Kooks Help Soundtrack 'American Idol'

Posted on Feb 12th 2008 11:30AM by Jolie Lash
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British combo the Kooks wrap up their first promo tour in support of their sophomore April 15-due effort, 'Konk,' tonight in Brooklyn.

The band kicked off their mini-trek last week, beginning things at the Los Angeles Troubadour where new songs were previewed to rabid local fans, their producer Tony Hoffer and a fair amount of foreign celebrity attendees including Ireland's the Thrills, Liverpool combo the Zutons and an almost-appearance by Noel Gallagher, who was on the guest list, but didn't make it due to a reported illness.

The jaunt featured a slightly tweaked lineup as the Kooks recently parted ways with bassist Max Rafferty. In his place temporarily at least is Dan Logan, from Brighton, England quartet Cat the Dog. "We've all known him for a little while," Kooks frontman Luke Pritchard explained of the fill-in guy. "We asked him to come and play with us for a favor. We f---ing love playing with him, [but] it's not official at all. He has another band."

While Spinner may not be able to help the replacement process, we did manage to, however, reveal to Pritchard that his track 'Ooh La,' helped soundtrack a portion of last week's 'American Idol.' "They played one of our songs? What?" he said in disbelief. "That's f---ing cool. Anyone playing your songs is good I suppose. I'm just really, really glad no one sung our song [as an audition]."

Pritchard revealed he was also quite happy to hear a version of his song on the internet recently, though when he reached out to give the artist some praise, it backfired. "I don't really go on the Internet that much, but I went on to YouTube and I was looking for covers of our songs and I found this girl from Chile -- this really beautiful girl -- and she did this cover of 'Seaside,' which was f---ing beautiful," he said. "I left her a message on it saying that, 'Hi! This is Luke from the Kooks! I really like it,' and she just sent one back saying, 'You're not him. F--- off!'"

The Kooks will return for a lengthier U.S. trek this spring.