Andrew W.K. emerged from a black velvet box and stumbled over a nonsensical speech (about how we should make sure to bring extra quarters to the store when we’re buying water to tip the cashier. WTF?) before sitting at the mirrored beast and improvising simplistic songs about food, being a boy and dog ownership. Clearly hanging out in another dimension where he wasn’t expected to play the instrument in front of fans, Andrew (despite being classically trained since age 4) banged out staccato couplets until they bled into a garbled Nordstrom piano-player audition over which he sang, “You gotta eat food/You gotta eat to live.”

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“Why D’ya Do It?”—jealous and wrathful—stole the show, suiting her better now than when she recorded it back in 1979. Maybe it was the contrast of seeing Faithfull dressed so quaintly and poised while shouting out, “Whyd ya do it, she said, whyd you let that trash get a hold of your cock, get stoned on my hash ?” That did it. The evening came into miraculous focus during this song. Her fierce snarl danced around the ska-inflected guitar and tore down any notions of artistic comfort to take refuge in. In just a matter of minutes, the whole being of Faithfull was on display—the delicate flaxen-haired flower girl of the ’60s, the homeless tramp of the ’70s, the drug addict, the smoky-voiced cabaret singer, the Weimar-era reenactor, the Shakespeare interpreter—all her incarnations summoned up at once.

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