Pop
Are you ready?
Four stages. 50 bands. Hours and hours of pulsating, raging, rocking music. It's the Warped Tour. And it's headed this way.
By BRIAN ORLOFF
© St. Petersburg Times
published July 24, 2003
AFI
Hours in the sun sure can do a number on a boy's makeup.
Just ask Davey Havok, makeup aficionado and lead singer of AFI, a stormy, San Francisco band that defies simple categorization.
"There's things that I don't do with makeup on Warped Tour that I would do in a theater environment because it would melt off immediately," Havok says from a tour stop in San Antonio, Texas. "Oftentimes, I just omit any sort of foundation. . . . In the sunlight, the foundation tends, with the sweat, just to look really caky and accentuate wrinkles rather than just hide them.
"(I'll) maybe do some shadows, like some eye shadows and light lipstick . . . I still want to look good. I still want to look the best I can in the sunlight."
AFI fans love the band for its theatrical fusion of punk rock and brooding atmospherics; some songs gain tinges of ambient electronica and others feature cello. Fans also enjoy the band's image, which some might call Gothic. Havok says he prefers not to define it.
"We really don't care how people perceive us," Havok says. "If people like it, that's great; if people hate it, we don't care."
Havok says AFI's music tends to polarize fans because it's unlike much of the other offerings at Warped. The band, which has been together for 12 years, has recently enjoyed bouts of mainstream success.
"We have a very unique sound that really doesn't fit anywhere . . .," he says. "I have a very distinctive voice, so those two things, I think, really either attract people or push them away from us. And we're very serious about what we do and we're very honest about what we do, and that sometimes appeals to people or diverts them."
Love 'em or hate 'em, the dapper depressives are unapologetic about their music, which is heavy on the angst. But how does a band that so identifies with darkness feel about playing for daytime audiences?
"A lot of the music doesn't translate as well in the daytime, so we do change our set a little bit," Havok says. "We focus more on the heavier stuff and the faster stuff. We kind of shy away from the ballads and the more moody, the more kind of landscapey songs that we have because it just doesn't come across well in the daytime.
"It's very stripped down at Warped Tour," he continues. "There's many attempts to rock in the sunlight which is not very conducive to the rock, whereas, inside, at night, it's much more appropriate and it's just a better environment."
THE USED
Bert McCracken, 21, lead singer of the fiery band the Used, rebelled against his strict Mormon upbringing in Orem, Utah, battling homelessness and substance abuse on the path to artistic freedom.
After releasing its debut album last June, the Used, which meshes wailing guitars with McCracken's sustained yelp, amassed a steady following. And McCracken dabbled in rock star excesses.
Most famously, he dated (and broke up) with Kelly Osbourne. And he recently recovered from a serious case of pancreatitis.
On the phone from his hotel room in San Antonio, Texas, McCracken seemed to be in good spirits, perhaps a combination of the band's success on the Warped Tour so far and what sounded like a party in his room.
Some of his thoughts:
On his health:
"It was pretty severe . . . but I'm doing all right now. I'm taking care. Trying not to drink. Trying not to drink a lot, at least. Keep being good to myself." (He laughs.)
On his relationship with drugs, in light of a New York Times Magazine story that quoted him as saying he had sworn off drugs and alcohol:
"No, I never really said that. I think it was probably just printed that way. I'm high as (expletive) right now; I'll tell you the truth." (McCracken laughs.)
On the Warped Tour:
"Man, it's awesome. . . . It's our second year. We know the ropes. Last year we felt like we were kind of lost, like junior high school kids or something. But this year there's a lot of familiar faces and there's a lot of new bands that I'm stoked to be playing with, like Poison the Well and, I don't know. It's a big shout "hooray' in general. The whole tour. Summer camp. Hallelujah. Hell, yeah, for the Warped Tour. I think it's the best tour of the summer."
