I am excited and honored to offer you another stellar, fan-in-the-pit, firsthand Blood Tour experience. I’m as excited as Davey in this picture.
I know–that’s pretty excited.
Anyway, read on to join intrepid reporter and total babe Aja (aka crhiscornell) at the Minneapolis show!
On January 28, we saw AFI play in Denver, CO.
It was the most unbelievable and perfect experience of my life, so I’m having trouble figuring out what I can even say about it that’s objective and worth reading and isn’t just me, you know, smashing the keyboard and screaming. (That’s right. My purpose here is to Create Journalism. To Journalize. Everything contained in this entire Javey Truther blog is objective and worth reading.)
If you’re seeing them and don’t want any setlist spoilers, turn back now, because below the cut there be spoilers and REAL PUGET BLOOD! My sources (and, like, the internet in general) tell me there is a good deal of variety in the setlists for this tour, the fact of which alone I could fill a post about (THEY’RE ENJOYING BEING A BAND AGAIN THEY’RE SO BEAUTIFUL TOGETHER AAAAH), but you deserve the choice. So, more about my experience after the break!
If you want some Javey and band-in-general feels, spoiler-free, let me direct you to this truly fucking incredible interview, in which the band–not just Davey, folks, the other guys even speak–do a nostalgic backstory for each of their 10 albums, or this one about the band staying together forever and ever and ever and ever. Continue reading
Last night, a clip of Jade appeared, filmed so tenderly I was surprised we were allowed to see it. It was just… really loving camera work. (And the song clip! GUYS! I am so excited about the SOUND!) It has been a long time since we have seen Jade depicted through a lens of kindness—of anything but scorn and indifference at best and murder at worst. The Anointed video was astonishing for the same reason: it showed us a Jade who didn’t die, wasn’t substituted by a Murder Girl, a Jade who ended up on the same side of the narrative as Davey at the end, when they enter the Queer Matrix and presumably live happily ever after, with heteronormative expectations exorcised.
What I want to talk about today is white. By my count, Davey references the color white on six notable occasions (Girl’s Not Grey, The Great Disappointment, On A Friday, Fade to White, Down Here, and The Face Beneath the Waves). Some of these references pack more metaphoric punch than others; he also frequently references paleness, light, fading, and clean/dirty parallels that certainly intersect with his usage of white. I’m going to frame my exploration around the song Fade to White, which is one of the more impactful instances, for all that the word doesn’t appear in the lyrics themselves.
(Here’s the song clip released last night that I’ll be referencing.) Continue reading
Post Pretty Precious Stone-Gate, I have begun reading the sequences of “oh my ____,” “my ____,” and even “oh _____” as addresses to Jade. Not because this is what Davey intended (or did he???) but because this is obviously what I have chosen to devote my life to and I’m not going to do it halfway. (Sorry not sorry.) Anyway, there are certainly a form of address to SOMEONE/(s), and I believe this to be meaningful. We see a lot of these addresses in Blaqk Audio in particular, which you can read my theories about over here. Here’s a catalogue of these instances:
Can you…?
AFI: 37 mm, Third Season, Greater Than 84, Medicate
BA: Bitter for Sweet, Semiotic Love, The Fear of Being Found
Will you…?
AFI: Ever and a Day, Too Shy to Scream, Now the World, Morningstar
BA: The Witness, Cities of Night, Bon Voyeurs, To Be Alone, Black at the Center
Tell me…
AFI: (Kiss and Control), Cold Hands, Face Beneath the Waves, Medicate
BA: Bitter for Sweet, (Mouth to Mouth), Wake Up Open the Door and Escape to the Sea, The Switch, Anointed, Black at the Center
Please.
AFI: Dream of Waking, The Missing Frame, Synesthesia, Sacrilege
BA: The Love Letter, Between Breaths, Wake Up Open The Door…, Mouth to Mouth, Down Here
What are some other recurring Davey pleas that I’m missing? Hit me up!
Tonight, In the Whispers 