You are now one of us
In case anyone actually reads this and never saw Start Today #2, here is the entire AFI interview from that issue. They are probably my favorite band of the last 5 years. AOD is an untouchable record.
In other news, Start Today #4 is done and off to the printer on Monday. I'm stoked and you should be too.
ST: How are you guys doing?
Davey: Great. This tour’s been wonderful. The responses that we’ve gotten from the crowds, considering we have to play in the middle of the day, in the sun, is great. We get to hang out with all our friends; do stuff like sing with H2O, watch good bands all day. We have so many close friends on this tour with us; it’s like summer camp.
ST: What do you do all day? Are you able to go out and do “normal” things, like go to the movies?
Davey: No, by no means. This is like a micro cosmos. It’s a traveling little world. We associate with ourselves and no one else. There are like 5 days off on the whole tour. On those days off, where we’ve been forced to go into the world, it’s kinda like a culture shock. Rich and I have been talking about how it’s going to stress us out to go home and have to go back into some sort of world where we have to associate with people who aren’t on this tour. It’s kinda stressful.
ST: When this tour is over, what is the first thing you’re going to do when you get back?
Davey: The very first thing, I’m probably going to walk down the street and get a tapioca pearl drink. You probably don’t know what those are. They’re these, I think they’re Thai. They’re these fruit drinks with these little chewy, gummy beads in them.
ST: You like Thai?
Davey: I love Thai. My favorite is a dish called Pat Pe King Ja at the place that I eat that is a tofu and red spicy curry, string beans, and coconut milk. I really like lemon grass coconut milk soup.
ST: On a normal kinda tour, not the Warped Tour, do you see a big difference between east coast kids and west coast kids, the way they act at shows.
Davey: Not really. Our fans across the country are all very, very energetic. They all sing along. They take part of the show experience for the most part. A slight difference that can be seen is the circle pit is more prevalent over there (west coast) and kickboxing is more prevalent over here. There is more head walking and stage diving over here. There are some of both on both coasts. Both are rad, I don’t have a problem with any of that. It’s all great. Any form of physical expression during our shows that doesn’t hurt anybody else, is fine with me.
ST: I ask that because Fields of Fire and In Control just played here, and it seems that west coast kids are totally different. It seems that there are a lot of cliques here and Cali bands just seem to have the punk rock aspect, late 80’s kinda thing, no segregation.
Davey: Everything is that way. There is segregation within the scene, and little sub-sects and cliques everywhere. I don’t really see it too much because with a band like us, most of the shows I go to are ones we’re playing and we’re a band that doesn’t fit anywhere, so kids have to ignore whatever clique they associate with to come to our shows because we have no clique. We’re not anything. We’re not punk. We’re not hardcore. We’re not death rock, not a metal band. We’re none of those things, and we’re all those things.
ST: That seems like it would be hard to do. Not to mold yourself after any one band or genre.
Davey: It’s a risk. You risk people not coming to see you because they can’t pin point exactly what you’re doing. We’re very lucky in that people have appreciated us for what we are, not what they expected us to be, or what they think we should be.
ST: What is always in your refrigerator?
Davey: We live in a community household, so I rarely use my fridge, because there’s like 20 people using the fridge. However, I usually have stuff for my voice in there. I have juice or soy milk, stuff like that.
ST: Alan Forbes has done some of your more recent art. How did that come about?
Davey: I met his wife first. We started talking about his artwork, and she was like “oh, that’s my husband.” Wow! She said “aren’t you in AFI?” I said yeah and she said, “he really likes you.” I asked her is she thought he would do a poster for us and she said yeah. We asked him to do our album cover and he was totally into doing it. He’s great, we became friends and he’s done every album since.
ST: Are you into other modern artists?
Davey: Yeah, there is an artist named Camille Rose Garcia, whom I love. I really love her work.
ST: Have you ever seen Chris Mars?
Davey: I’m not sure.
ST: His paintings are all inspired by his brother’s schizophrenia. My favorite is “Pumpkin Killer.” And there’s this other guy, Joe Sorren. They both have a style I really think you’d be into.
Davey: Cool, I’ll check it out. I’ll see if I can find some of his stuff.
ST: Do you paint or anything?
