Grounded

The Golden Falcons’ full-court press didn’t get past the KHP.

I have bad news for anyone who was looking forward to seeing the Golden Falcons at the Brick tomorrow night: Last night, at around 3:30 or 4 in the morning, the rocking Dallas sep(or oc)tet’s van ran out of gas on the Kansas Turnpike, which, as we all know, is patrolled by marauding Kansas Highway Patrol officers. A couple of the band members set off on foot toward the next McDonald’s-controlled highway rest area (which they probably would have starved before reaching). A KHPman picked them up, offering to give them a ride. What a ruse. Once inside the pig’s car, he decided to arrest one of them for DUI (even though they were walking) and impound the band’s van and trailer.

I’m old buddies with the drummer, Jared Jackson, who said that the sorely sleep-deprived Falcons have no choice but to cut their losses, rent a car and go home today. They’ll have to leave their van and trailer in the Emporia impound yard and figure out how to come back for them later. I suggested they hold a Fuck Kansas benefit when all this over to recup their losses. As Brick owner Sheri Parr said when I told her the news a few moments ago, it sucks that bands have to go through Kansas to get here.

As far as anyone knows fellow Dallas band Max Cady is still playing, along with local act Hydrafader. For me, though, it won’t be the same with out the Falcons.

In other news, Pitch correspondant Andrew Miller went to the AFI concert Wednesday at the Uptown. Here’s his review of the show:

In a KISS-like merchandising move, AFI offers T-shirt designs emblazoned with the individual faces of its four members and personalized blood-or-love-themed slogans. (Unsatisfied with these options, one young fan used indelible marker to create her own T-shirt tagline: “I love AFI like pie!”) AFI’s Wednesday night concert at the Uptown contained no Alive!-era theatrics, though the Berkeley-based band made a striking visual statement with its snowblinding stage set-up. Not only did the goth-identified group don bleached-teeth tones, but also the drum kit and microphone stands flashed with pearly-white polish. It was a fitting, expectations-flouting display from the masterminds behind this decade’s most remarkable musical makeover.

AFI once played relatively generic galloping-steed speed punk, and it offered a brief flashback to that circa-1997 sound midway through its 60-minute set. But most of the material came from 2003’s Sing the Sorrow and this year’s December Underground, up-tempo albums with downbeat lyrics, new-wave guitar lines and group-hug choruses. Known for a grating, kicked-in-the-crotch delivery during AFI’s early years, frontman Davey Havok has harnessed his voice, bringing it down a few octaves and ditching the squealy aftertaste. He also took former Warped tourmate NOFX’s advice and called “whoa on the whoas”: Newer anthems such as “Miss Murder” and “Girl’s Not Grey” earn their singalong participation from the crowd instead of pandering.

Havok spoke less than twenty words (he closed with a concise “Kansas City…. Goodnight”), but he captivated the crowd by striking balletic poses, gazing balefully with his wide eyes ablaze, and, in the moment that clicked a hundred camera phones, walking atop the outstretched fans of his followers like a messiah on water. The high-pitched screams that greeted AFI’s entrance proved Havok already owned the ladies’ hearts, but he won a few fresh converts. After the majestic encore selection “God Called in Sick Today,” a burly bearded man with a backward cap and a hemp necklace blurted “I want to have your baby!” That’s one groupie request even Gene Simmons might decline.

Wow, that almost makes me regret not having been there. Thanks, Andrew.