Dimitri Cooke
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| Dimitri Cooke | ||
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| Background information | ||
| Birth name | Dimitri Xander Cooke | |
| Born | March 23, 1979 (age 28) Chicago, Illinois |
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| Years active | 2000- Present | |
Dimitri Xander Cooke (born March 23, 1979) is an American musician from Chicago, Illinois. He is the second oldest of three kids. Oldest, Thomas, known as Tom and youngest Anthony, playfully known as Tony. Born in Chicago, Il, Dimitri�s childhood was a typical one. His mother was a piano player, his father was a guitarist, and they both raised their children to experience the best that life could offer them. Since they were not well off as the other families in the neighborhood, the Cooke family tried to teach each other the act of caring and playful disposition. When asked about his favorite childhood memory, Dimitri will always tell the story about his older brother Thomas helping Dimitri get unstuck from the trashcan. �When Tom and I were younger, when Tony wasn't in the picture, the two of us used to cause a lot of trouble. But the one time that sticks out in my mind is the "trash can incident". When we were younger, we were really poor. Almost under middle class, actually I was surprised when I learned how much we actually lived on. Anyways, Dad worked at a gas station, and he used to bring home the barrels that the gas came in -- you know it was one of those old gas stations -- as trash cans since we really couldn't afford to get a nice one that didn't break the next day. Tom and I were taking out the trash and I jumped in the can to step on it to press it down so we could fit more. And as I tried to get out, I got stuck. Tom laughed at me for an hour before he got fucking Crisco and was able to "Crisco" me out of the barrel. To this day, I can't even think of having anything cooking in Crisco cause I just think about how it was used to get me out of that damn metal barrel. I told Tony this story the other day when I came home and he looked at the trash can we have now -- with the change in money, our family can afford real things now -- and he just couldn't understand it.� (Spin Mag. 2005).
When Dimitri was 14, he started to teach himself guitar. It was around that time that he lost his fear of hanging out with his cousin Victoria Hellstrom and started a little band they called �Dimitri & Victoria�. Yeah it wasn�t the best name ever, but it started out small and soon the neighborhood kids were starting to join in with them. Dayton Stroud and Theo Vanderbilt were two of these kids. While Theo�s family was better off than the Cookes, Strouds and the Hellstroms combined, the kids welcomed him into their little circle of friends and the four have been stuck like glue to each other ever since, with Victoria even marrying Dayton for a little while, though the marriage was doomed from the start.
As the years went by, Dimitri started to get a little bit of a following with his solo act that he was peddling around Chicago. Luck would have it that he was picked up by Vagrant Records, signing Dimitri to their indie rock label, just as it was starting out. That was back in 1999, and Dimitri released SMILE LIKE YOU MEAN IT in 2000. It was from then on that Dimitri�s fame rose to the top of the indie music charts, crowning him one of indie rock�s kings � alongside bestfriend Dayton who had also found his way into the music scene. Dimitri�s life was going along wonderfully until 2005, when he met someone who changed his life. Up until this part of the story, Dimitri Cooke was completely confident in who he was romantically and who he was mentally. Dimitri was a sarcastic guy, slightly on the mean side, who took no prisoners. He was loyal to his Chicago crew and pretty much no one else, that was until he met Audrey Sinclair. Audrey was an upcoming singer on Jive Records, they felt she was going to be rivaling that of Britney Spears and Christina Aquilera � the woman was beautiful, talented, and Dimitri fell instantly in love with her. With in five months of daiting, he proposed to her. And with in one month of the proposal, she was dead.
