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Concert reviews Music

Mental Metal

ANDREW WK

with DYNOMITE

at Lee’s Palace, March 19.

Tickets: $10. Attendance: 500. Rating:

NN

Rating: NNNNN


Each time another person tried squeezing themselves into Lee’s Palace, which was well overstuffed by 10 pm, the people pressed up against the stage had to suck in their guts.

It didn’t resemble a typical Lee’s crowd. Andrew WK’s fans are more like the rowdy mass that tumbled out of Skydome after Wrestlemania X8 last Sunday.

And for a WWF fan there’s a lot to like in Andrew WK’s carefully scripted blowhard act, delivered with sweaty gesticulation and completely free of irony and humour — well, at least the intentional kind. The five-piece backing band didn’t seem cognizant of how much they looked like a Michigan militia version of the Village People.

They moved briskly from one dunderheaded fist-pumper of a party anthem to the next, most involving the word “party” as part of the hook so that everyone would get the message. And most people did, jumping and head-banging to the beat.

Yet it was a controlled enthusiasm, not unlike what you get from record-label street team members hired to act excited. The dude who jumped onstage for the final number wearing a white T-shirt bearing the sloppily scrawled Andrew WK slogan Ready To Die might’ve been overdoing it a touch.

At least the woman who climbed onto Andrew WK’s shoulders during the closing melee and then raised her top to flash the crowd — with her bra — provided an apt metaphor to sum up the spectacle.

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