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.

Monday, April 14, 2008

Blog is the new punk?

Just read this nice bit at Attackerman about the similarities between blogs and punk.

A parallel I wholeheartedly embrace! Except, alas, it only works in theory. The hardcore scene that gave me succor — full of boys with Abe Lincoln beards and girls who steal soy milk from the campus cafeteria — is, alas, ridden with Luddites. You’d think that blogs would mean the end of zines, since they cost nothing to produce and are vastly more efficient to distribute, but in the final issue of HeartattaCk, there’s an attack on blogs as inauthentic and soulless. I know the CrimethInc kids have an uncomfortable relationship with blogs, something that has a lot to do with their off-the-grid anarchist politics. Plus you can’t place a stack of blogs at your merch table next to the go-vegan pamphlets and DIY-tampon instructor kits. If blogs are the new punk rock, is punk rock the new Emerson, Lake and Palmer?


Punk came along at a time when there were too many gatekeepers protecting a form of music that had become irrelevant, but dangled access to distribution too high above the heads of kids with more soul than training and 'cause them to look for another way. If that's not what blogs are than I don't know what is, and I always like to say that it's why I don't really plan on having Max and the Marginalized "graduate" from the blogs to some more formal means of distribution.

So what about blogs as punk? Obama-ites and Clinton-ites fighting one another like rudies and punks on the west coast and in England, hardcore kids and punks in the east, while the other half sings loudly for unity in the scene, declaring that too much infighting will destroy the greater cause? Is Arianna Huffington Greg Ginn (or is Kos?) Is this totally stupid?

Anyways, I'm in that Democrats and Progressives united front:

1 comment:

-blessed holy socks, the non-perishable-zealot said...

Got bawls? Most of U.S. don't. Read the signs of the times! God's a concrete, kick-ass reality!!

GOD BLESSA YOUSE -Fr. Sarducci, SNL