Dimitri will always remember exactly what he was doing June 17, 2005. �Audrey and I had just gotten into a fight. It was a stupid petty one about where we were going for dinner that slightly erupted into something else. But I still kissed her goodbye when she left that day, when we both left to go to work, and I never saw her again.� Audrey was in a terrible car accident that claimed her life, and something Dimitri has never been able to forgive himself for. He thinks that he could have prevented it. It was after Audrey�s death that Dimitri began to unravel. Song after song was dedicated to his lost fianc�e, and as the months grew colder, so did Dimitri, eventually trying to find ways to cope with his loss; turning to alcohol and recreational drugs to ease his pain. In January 2006, Dimitri released his worst album to date; OUT OF SHELTERED LIFE EP in which he was all over the place, every song sounded the same, and it was terribly put together. The reviews were terrible all around, and Dimitri took it terribly hard. He showed up to a meeting for Vagrant completely wasted and didn�t show up for a lot of his schedualed apperances, causing Vagrant to temporarily fire Dimitri until he could get his life back together. So Dimitri went back to Chicago to be with family until he thought he was alright to come back.
Dimitri didn�t make his return to New York until March of 2006, where he lived in an apartment in Alphabet City, with no television, the heat was never on and the musician couldn�t afford the rent. The landlord was a dealer, so Dimitri did what he was used to; he bought what he could off the landlord, and the landlord considered it to be his rent. That worked out for a while until the landlord was arrested and Dimitri was now forced to pay all his back rent. So he went back to Red Eye to prove that he had changed and he was given a trial contract � one fuck up and he was completely gone. So Dimitri wrote NAMES, in which every song is written about and for someone in his life. One was about a woman he had a crush on, a Kelli Vogel who Dimitri had known for years. Names was and is to this day the most crtically acclaimed album Dimitri has ever released. The first single was a song entitled RETURN, in which the single cover depicts a hand holding a blurred out photo of Dimitri and ex Audrey over an open flame, his way of trying to get rid of her from his life. The album proved to Red Eye Records that Dimitri Cooke was back in the game, and they had nothing to worry about; he�d make his way back into the hearts of his fans eventually enough.
As the months went by, Dimitri lost another friend by the name of Eliza Parker, who was a model that Dimitri had once been romantically involved with. It was then that he started to add onto his tattoos � now two dates were tattoed on the back of his neck, one for Audrey and one for Eliza. As Dimitri started to bring himself out of his depression and dependence on substances, close friend Karsten Castello offered a suggestion: collaborate together and call themselves �Akin� and release an album. Since Dimitri and Karsten were two of the biggest names in indie rock, the collaboration was huge in the scene, and they ended up releasing TWO ALBUMS before Karsten herself died in a plane crash. And another date was added to the back of Dimitri�s neck.
During the inbetween time of Akin recordings and album releases, Dimitri was involved in a car accident � one that rivaled the exact one that killed Audrey Sinclair only one year before. Paralizing his friend Olivia who was driving and breaking Dimitri�s leg, the musician fell into another fit of depression that he wasn�t sure he could get out of. Dimitri credits his relationship with Kelli Vogel at that time to what helped pull him through his difficulty, and to his recovery. As they year progressed into 2007, Dimitri asked Kelli to marry him while they were in Paris promoting a record the two were going to record. She said yes, but it was short lived, soon she left Dimitri for reasons even Dimitri won�t talk about to his closest of friends, and that certainly is saying something.
The latest recording that Dimitri has released is POLITICO, an ep in which he is supporting on tour with Dayton Stroud, Victoria Hellstrom, Theo Vanderbilt and new comer Josephine Banhart. As http://www.spin.com has reported, Dimitri is due out with another album in August of 2007 entitled �He Complicates Things� and the record is looking to talk about all aspects of Dimitri�s life, spanning from as late back as 2004, and as recient as the summer tour he is still currently on. When He Complicates Things was released, it sold a record amount in the first day, bringing Dimitri Cooke back to the top of the music charts.
[edit] Discography
| As Dimitri Cooke |
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Smile Like You Mean It
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Dynamics in C Minor EP
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Night
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breakoutSTOP
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Force Is A Killer
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Coming To
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End of an Anchor EP
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Until The Bombs Wipe Out The Clouds EP
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| Out Of Sheltered Life EP |
| NAMES EP |
Slow Decay LP
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Politico EP
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He Complicates Things
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| As Akin |
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Self-Titled LP
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No Holds Barred LP
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