Welcome to Max and the Marginalized's page/blog, etc. We are a political band in Los Angeles. We write and record a new song every week (as of this writing we've been doing this for 32 weeks straight), always about something that week which we find worthy of our protestations. All the songs are available for download right here.

The idea is simple, really. How can bands claiming to want to make a difference write a song about, say, ending the war and then hold on to it to make a perfectly polished recording of it for their album which will come out in a year, secretly and shamefully hoping the war lasts until then so their song, marketed properly, will still be relevant?

We don't have any interest in that. We write songs about things that are happening now, record them, and release them with the hopes that they can be a small part of a big conversation that leads to real progress.

All of our songs appear on The Huffington Post with little blogs accompanying them explaining what they are about. Those can be found right here. We are also on MySpace like every other band in the universe, but are trying to move the operation to the non-Murdoch world at our Facebook Page.

Lineup: Max Bernstein - guitar + vocals. Dave Watrous - Bass. Jon Ryggy - Drums. Our friend Max Waker is a recording engineer and makes cartoons.

Saturday, March 8, 2008

New song - Mathematics of the Dead

The idea of that last blog is fleshed out in rock song!

This week's song is about the mathematical problem with the war leading up to the election: the fewer casualties we take in the months before the election (and of course I'm all about fewer casualties), then the more likely it is that John "100 Years" McCain gets elected, which means the war lasts longer, which means we take more casualties.

It's like that anti-drug commercial from the early 1990s of the yuppie in his office staring up after doing a line saying "I do coke... so I can work longer... so I can make more... so I can do more coke... so I can work longer... etc."

Enjoy Mathematics of the Dead.




Mathematics of the Dead

Paint a picture by the numbers
Ink the sky in synthetic blue
Strategize statistics much too good to all be true
Keep the count declining
Mushroom clouds have silver linings too
For you, the battlefield and the ballot box are two
Sides of one bad equation
One life saved is two dead later on
In 100 years of John, carry the 1, carry it on

On and on, manipulate the space between the X and Y
Cross out all those T's and put those dots on your I's
A calculation simplified enough to wrap my head
Around the mathematics of the dead

A manufactured downtick
No it isn't too far-fetched to grasp
A tiny children's band-aid on a gaping gangrene gash
Bring out the substitute
Send more boots and pull them back to base
These figures look good on their face
Run them in place, run them in place, just in case

Manipulate the space between the X and the Y
I'm crossing all my fingers with the wool on my eyes
A calculation simplified enough to wrap my head
Around the mathematics of the dead

My oh my, it's very temporary just a matter of time
And I wish that I wasn't skeptical enough to roll my eyes
At statistics ever-tilted by design to stay ahead
Beyond the mathematics of the dead
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