AFI - Manchester Apollo - 16.10.06

15 years in the game yet for the first 10 minutes of tonights set they emulate Justin TImberlake, 5ive and the choreograhed jumps of Busted. A counterpart to My Chemical Romance's The Black Parade, a backdrop of snowy white innocence is fitting for a band who from a distance look even more fashion conscious than the Lostprophets and up close look as old as Twisted
Sister.

Designer Magazine is ashamed to know we know little of AFI's backcatalogue past the obvious "Miss Murder" single, but it's easy to see why they're a dominating force on the rock scene with anthem after anthem. Often said that this is the band Gerard Way wants My Chemical Romance to follow in the footsteps of it's hard to imagine any other band on the rock scene that
remains as vital and omnipresent as AFI and while the odd audience member has been hear from day one most of tonights predominantly teenage audience have found out about the band from illegal downloads on peer to peer systems.

We came as mere voyeurs and by the end of it we were firm fans of the band, but songtitles we couldn't name but one. By the end of it 20 zillion songs have been played, each raising the bar higher than the last one and unlike other bands who simply have one single which towers above the rest, which each AFI song your struck by wonderment of each successive song that the
memorybanks simply can't recall the last musical high.

As you can see from the photos below it was a glorious gig, but if all Designer Magazine readers could let us know their Top 3 AFI songs on the message board and why we should start there we can compile a list of the great AFI songs ever

Alex McCann
Photos: Shirlaine Forrest www.shirlainephotos.co.uk

*****************
Click here to leave your thoughts on this article on the Message Board
(NB: The message board opens in a new window so please disable your pop-up blocker to view)
*****************