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"Two Of A Kind"
The title was a reference to a guy we knew at the time who had recently started dating a girl who had started adopting his style of dress and mannerisms. She was basically the female version of him. It was just an observation of the situation, put into words as the title of the song. I don't know how much of Davey's lyrics reflect the concept behind the title, although there are certainly lines that could be interpreted in such a way.
"Half-Empty Bottle"
This was a song that I had written between the time that we had split up in late-August 1993 and our reformation in December 1993. It was originally going to be performed by the band I was playing with in the interim. That band recorded it, under the original title "Burn It Down", several years later along with several other songs I co-wrote - without giving me any kind of songwriting credit. The lyrics are just generic punk lyrics. The title "Half-Empty Bottle" was an obscure homage to a lyric on the first album by The Replacements that includes the phrase "half-full bottle".
"Yürf Rendenmein"
The title for this one came from a nickname that Davey and I had for a guy that we used to see at shows in the East Bay. He was a very strange looking guy. ANyway, he seemed to be at every show that Davey and I went to around that time and there was no escaping him. Even though we didn't know him and neither of us ever had a conversation with him, we began referring to him as "your friend and mine", which led us to dub him Yürf Rendenmein. Lyrically, the song is about something else altogether, which was standard practice for us then. Only in a few cases did the song title appear within the lyrics of the song. I don't know if the lyrics were directly influenced by any one person or if it was just a general thing.
"I Wanna Get a Mohawk (But Mom Won't Let Me Get One)"
This is one of the few examples where the song title is found within the lyrics to the song. The song is about Davey's younger brother, who was quite young when the song was written, as evidenced by the line "I may be in fourth grade, but I know what's going on". It was a semi-biographical song.
"Brownie Bottom Sundae"
The title for this one was Adam's idea. We were at a Denny's Restaurant late one night and on the table, there was one of those little cardboard signs advertising one of the restaurant's new desserts. This one was advertising their Brownie Bottom Sundae. Davey's lyrics for this song could be seen as the prototype for the kind of lyrics he would go on to write in later years, with various references to feelings of helplessness and despair. This was one of the first times that Davey's lyrics deviated from the earlier phase of AFI's songs, which were usually meant to be humorous or witty.
"The Checkered Demon"
This is possibly the only co-writing credit that Mark and I shared on an AFI record. The majority of the music was written by Mark, and I added a section or two to it when he was having a hard time finishing the music. Again, as with the lyrics to "Brownie Bottom Sundae", Davey's lyrical content foreshadows the lyrics he would later contribute to subsequent albums. The title was inspired by an underground comic character of the same name, by S. Clay Wilson. The progression or evolution of the title came from the tempo of the song (originally it was much faster than the album version) being so fast that someone should wave a checkered flag at the end of the song (referring to the checkered flag used in auto racing, which signifies the end of a race). So from "checkered flag" we arrived at the title "The Checkered Demon".
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