virginia venue called Jammin' Java.

I think about this sometimes, especially if I revisit Close Calls With Brick Walls or 55 Cadillac. When Andrew W.K. has come up in conversation, I've told friends about the time he sent out an equally sincere and opaque statement about, I'm not really sure, coming so hard he was too ashamed to be seen by anybody's god. It's as much a part of my internal Andrew W.K. lore as his Wolf Eyes associations or the video of him being martyred in Faygo at the Gathering of Juggalos.

I want to say 2009 wasn't that long ago because it doesn't feel that long ago, but I'm 17 years older and that world is inaccessible to me. It was very difficult to find Andrew's statement about his sexual feeling. Washington City Paper either didn't cover that little blip of weirdness or the story didn't make it to their website. The Onion A.V. Club's D.C. branch shuttered in 2010 (I am, proudly, the last editorial intern to serve a full semester there), "The Onion" and "The A.V. Club" are now two separate things and the archives from the years when the paper had local editions seem to have vanished. Brightest Young Things, a place that very desperately wanted to be Vice, shut down a few years ago and doesn't have any lasting online presence.

[Jumping to an aside about that Brightest Young Things description with an illustrative example I'm still amazed by: A year or two before I moved to Washington, D.C., started attending American University and working at WVAU, its radio station, WVAU put on a show with the band Ponytail. The concert was open to the public and nobody knew it at the time, but there was a BYT reporter in attendance, and he posted a review of the show a few days later. His personal low point: AU was a dry campus, so he had to drink a few beers alone in his car in a parking lot before the music started. His personal high point: He raved that one of the opening bands had a rhythm section that was, and god damn does it pain me to write this, so I'm going to somewhat censor it, "teen p*ssy tight." I truly do not know why you'd admit to being a thirtysomething doing the former or think to publicly write the latter. And he was mad he had to pregame! The review opened with some whining about how he'd been forced to do that! And he wasn't arrested for using that phrase I'm not going to re-type! Bring on the thoughtcrimes!]

After some long internet searching, I found the Andrew W.K. statement on Exclaim, a Toronto music blog. They themselves had taken it from Idolator, though that link is now dead and that site is now a spammy bot landing page. The places people write have been going out of business for a long time and the Andrew W.K. sexual experience is almost entirely lost to time. But I'm writing this here. I want there to be more of a record. I'm doing what I can.