Adam Carson of AFI
The punk rock band AFI (A Fire Inside), which got started in Ukiah in the early ’90s, tours the world now, but still plans to take time for a return engagement Jan. 15 at Petaluma’s Phoenix Theater, where the group played some of its early shows.
The show sold out immediately, but fans are still scouring the ‘Net for tickets. Meanwhile, AFI drummer Adam Carson took a moment for a quick phone chat. Here are some of his thoughts on the current pace of the pop music business:
Q: Your new album, “Crash Love,” is selling well. It still seems like you’re playing pretty straight-ahead rock, even though it’s very sophisticated in terms of production. How has your music evolved?
A: The band has evolved continually since its inception, partially because we’ve grown as people and as songwriters. What we want out of music changes as we get older. Also, we’ve become more skilled at our instruments. You know, we started the band before our guitar player owned a guitar. It was an idea before it was a reality.
Q: You’ve done eight albums over the past 18 years, and looking at the more recent ablums, they’re about three years apart. Since the time in between is spent touring, writing and recording, do you really have much time to recharge between albums?
A: No, not really, and it’s too bad, too, because the way the world seems to be operating these days, people’s attention spans are so short. It took us three years to release this latest album since the last one, and I think we might have lost some fans that way. It used to be OK for a band to go away for awhile. In fact, it used to be a good thing. When a band is played all over the radio, you don’t want to hear ‘em for awhile. Then when they have a new record, it makes it that much more powerful. But it seems like, these days, if you duck out for even one second, people are prepared to move on.
Q: Is that because people are getting their music off their computers instead of buying CDs?
A: I think so. And I think it’s just because people can satisfy any desire to hear any song and see any video. It’s right at their fingertips. If there was a band that was on MTV, you used to have to watch MTV to see the video, and you had to sit through a bunch of stuff, and get exposed to different things. Now if you want to see a video, you get on the computer and you watch it. You can watch a video 10 times before you’re over it. If you watch it 10 times in a row, then you’ve gotten over it in a day, as opposed to waiting two weeks to see it. The shelf life for everything has gotten so quick. And the turnover.
Q: Would you even want to take less than three years between albums?
A: I don’t know. I think we, like everyone else in the world, are trying to find a balance. We don’t want to rush things. We want to keep things organic. We’ve always put our art ahead of our interest in maintaining a career. Some bands are able to just put out record after record. And some bands really do still have the luxury of going away for awhile. A band like Tool could take off for 10 years, and when they put out a record, there’s still gonna be a huge fan base that wants to hear it.