Davey: No, I can’t do anything.
ST: So you have a Nightmare Before Christmas sleeve, why?
Davey: I love Tim Burton. I love his artwork. I love his films. The imagery in NMBC really appealed to me.
ST: I take it you didn’t get a chance to see Planet of the Apes.
Davey: I did.
ST: What did you think of it?
Davey: I liked it, and I don’t blame Tim Burton for any of this, but I don’t think it stood up to his other films. I think he did a good job for what he had to work with. I think with that premise and that movie as it stood already, there was only a certain amount he could do with it. I think it was visually really good and the ending was cool, but compared to Edward Scissorhands or Beetlejuice. It was a good movie, but it wasn’t Sleepy Hollow.
ST: What were you like growing up as a child?
Davey: Very similar to how I am now.
ST: Were you the weird kid at school?
Davey: Yeah, of course. I grew up on 1980’s video games. I loved cartoons. Anything to do with Halloween or supernatural stuff. Vampires, I love vampires. Skateboarding, all that stuff.
ST: What was your worst punishment as a child and what did you do to deserve it?
Davey: Worst punishment. This is what comes to mind, and it wasn’t even a punishment. I didn’t do anything wrong. My cousin and I were in Rochester, NY, which is where I was born, visiting family in 1986. We had tickets to go see the Beastie Boys and Murphy’s Law. I was 11 or 12. There was all the hype surrounding the Beastie Boys at that time, about how crazy or raunchy and how terrible their shows were. I come from an Italian family and my uncle forbade my aunts to bring me and my cousin to the show because of the maturity level of the show that was supposed to ensue. It wasn’t a punishment, but that was one of the worst things ever. (We getting interrupted by Kool Keith at this point.)
ST: How do you feel about the new commercialism of punk, skateboarding, all this right now.
Davey: I’m over it. There was a point that I was like “whoa”, but now it’s second nature. It’s so much in the mainstream now. Punk rock is so different than the music I grew up listening to. It’s night and day really. It doesn’t really affect me at all. I don’t listen to punk rock at all anymore, really.
ST: I never could have imagined something as big as this.
Davey: It has been going on for 6 years, so it’s just the way it is now. It doesn’t bother me at all.
ST: I just remember when skating was dying and now it’s become so huge. Anyway, what’s your reaction when you go into the mall and see your music or merchandise?
Davey: That’s crazy. I still have a hard time getting used to that. It’s really cool. It’s so awesome to go in and see my bands shirt on the wall next to Black Flag. It’s a really cool feeling. It’s neat. I remember going to stores when I was 12 years old and seeing all the shirts of all the bands that I wish I could see, and now we have a shirt up there next to them.
ST: Speaking of Black Flag, how’s it being on tour with Rollins? Have you hung out with him?
Davey: I haven’t gotten to see him yet. I have only seen him twice. He just came on this tour two days ago.
ST: So why did you decide on the name Havok and not Chaos or something?
Davey: I don’t know, it’s a stupid name (laughing.)
ST: So you’re edge.
Davey: Yes!
ST: Have you been alienated because of it?
Davey: oh yeah! Even to this day, people feel it’s necessary to joke about it or to say “when we gonna go drink a beer?” It’s like, “come on.” It’s just so tiresome at that level. Then there is the level where it’s “whatever dude.”
ST: I would like to see it become just a decision, not alienating. I can be guilty of having those militant days, and I do realize that it’s stupid, but it happens. One of the things I want to do with this zine is get punk kids to be like “oh he’s straight, that’s cool.” And I don’t want edge kids to be “fuck that dude for doing whatever.”
Davey: Trying to force someone into your beliefs is never gonna work. To me, really coming down on someone physically or verbally because they’re drinking. It’s just the same as someone trying to pour a beer down my throat, you know. You’re infringing on their own personal beliefs. At the same time, yeah I think it’d be a great word if nobody did drugs. I’d love it if I could snap my finger and make it that way, yeah I would. I’m not that passive that I’d say “everyone do what they want, that’s cool, I don’t care.” I do care, but I’m not going to push my beliefs onto somebody. If anybody would want to learn about it or talk to me about it, I would definitely encourage them, but if people want to go out and shoot heroin, then that’s their own decision.