Sunday December 3

NEW WET KOJAK

DIAMINE

$25 / Red Room / Doors at 5:30

New Wet Kojak was formed in 1993 by guitarist/singer Scott McCloud and bassist Johnny Temple during a lost weekend in Amsterdam. With idle time on their hands at the end of a Girls Against Boys tour of Europe, the duo descended, somewhat disheveled, into a small studio in the Red Light District, and emerged with a few loose acoustic-style songs with sleazy bass lines. There was no plan. The project picked up steam a year later in Washington, DC, after a Girls Against Boys show at the (original) 9:30 Club. McCloud and Temple used alcohol to con three DC friends into doing some more recording: Geoff Turner (Gray Matter) and Charles Bennington (High Back Chairs) joined on lead guitar/keyboards and saxophone, respectively, along with drummer Nick Pelliciotto (Edsel). Four more songs emerged, as well as a loose band aesthetic of raw, late night experimentation. It was a wildly erratic combination of difficult personalities and musical arrogance, with a pitch perfect balance of brilliance and confusion. They were aware that having a saxophonist in the band could be problematic. In 1995, the five-piece ensemble had completed their debut full-length recording, New Wet Kojak, which was released on Touch and Go Records. Most of the post-Amsterdam songs were recorded at Turner and Bennington’s WGNS Studios. The band’s second full-length LP, Nasty International, was released by Touch and Go in 1997, and garnered more positive reviews, including in Vice and Pitchfork, which gave the album a glowing 9/10. New Wet Kojak began to play live concerts during this period, in the US and more extensively in Europe. Do Things, the band’s third LP, was released by Beggars Banquet US in 2000, followed by an EP titled No. 4 and another full-length recording, This Is the Glamorous (also on Beggars). The band last played live together in the summer of 2002. Other than a five-song set at the Black Cat’s fifteenth-anniversary celebration in DC in 2014, these will be the first New Wet Kojak shows in more than twenty years.