On Warped vs. Ozzfest, which the Used also played last year:
"There's just a more family vibe on the Warped Tour. Anyone will tell you. It's true. There's no rock stars on the Warped Tour. Everyone just hangs out. There's a barbecue every night. It's cool."
On Maybe Memories, the band's latest album:
"It's a DVD and it comes with a live disc. It was originally just a DVD, but it's cool, man, it's a show we played in L.A., a bunch of songs from that and there's a bunch of old, unreleased demo songs that we tracked in our drummer's closet of his bedroom at his house. There's a few new tracks on there. The DVD's like an hour and 45 minutes, just kind of the story of our band from then till now. So, it's cool."
On growing up in Utah:
"Everything influences you in the way that you present your art to other people and the way that you create your art for yourself. Life is pretty much the influence, so growing up in Orem, Utah, and growing up in the church is obviously a huge factor in it for me. But there's a few others in my band that weren't raised in the church. So it's a combination of a lot of things."
On fellow Utahans, the Osmonds:
"The Osmonds? Do we have any thoughts on the Osmonds? They're all pretty cute. They're all pretty hot. Actually, I used to play in a band with Donny's son, Jeremy, in a metal band called Cobra Kai . . . before he went on his mission."
On his inspirations: "Um, I've been really interested in soft-boiled eggs lately."
As a food? Or art? Or both?
"Both, of course. They're so amazing how they're halfway hard, but they're really not hard; they're still soft. They call them soft-boiled eggs because the middle's kind of soft and the outside's kind of hard. But, you know, hard-boiled eggs aren't really even that hard. They're still kind of soft. I don't know. Where do these people get it? How do they come up with this (expletive)?"
ANDREW W.K.
Andrew W.K. made quite the splash with his debut album I Get Wet in 2001. Dousing himself in pig's blood for the cover photo just proved that, well, anything goes.
His message? Loosen up!
Of the album's 12 tracks, three contain the word "party." One commands: Party Til You Puke.
And his sound? It's just as off-the-wall, shuffling between splashy disco and punk beats and tough-guy metal guitar licks.
Andrew W.K. (the initials stand for Wilkes-Krier, his real surname) projects his party-hearty approach onstage. His laissez-faire attitude translates into a rollicking free-for-all, with Andrew leading the dancing; he often invites fans to join him onstage.
But doesn't all the reveling take its toll?
"There's been a couple times when I've twisted my ankle or smashed my knee so hard I've collapsed, basically," he said from the San Antonio, Texas, tour stop. "That's happened to me twice in the last year, both times where I thought I'd have to stop playing because I couldn't stand."
Andrew is known for chatting with fans, spreading his good cheer to those he meets.
"I meet people all the time, and it's very exciting to meet people who I would never expect to like this music," he said. "I've been only so thrilled to meet a lot of, what you call, the straight-edged movement, which is young people . . . who have decided to not do drugs or drink, among other things often.
"A lot of people would be surprised to hear that they like the song called Party Hard, but the beauty of it is that this music is bigger," he said. "It doesn't place any kind of qualifications or guidelines that you need to follow to be part of this."
Andrew strives for universality in his music, stripping the personal elements from his songs.
"With this music, you don't need to understand it. You just either like it or you don't," he said. "And the beauty of that is there's a billion ways to understand it or a billion reasons to like it. So if I had to limit it down to one specific way to look at it, or one reason to feel good about it, then it would really eliminate a lot of the excitement . . . of what makes it fun to listen to."
Andrew W.K. will release his sophomore album, The Wolf, on Sept. 9. He described the album as expanding upon his favorite themes: liberation and merriment.
"This is music that's about itself and it's making itself as it goes along," he said. "Once the melody is captured and concrete enough where I can record it, I'm just going to use every instrument, every piece of recording technology and equipment, every way I know how to sing, everything that I know to make that melody as huge and powerful and spectacular as possible. . . . Because at the end of the day, that's really what this music is about."
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