The Last Kiss

I got this from the Sept. 2001 issue of Rock Sound.

Ukiah may have the comparative glamour of being in California, but from the way AFI describe their band's birthpalce it sounds pretty much like any small town. "There's not much to do, we spent a lot of our time skateboarding and listening to punk rock-and it just seemd like a good idea to try to write the same music that we spent a lot of time listening to ," says drummer Adam Carson. "So we got instruments and started playing. There were a couple of bands in the town one was Influence 13, which Jade (AFI guitarist) was in. we played shows, one a month or every two or three months, and we'd look forward to those shows, just counting the hours until we could play. Eventaully we started leaving Ukiah, playing in Petaluma or Lakeport, a small town which was nearby. We were just super-young, with not much to do. I think I was 16... "Our first show in Lakeport, we weren't even on the bill. We just packed up our gear, drove out there and asked if we could play, and they let us. There were mainly 50 kids in the whole town that would go, and maybe once a month they'd have a show, and it seemed like the same eight or nine bands would show up to play: they were a lot of fun, this would have been about "91". "We used to put on shows, " remembers vocalist Davy Havok, "at this park in Ukiah, an outdoor amphitheatre- we and Influence 13 and Loose Change would put them on Very simial to Lakeport, and even less people would come." "We were like the shitty band," laughs Adam. "Influence 13 and Loose Change were really good -they could actually play and had decent songs!"The band put their first 7" out, all 210 copies of it, felt like they'd done pretty well, then broke up and went off to college. They tired a reunion show around Christmas '93 at the Phoenix Theatre in Petaluma, which Davey recalls as being the first time people had ever sung along to their songs, and decided to keep going- a fact for which we all may be profundly grateful. It was hardly plain sailing right away though - band member came and went, with the current line up only stabilising for '99's 'Black Sails In The Sunset'. The usual nightmares of early tours didn't escapre AFI either, as Adam recalls. "The first tour was in summer of '95 and Davey and one of the guys from Swinginn' Utters booked all these shows, and we just went and played them - and sometimes there'd be three people there and sometimes 20": and that would be a good show. But it was lot of fun, a couple tours later when we actuall figured out how to do it and do it well, things got a lot easier. I think every band has a simialr story : you do your first tour, you sleep in parks, you sleep in the van, you don't sleep at all, you do insane drives, you play in front of nobody, but it's just part of it." Davey agrees: "I think the first two, three years of touring was really really difficult -but you have to do It." Jade's own first tour was well before he joined AFI : "We went to Canada, we slept a whole bunch of people in the van, under the van, on top of the van - typical tour, I guess." Bassist Hunter's recollections are slightly different, as he announce: "My first tour was The Offspring support tour", to general laughter, before clarifying: " I mean I guess I'd done other tours, but they were real short, one week tours but my first real tour was AFI, L7 and The Offspring." Adam: "But then on Hunter's first AFI headlining tourm The Force (Hunter's other band) came with us and he played two sets a night for three weeks. So that was pretty cool." It's all a far cry from their experiences as main support to The Offspring in Europe early this year, which exposed their music to massive audiences every night, and saw AFI playing Wembley, gaining a lighter salute on 'God Called In Sick Today', another live version of which will appear on the next Nitro Records. compilation. How do they actually feel when thery're on stage? Davey: "Its just a release for me. The way I feel onstage I don't feel anywhere else, and if I didn't have it I think the rest of my time would be spent in different moods than I actually spend it. I'm not a particularly depressed person, but if I didn't have this I definitely would be. Adam,: "It's sort of ironic that the time we spend onstage venting our anger and frustration and unhappiness is actually the happiest time for me, you know? I'm really happy to be up there, yet it's that outlet to get all the bad things out. "Hunter: "I tell people that see me after we played, and wonder why I'm not jumping around and going crazy, or before we played and I'm not going off, that I tend to save up all my energy during the day for those minutes that we're on stage, and it definitely a realease, and it's a time to connect with all sides of one's emotions and bring it all together, and I don't know - I don't act the same way when I'm shopping at the supermarket - it'd be a little out of place..." Jade: "I think I'm just concentrating on music and singing and playing, so I'm pretty intense in that way. I'm concentrating on what I'm doing and performing and putting everything into it." Through all of this, AFI have spawned an extremely dedicated bunch of fans, followers and friends, people who love the band and are appreciated just as much in return. Adam: "I don't know if I can explain it, but when a kid gets an AFI tattoo - to us it's not like, 'Oh, that kid likes our band enough to get a tattoo' - it's more like. "He's a part of it, he understands us better, he's part of the family, part of the larger type of people that is in the AFI family. He's one of us." Davey: "This is someone who understands what is going on, who understands who we are, and it's great. That's really a commitment, you know? You really can't be more committed to us than that, and this is something that we're 100% committed to us, you have our respect. " Talk turns to the ban's future plans, as rock sound tries to figure out which direction the band's music will take next,. Jade says he's been thinking about it a lot , and it's going to be 'semi-different'. "I mean if it wasn't, I dont think we'd be doing our job, yue know? Not like different weird, or different way-out-there experimental, but I think good in a different way. I want to explore some new avenues if you will. I'm not going to give anything away though, it's gonna be a surprise." rock sound worries, wondering if this is going to signal another huge departure for the band. Will the music still be dark and epic? Jade: "Oh, of course. I mean we can be more dark and more epic." Davey laughs: "There's enough bands that are happy. I don't have a problem with it, I like a lot of happy bands. I think there's a place for all different types of music, that's not our style though." Jade :"It's nice to want to feel good though, but the kind of emotional thing, and I think that's the distinction - there's so much emotion in our music, and happiness is very easy." But before AFI have a chance to work on new songs, they've still got a lot of touring to do, and work on their DVD which will hopefully be out in the autumn, featuring all their promo videos to date along with live and behind - the -scenes footage from the Warped tour, as Adam explains. "We're bringing a friend with us on the tour, and he'll have his camera rolling the whole time, and hopefully we'll get some stuff that's interesting. I think there's a lot to the band, there's a lot to touring bands in general that the average listener doesn't understand. It's a whole lifestyle, a hwole culture of people that are involved in the music scene - they come together, they go on tour , and there's so much more that happens that we'd like people to know about. we hope that the DVD will give you an entire scope and -just help you to understand the band better I guess... Whatevery the future holds for AFI, it's certain to be interesting.

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