“He sang of partying with such ferocity that suddenly parties seemed like trench warfare…” How we saw, and only just survived, an early performance of the 00s' first rock classic

A sweaty Andrew Wk surrounded by fans — (Image credit: Theo Wargo/WireImage/Getty Images)

Back in the raw, drizzly spring of 2001, I found myself in some dumbo punk’s basement to watch my friends in a local leather neanderthal band melt some faces. There was the standard array of half-assed thrash bands on the bill, but the opener was just some dude from out of town.

He moseys up to the– well, there was no stage, just kind of a cleared corner of the cellar – and pushes play on his boombox. The guy wears all white, except it’s clear he hasn’t bathed or changed in a good week or so. He's grimy.

Anyway, the tinny cassette rolls out a cacophony of machine beat rock n’ roll and our curious stranger starts decimating the place. Which is no easy feat in a half-destroyed basement. He sang of partying with such ferocity that suddenly parties seemed like trench warfare.

I dunno too much of what happened after that. I’m only 5’ 7”, so I was pretty much just staring at the back of people’s heads. But I am pretty sure he picked up an old couch at one point and held it over his head like the Incredible Hulk and tossed it at the withering punk rockers up front. And then he just picked up his boombox and split.

Nobody knew who he was, and the guy who put the show together didn’t even remember booking him. We thought he might have been a shared hallucination. Or, like, some oily ghost.

Six or so months later, that same screwball somehow turned his scary Party Hard song into a chaotic anthem for a lost generation that did, indeed party pretty hard. Woodstock 99 wasn’t just some one-off, you know.

Andrew W.K. - Party Hard - YouTube

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Party Hard was repetitive, primitive, tribal. It was rock'n’roll stripped to just the live wires. Andrew WK had taken his basement rock terrorist shtick to the mainstream. In a world where anything can happen, something sure did. The single was quickly followed by his debut album, I Get Wet, which was as much about sweat as it was any other bodily excretion. The cover featured Mr WK’s mug covered in blood. A result of…well, you get it. The partying thing.

We eventually got the backstory: WK’s actual name is Andrew Fetterly Wilkes-Krier. He studied piano in college, grew up just outside of Detroit, was in a variety of go-nowhere bands (Kathode, The Pterodactyls, Lab Lobotomy etc), before moving to NY in 1998, where he worked as a bubblegum machine salesman before eventually writing and recording the material that shook up basement gigs all over the East Coast.

Then he mailed a demo tape to Dave Grohl, who let him open for the Foo Fighters. Shortly thereafter, he became the most oddball mainstream musical celebrity since Tiny Tim. He released a few more albums, became a motivational speaker, and married TV star Kat Dennings.

So he did alright. But did we?

Almost a quarter century after Party Hard, when’s the last time you even stayed up past midnight? Or flipped over a cop car? Or rocked a basement so hard they put you on MTV? Almost never, right? I think it’s time we go back to the scriptures Andrew WK laid out for us a quarter-decade ago. You know the words:

Party hard
(Party hard, party hard, party hard, party hard)
(Party hard, party hard, party hard)
Party hard
(Party hard, party hard, party hard, party hard)
(Party hard, party, party, party, party)
Party hard

Now put on some dirty white denim and make the world a better place, already.

Came from the sky like a 747. Classic Rock’s least-reputable byline-grabber since 2003. Several decades deep into the music industry. Got fired from an early incarnation of Anal C**t after one show. 30 years later, got fired from the New York Times after one week. Likes rock and hates everything else. Still believes in Zodiac Mindwarp and the Love Reaction, against all better judgment.

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