AFI’s Davey Havok Isn’t Big on Twitter, Misses Record Stores

Since the advent of file sharing and the endless stream of sites that rose in the wake of Napster, record companies have been scrambling to figure out a way to catch up with all of the technology. It's forced many to get creative with their marketing efforts. On Sept. 29, AFI will release 'Crash Love,' the California combo's eighth studio album.

If you weren't already well-versed on the cult of this band, AFI enjoy the kind of devoted fan base most of their peers would kill for. For our older Noisecreep readers, imagine the Kiss Army and the Field Club rolled into one, and that's the type of dedication their fans have. To help spread the gospel of the band's upcoming album, AFI have successfully been using the internet and platforms like Twitter to distribute their message. Noisecreep spoke with vocalist Davey Havok to get his take on the way technology has affected the way we find out about music.

Since you came of age during the time of tape trading and vinyl, I wanted to get your take on the technology side of things. Do you think the immediacy of information and music distribution has affected things in a negative way?

I see it mostly as a positive thing, but it's not perfect. New media allows for music to be traded among passionate fans, so that's great but there are the obvious minuses to the technology. It's so easy to get music now and in the process some of the importance of the culture is lost. Like you said, when we were younger we went to record stores to buy new music. There's something special about that interaction you make with other people when you go to a cool little record store and get turned on to new music. It's that loss of culture that I think people are missing out on and it sucks.

One of the key marketing aspects for the 'Crash Love' campaign has been the Twitter "tweet to reveal" promotion. How much say did you have on that?

To be honest, I didn't really have anything to do with that. We have done some really cool promotions throughout the years that I have been involved with more. But with that Twitter thing, it was more of the label and management running it and all that. We actually did a cool contest called 'Begin Transmission' that the band was very involved with that was a lot of fun.

So you're not really big on the Twitter thing?

No, not really man. I mean, it's OK but I just don't really use it or anything. It's an interesting way to share information and all of that but I'm not on there. The label's marketing department were on top of that for our promotion which is cool because Twitter is obviously big right now.