Say Anything Band • Page 102

It's how I work.

 

Yeah that’s an insult….to the dead.


Sorry

 

When he's blocked, I'll rest.

 

If Max has enough money to get his car washed 2 times a month in this economy maybe he is doing better than we thought.

Gonna have to process this for a bit.

 

We don’t know how much he gets paid. Or what they get paid with.

 

That's fair. It's also unclear if he goes to a car wash or they come to him.

Gonna need more info honestly to make a final determination.

 

Good thing we have boots on the ground already

 

These guys are such a naturally good fit

 

When I listen to The Dangerous Summer I just feel like they are rewriting songs they already wrote and they're not as good as the one's they wrote before. Max feature actually is pretty cool on this one but the song is pretty boring overall.

 

I accidentally listened to the version of this song that didn’t feature Max, and it was fine.

Then I figured out my mistake, and the Max-featuring version was like 10x better. His part is fun.

 

Came across this thread after Googling "Billy Zane shot himself"

...so that mystery was solved. I've not seen Titanic since I was dragged to the theater 7 times to see it when I was 10.

I am going to the first of the shows in LA next month. SA has been too massive a part of me coming to accept my BPD and learning to get help and to grow. Say Anything and Max (through Song Shop Songs) legitimately at some points were the only thing that kept me from self deleting while I learned how to live with my illness.

My take is - without discounting anyone else's feelings or acting like I know anything - this:


It's difficult to be mentally ill. It's even more difficult to be mentally ill partnered with someone who is also mentally ill. Being mentally ill and in "the public eye" adds another layer of things on to it. Add in a kids and it becomes exponentially more difficult.

I think that at a certain point it became obvious that Max was looking to move into something new, and he got the opp to do comics and that became his obsession. Obsession for people with Bipolar (and for me BPD) is very different than what neurotypical people generally feel it is.

As an example - I obsessed over a 4 year relationship for 7 years. Literally every moment of every day for seven years it was there. No matter what I was doing, it was there, poking at my brain and at times causing physical pain.

What I think is that obsession alienated people and that is how SA became Max only. That let him run the course on what was left and after idtii (which I still think is a good album) when he was alone, with some cash and everything seemed good, decided to try and jump to something new.

Some successes carried that for a while, but good times can't prevent a mental disability from disabling someone.

The pandemic had an effect on all of us, and some more than others.

The Bemis' have a big family and I think that the mental effect from it isn't acknowledged enough. Think about how both of the Bemis' made their money. Now remember what I said about mental illness. Impulse control issues are pretty "to be expected" for those with these illnesses. I've been a binge eater, serial fuckboy, drunk, pill popper, cokehead, gambler, workaholic, and about a dozen other things that would be categorized as addiction if not for that the fact that the addiction was always rotating.

Max snorting pills, serial juuling, and all the things that never made its way public tell me that times got tough and cycling started.

It was obvious that money was getting tight two years ago when Cameos, workshop sessions, clockwork song shop cycles, and livestreams every month became the norm.

There was likely money borrowed from family, tensions created, things said, arguments had, and ties cut.

I am not going to even pass judgement on them as parents. I don't know the first thing about being a parent, and I am still pretty sure that I don't want to have kids. It's not my place. From what I saw when I was more obsessive a decade ago, the Kings seemed like a very tight-knit family. Families gossip. They talk shit. Sometimes it ends up in rifts forming. I didn't talk to my brother for a year because he said something that infuriated me. Remember, there is mental illness at play.

I am in the snark sub, and I see the threads on Reddit. I read through this entire thread here and this is the only place where I saw some civility, there is still only 2 takes that I'm seeing prevalent:

1. Max is an egomaniac and went full unhinged on Psyche! and should be sued (for…some reason?).
2. Max has essentially gone fully insane

I posit that it's as simple as things got hard, some family drama has happened/continues to happen, and we've watched it happen.

It doesn't (and I am not) defending anything. At all. I've read some things that have made me feel uncomfy.

BUT Shit talking is something that Max has done on every SA album. The outro of Psyche! might have been a bit across the line for some. I heard it, and it felt in line with the lyrics across the rest of the song.

This is already a novel, but read the lyrics. The entire thing is a diss track:

- Max is married to Chad Gilbert's ex wife
- The stolen band members thing (I know Kenny from Moneen was playing guitar for the last few years SA was touring)
- "I got away with destroying my lover's true life" sounds like a referential quote

Referencing Darren is sharp but not uncommon, and Max started that part referring to Dr. Dre. Maxim Mental was essentially his rap album.

The song was written over a year ago, they continue to have deals with labels and stores which are pushing vinyl pressings. It maybe crossed a line but take the vibe of every lyric in that song. It's intentional.

Max has some real shit going on in his brain but he is undeniably also intelligent. I am not saying this is the case but I wouldn't be surprised if the discourse and controversy was him realizing he could use all of this to his advantage just like he literally always has.

 

Okay now do the part where he raped his wife

 

Yea, I’m not reading all of that. I read a bit and from what I gathered it was giving him a pass on it all because of his mental health. As someone who also struggles with their mental health, I say fuck that. Just because it can help explain why people do things, doesn’t mean you get to just blame it all on that.

 

It's 100% not a pass.

I get it, it's a long and, I admit, stream of conscious post.

It is not a pass at all, and I think that criticism is valid.
I am admittedly conflicted, but ultimately it shouldn't be so surprising that the person who has released like, 100 songs which highlight their mental illness is in fact, mentally ill.

Did people think that Spores or Vexed or any of Oliver Appropriate was just a character?

Not rhetorical, I thought it was pretty obviously true to life.

 

I am not familiar with this.

I am not defending him in my post and I assure you that I will not defend that.

Where can I learn more about this?

 

I also didn't hear about this.

This is horrifying if true.

 

Also, ultimately this is the the only thing I said that was relevant to the actual conversation that went down about Psyche!:

 

Lack of character, lack of accountability has nothing to do with mental illness.

Enjoy the music if you want, stop giving this guy the time of day. You're not going to find psychological reasoning here. I once considered him a Bipolar hero to me (he's the reason I looked into my own illness) but he is not that.

 

There are actually zero reasons to go this hard defending a stranger. I’m not going to use lyrics as some sort of insight as we have no idea what words are genuine thoughts or played up due to being in a song.

You can still listen to the music if you want. But based on all that’s come out, writing an essay defending him as a person is a massive waste of time.

 

You're correct about that. I know that first hand.
I feel that it would be tactless to try and edit or justify my original post.

I'll just say that I focused a bit too much on posing my theory of the way things have gotten to where they are and how the lyrics of Psyche! really shouldn't be surprising and not enough on saying that mental illness doesn't excuse.

I may have come across defending but I was trying to approach from a neutral position, and I think I failed at that.

 

I’m not reading that. I haven’t heard the song and I have no plans to. After his two part rant earlier this year where he just put all his wife’s shit out there and said some gross stuff about her, I have zero desire to support him in anyway.

 

I am not defending. I did highlight that a couple times in my post.

without seeming as if I am backpedalling, my intent was more to try and pose a neutral and personally honest position.

 

I've not seen that. I suppose I need to do a bit more research.

Not trying to stir shit though for real

 

Life tip: don’t write essays defending someone who has done some bad shit for a while in recent years and not be up to date on things. This just doubles down on it being a massive waste of time.

 

You didn't read it.

I wasn't defending.