Andrew W.K. - We Want Fun Demo

So I noticed a post at The Lost Turntable asking about Mr. W.K. and the whole Steev Mike thing. If you're not familiar with that whole situation and have a year to take off and speculate upon it with, you can check out this website and get thoroughly bent out of shape over how weird it gets. If you want to get to the meat and potatoes of it though, I believe Steev Mike was an early name used by Andrew and he uses the pseudonym to represent a confidante unto himself, ala the AWK persona started off more as a persona but has evolved into a generalized extension of his true self, making the Steev Mike persona no longer as essential to him as he may have initially felt it was. Whatever the purpose though, Andrew to me is Andrew and I think he's great! Great music, lotsa fun, and while he may be a bit strange he is not stupid and is clearly not a puppet. So, much respect to Andrew W.K. and his music and everything else he does, HE IS THE MAN!

Now, with all this talk about AWK and his music and personas and such behind us, I present to you an early document of his musical vision which will entertain and confuse with unbridaled glee! A demo was passed around between friends and band members in Andrew's early days which may have represented his intended debut full-length or may have been a near complete demo version of it. I assume it's the former as it's so complete, but only Andrew would know, so I'm going to focus on the music. The We Want Fun Demo, as it's referred to by fans, contains a great number of songs later re-recorded for I Get Wet as well as a few for The Wolf and some unreleased tracks. This is important since part of the oddball Steev Mike theories has been that Andrew decided to take more control of his career after I Get Wet, explaining why The Wolf is such a different album, but this proves those songs, or at least some of them, existed in a complete state prior to Andrew's rise in popularity, destroying that part of the Steev Mike theory once and for all. Also, it's worth noting some of these versions are a little different from their official counterparts, but not terribly so and anyways, it's always interesting to hear an early rendition, isn't it?

A quick explanation about the source of these tracks is in order. I found out about this collection (or album, which I tend to think of it as) via an AWK message board and was led to a fan page which is apparently AWK-certified that contained lots of demos, alternate versions and unreleased tracks. Unfortunately, by the time I got there, everything had been pulled down due to a dispute with the service provider. The site was supposed to return shortly but, as far as I am aware, it never has, which is a serious bummer because they claimed they were about to post an upgraded version of this collection, the major difference being the glitches in the last few songs would no longer be present. So I couldn't get the better version, let alone the standard one circulating already, and a number of people on AWK's message board wanted it also but had no idea where to look either. I turned to google, and in my amazement found nothing, so I went off the grid and paid a visit to SoulSeek. I'm not a fan of the old-school p2p style downloading as it can take forever and often lacks reliability, but if there is a place that weird stuff normally not circulating seems to turn up, it's SoulSeek, and it was there I found a copy of the We Want Fun Demo with the glitches in the last few tracks. That said, the glitches aren't that big of a deal and the majority of this collection is glitch-free, so I'm quite certain everyone will find it thoroughly enjoyable! Yay!

So, until next time, props to Andrew W.K., props to all the people reading this site, props to everyone deserving props (that's A LOT of people!), and you should get out there and have a great day with this ridiculously upbeat download!


Andrew W.K. - We Want Fun Demo
UPDATE: So the DMCA yanked this post because of this link the other day. I posted this in January and they're hitting it in May? On top of that, this is something that is available elsewhere also for free, was never officially released and is actually allowed to be traded by the artist that created it as far as I know. I would love to know who the idiot is who reports links like these, because they clearly have NOTHING TO DO WITH THEIR LIVES. Of course, not that my writing this diatribe is really improving my life or anyone elses' either, but I'm sure you get my point. Anyway, the download is gone. You can always get it at the site I listed below though!

01 It's Time To Party
02 Freejumps
03 Girls Own Juice
04 Your Rules
05 She It Beautiful
06 Tear It Up
07 I Love Music
08 Kill Yourself
09 Don't Stop Living In The Red
10 Interlude
11 Totally Stupid
12 Party Hard


PS - Just to explain a few things, Girls Own Juice is an early version of Girls Own Love. Kill Yourself is some kind of spoken word piece and a song about feeling bad about yourself and ending your life, which is something AWK does not support and is strongly assumed the song is pointing out the futility of. Finally, We Want Fun, the song, IS NOT PART OF THIS RELEASE! I know, pretty ridiculous to name something after such a great song, but AWK is a confusing guy.

Also, just after finishing this post, I found this site, Andrew WK Music, which has a lot of cool-ass AWK stuff for download including this demo. The version featured on their site, which is different from the one featured here, is supposedly from the masters and has no glitches, so you might want to mosey on over and grab it there. Makes me feel kinda redundant, but I hope you enjoy the post regardless.