on the soapbox for a minute.

Why is it that cool bands have to turn shitty? It's almost fucking manifest destiny for a band to march from being rad

to being total fucking ass-bag tools of medocrity. I will never forget when I first saw this band. They reawakened my sense of what music could be. It wasn't earth shattereing, it wasn't really ground-breaking. It was just good music. I still get goose bumps when i listen to "god called in sick today" on headphones when no one else is around.

does this make me a goober? yeah kinda, i still get goosebumps sometimes when i hear "gettin it" too. which is super lame, anyway...

So i go and see AFI in the summer of '99 because a girl that i liked really wanted to go, and since i liked her i went with her and a group of her friends. Well most of the shows i had been to before this and been fairly big rock shows not small venue punk shows, so i didn't really know what i was getting into but they were top fucking notch even though it was about a billion degrees in the pine st theater that night. and since i wasn't 21 yet i couldn't go to the bar and get a beer (it was summer of 99).

Them playing so well and with smiles on their face and the packed crowd loving it, it was awesome, and i have seen few shows better than that show. Queensryche last winter was really good but in a very different way.

Anyway AFI quickly became my favorite band, the only problem was i couldn't find any of thier cd's. i bought one at the show, but they were little known back then, and everyday music didn't have anything by them nor did music millenium, or any of the other used cd stores i used to haunt back in those days before broadband. So i started trying to find them everywhere with no luck, until i went into 2nd Avenue records where i found the music mecca i still go to nowadays, when i want a cd i go there to get it because they have fucking everything i want, a killer metal section and a killer rap section. they know who andre nickatina is and they know who sonata arctica and rhapsody are too. anyway they had all the afi cd's i could afford as well as 7" 's too which is cool.

So after i stocked up on AFI cd's and stickers and patches to deck my shit out with. about 8 months later i started to notice kids coming into the burgerville i worked at wearing afi shirts... funny i though, those kids must be the cool kids or something, then i started noticing more and more, and they released a new record that hardley had any emotion on it at all. then they signed to a major label. and today when i went to their website for no real reason other than i saw they had a new album out. their site is all MTV this and myspace that. WTF. This was my first firsthand experience with a band really letting me down. Not like megadeth who kinda faded away and are now slowly starting to come back, or anthrax who got a new singer who is good, but it's not he same. These guys just totally changed thier style got popular and cater to the fucking hot topic kids. yuck. it makes me sick. they were on the shortlist of things to get tatooed when i was thinking about getting one back then. Thanks for listening to my rant about bands changing and selling out.

ok so look at them in the first one. their first album was a riff on reservior dogs. kinda cool, the album was answer that and stay fashionable which is a quote from Spinal Tap which is rad. what ever. then you have the second picture which is from thier website. what a bunch of fucking bullshit, look at davey havoc (2nd) he looks like a fucking girl with all the makeup and manicured nails what a fucker.