What happened to Andrew W.K.?

Ms. dW and I went to the 1st anniversary party for the Rock & Roll Hotel on Saturday. After briefly flirting with the door guy who wears the gauntlets and drinking a few $2 cans of PBR, we checked out DC's The Whips on the first floor. I'd seen them before and I thought they were pretty good.
Initially we weren't sure if Andrew W.K. was performing or just hosting the party (he introduced the bands and such) but it turned out he was scheduled to perform from 12:30 - 2:30. I wasn't really sure what was going on since he didn't have a band....I told Ms. dW it was like Bat Mitzvah AWK - pretty soon he'd be announcing the horah or something. Seriously, it was just him shouting over a backing track and intermittently playing the keyboard or headbanging. He did 'Party Til You Puke' and we didn't even recognize the song until the chorus. Basically we left after about 4 songs in order to preserve our mental image of the AWK we knew and loved from such performances such as several years ago at 9:30 Club. Maybe we should have had more PBR...

Review: Noise Against Fascism 1/20/2005

Noise Against Fascism: Mirror/Dash (Kim Gordon/Thurston Moore), The Believers, Metalux, Double Leopards, 16 Bitch Pileup, Monotract, Nautical Almanac, Buzzardstain, Chris Corsano/Paul Flaherty, To Live and Shave in L.A. (feat. Rat Bastard, Don Fleming, Chris Grier, T. Moore, Tom Smith, Ben Wolcott, Andrew W.K.), Magik Markers
Black Cat, Washington DC
January 20th, 2005

So Ms. dW and I headed out to ye ol Black Cat in search of the one and only Mr. W.K. in spite of the bitter cold weather, various illnesses we were coming down with, and a certain other 'W' whose supporters have temporarily overrun our normally quiet little burg. This "concert" began with a female duo uttering some indistinguishable vocals transmitted over a bullhorn and accompanied by a dissonant backing track and crunching guitar. Different people kept coming out on stage in various configurations and I couldn't tell you the difference between any of the acts that didn't include Kim Gordon or Andrew W.K. So the whole thing was actually "noise" and I think 4+ hours of grating sonic dischord, feedback, and distortion should be enough to defeat just about any type of negative -ism. I also blame it on my current gastro-intestinal dischord (though that could be a virus I guess).
Highlights from the show include: two hooded DJs spinning a Gary Glitter record; some beret-and-sunglasses dude who reminded me of Dr. Mraz yelling at the sound guy to "play some Can, man" and ranting about various things during the set breaks; [for Sonic Youth fans] Kim Gordon doing some "cowboy" "song" for 20 minutes; and finally Mr. W.K. himself on drums (that's right I had to sit through all that crap just to watch him fiddle around with a backing track and then pound on one tom for a couple minutes).
Next time I will stay home and watch the 'Your Friend, Andrew WK' episodes stored in my computer. It would have been cheaper and hopefully resulted in less vomiting.
Oh yeah, one more thing: good grooming is not a government plot. Seriously...