INQUIRER: The rocker, actor, and postmodern media personality Andrew W.K., who calls himself “a professional party,” is making a music video with a group of free-spirited filmmakers based in South Jersey. W.K. (the initials stand for Wilkes Krier) hired the Gloucester County production company From Start to Film after its representatives made a pitch to his people outside W.K.’s March concert at the TLA theater in Philly.The video will promote what the 33-year-old cult star dubs a “deluxe” 10th-anniversary rerelease of his I Get Wet album and may be released as soon as next month. The filmmakers “had a great idea, and we ran wild with it,” W.K. says, or rather, proclaims, in his buzz saw of a voice. “They’re an amazing group of folks.” A trained pianist and popular Conan O’Brien guest who recalls Alice Cooper, without the guillotine, W.K. meets me in front of a Cherry Hill hair salon. Smiling in his signature white T-shirt and white jeans, he’s about to head home to New York after finishing two days of principal shooting. “We rocked out,” says director Shawn Caple, 27, a Franklin Township resident who owns From Start to Film. He’s currently editing 10 hours of footage into a 90-second video. No small challenge: Andrew’s high-voltage persona is a performance-art mashup of stand-up, vaudeville, and verbal blogging. (He can riff on seemingly any subject, from aliens to Occupy Wall Street, and is a frequent VH1 commentator.) With his inky, shoulder-length mane and kinetic exuberance, the guy’s like a heavy-metal cheerleader — or a preacher for a theology in which partying is a sacrament. MORE
PREVIOUSLY ON PHAWKER: Andrew W.K. is a god. And I don’t mean that in the sort of way Jimmy Page is a god, or John Lennon is a god. I mean that he is the archetypal embodiment of pure awesomeness. He doesn’t fuss with metaphors, or new ideas, or silly things like that, he just takes the awesomest things he can think of and combines them. Epic orchestral opening, seguing into an even-more epic guitar solo, climaxing in a chorus that’s sheer will to annihilate will have you air-drumming like it’s 1985? That would be “Never Let Down,” whose video alone could explain you this man’s sheer awesome. And not only that, but almost every song on his first two albums are also this hell-bent on blasting out of your car speakers. Case in point, the words to his breakthrough single “Party Hard” don’t extend much beyond Let get a party going lets get a party going and now its time to party and we’ll party hard followed by Alright! and yeah! and then party hard party hard party hard over and over. MORE