AFI, Part I:

I decided, since I couldn't think of a single thing as sufficiently interesting (as least...to me), that I would do a post, actually two, maybe three, about my seeming obsession with AFI.

I'll start by telling everyone who they are.  AFI, A Fire Inside, is a band with no particular scene, or, a least, none that I can decipher accurately.  They have been around since 1991, started as most bands do, in a garage.  AFI didn't gain international fame until 2006 with the release of their seventh studio album DECEMBERUNDERGROUND.  I heard my first AFI song, Days of the Phoenix, sometime in 2001-2002, my sister turned on MTV, I think, and the video was playing.  She was too busy to turn it right away and so we ended up watching the entire thing, for whatever she was doing I am eternally greatful.  I didn't know too much about the band and no one else that I asked had ever heard of them.  Ever since I heard that first song, what most diehard fans consider to be their best, I was hooked and have never looked back. 

In 2003 I was in the seventh grade and their album Sing the Sorrow was released.  I knew then that I had found a band that I absolutely LOVED.  I listened to them consistantly, and went and bought their entire back catalogue.  Most people, however, did not see what it was about them that was so enticing to me.  They heard their older stuff and could not see anything of value there.  Sure, there was a lot of yelling and anger, but unlike other  music of the same catagory most of their songs at the time were comical and did not express a direct desire to commit suicide, which I appreciated, since at the time there was a slew of bands gaining popularity that all said the same thing:  that they were a group of sad men that only wanted people to feel sorry for them.  (Not to say that I don't like some of these bands:  Hawthorne Heights, My Chemical Romance, HIM, The Used, all of these bands have a special value to me, I love them all differently.)

AFI, after the release of some of their later work did get a lot more serious and they did delve into their feelings a bit more, so much so, actually, that by the release of DECEMBERUNDERGROUND a lot of people were placing them in the catagory of emo bands, although I will argue against this all day.  They never, to me at least, act in a manner that would be considered as self-loathing and for this I am extremely grateful. 

One thing that I was always mad about was that they never came to NC in concert.  It was so infuriating  because all I ever wanted to do was to see them in concert, but, at the time that I started to listen to them they did not do smaller areas or even large areas where they did not have a substantial number of fans, mostly because they were not that well know and couldn't afford to play shows where they would make an acceptable profit.  And so, last year, with the release of their latest album, Crash Love, when they announced that they would be playing as close to me as Myrtle Beach I knew that I was not going to miss my chance tosee them and planned a road trip with some friends to see the greatest show of my life, except...it turned out to be the worst day of my life...

Until next time, here is a video, from 2009's Crash Love: