Jesse Lacey Releases a Statement • Page 10

Nice input, thanks

Not you Jason, your response beat mine

 

I will. I'm doing the best I can right now. I've been busy with life stuff every since all this news broke on Friday.

 

He didn’t own up to shit, he beat around the bush and made it about himself. Yeah let’s not flame any other sexual predator if they own up to it either, that makes sense.

 

I have made mistakes in my life that I regret because they hurt others, and in most of those cases I was too young to really grasp the consequences of those actions and I take full responsibility for the damage they inflicted on others.


But if the kind of "mistakes" u make in life are akin to Jesse's, which is intentionally and repeatedly preying on minors as a grown adult idk what ur life is.

 

Yeah this is dumb. He didn't get caught shoplifting or something. He hurt actual people when they were their most vulnerable, they weren't mature enough to even know they were being abused.

 

After some thought, it was an easy decision to stop listening to Brand New. As one user in this thread posted earlier, there are tons of good bands that do not have members as sexual predators. Does anyone in this thread have Brand New album art or lyrics inked on them?

 

I've been completely aghast and legitimately sick over this. To think that in my favorite band, my favorite lyricist, the person who is responsible for lyrics I honestly and wholeheartedly believe saved my life, could have done something like this is devastating to me. The truth is though, my feelings about this don't matter. At all. What matters is that we as a community and the scene do not condemn a woman for speaking up against her abuse and abuser because it is inconvenient to us as fans. Instead, we have to do whatever it is that needs to be done to make this community a safe place again. We do that by condemning the actions of abusers and reflecting on ourselves and calling bullshit on our own shortcomings. We need to have a dialogue because the tragedy is not that we cannot look at our favorite musician the same way again, the tragedy is that after all this woman endured she will have to go through much more by bringing this up. The internet is a cruel place. Be the voice of hope. Believe victims. I'm rambling. Just Love more...suck less.
I'll be giving away my LTD Science Fiction Vinyl.
I don't know if I'll be able to listen to brand new again.
I don't know if I'm being dramatic or if I'm making sense.
I don't know

 

I worry that there are people who think this isn’t that big of a deal.

I would drop any artist that I’m a fan of if I found out they had done something like this. It’s not about being a saint or trying to be a hero, we’re expressing ourselves because we want to make sure that we’re in a world where people who have been hurt can be safer and feel safer, and we want to let those people know that. This guy did the total opposite of that and that sucks.

It isn’t about us - the support - it’s for the people who Jesse have manipulated and hurt. And to call those people who are supportive out in the thread instead of asking or thinking, “what can we do so this doesn’t happen again?” And the fact that it had to be said over and over again in this thread and a lot others, that’s kind of bothersome.

 

He also responded with this when asked if he had any comment on the situation.

 

I do. I have album art from the first four albums along with "fight off your demons" from left elbow up and across my chest - mixed with some other tattoos.

 

I've seen a lot of posts on Reddit and other sites where people say, "why did she wait so longggg?" And this is probably one of the reasons - now is the best and "easiest" time to announce these things and have people believe. Had she released this info 2-3 years ago or even a year ago who knows what the reaction would have been, but I can almost gauarantee it wouldn't have been what it was this past weekend. We've gotten - somewhat and in a very small way - better at believing and holding people accountable.

 

Wow. Just fucking wow.

I didn't think anything could piss me off more than the news itself breaking and being a thing but hey, life can really surprise you!

I've loved Brand New since I was 15 (same age as that poor girl he abused) and I bought a copy of TDAGARIM because I thought the cover looked eerie as fuck as I dug the hell out of it. Regardless of how much of a fucking putrid stain I think JL is now and how much I hate that this is the case, that album changed my life and will always be the most album of my formative years. When I was going through the first stages of what I now know is depression that album was there for me. When I was alone and isolated due to bullying and social exclusion it pulled me through. When my mother died and I was still numb from the pain listening to "Jesus" brought the first of many bitter tears to my eyes - it still does sometimes even 5 years on. I always felt as though Jesse Lacey knew the inner workings of my soul from how his music was able to stir me the way it does.

I'm just broken here, because I know that somewhere there are victims feeling even deeper and more damaging pain than I could ever imagine or begin to comprehend. To be violated and used by someone you admire or support or believe in is just heartbreaking. There is nothing worse than having your innocence ripped away from you by a monster and those poor women will have to live with this pain potentially for the rest of their lives.

I can't honestly say whether or not I'll be able to listen to TDAGARIM ever again at this point, or any of their other albums. I haven't listened to Science Fiction yet because reasons but maybe I won't now. I just don't know about all that.

What I do know is this: fuck you Jesse Lacey. Just fuck you. You gave us all something we could believe in and that could inspire us and you've proven yourself to be a fucking snake. I hope you spend the rest of your days tormented by the shit that you've done but hey, abusers rarely learn so I doubt you will.

And to anyone wanting to defend him or call bullshit on this story: fuck all of you too. I don't have anything else to add here because people like you - the defenders and emablers - are worth as little of the shit on my shoes as the scum like JL are.

 

She did share it a year ago, but no one cared or even really saw it since she commented on a The Front Bottoms post about the tour they did with Brand New

 

The accounts written by the women Jesse manipulated are heartbreaking.

In the end, I'm thankful they've been brave enough to step forward and let us all know about the abuse they've faced. I can't imagine all the shit they're taking online from people who are trying to cut them down.

I also have sympathy for Jesse's wife. Obviously I don't know how much she knew about all this, but what a shitty situation this must be for her.

 

Yeah, I don't follow TFB's page on facebook, and even then the comment was really low on their post from last year. Maybe only 6 or 7 replies/reactions to it at the time. It's crazy how it didn't get any attention until now. Especially with a fanbase as rabid for anything involving the band as this one is.

 

Also in response to the question higher up: my girlfriend and I first met each other because of Brand New. It's our favorite band, we have a record player room with 7-8 pieces of BN related art, and tattoos. This weekend has been tough; we've probably spent at least 7 or 8 hours talking about this.

At the moment I think the two of us have (for now) come to the consensus that: the music has changed our lives for the better and shaped us into who we are, and that cannot be undone. It will be quite a while before we put on a Brand New record again, but I believe we will. There is a family of hard-working musicians, people involved with production, etc. that went into making the band what it is, beyond just Jesse, and for now I have not heard anything that makes me believe any one of them enabled or even knew about this. Some people may consider these people tainted forever from their association with this, but at this time I don't think I will see it that way. That's my (current; subject to change) stance though. I do not begrudge anyone who feels like they can't listen anymore. That's your right.

As far as my connection with the music itself on a personal level, I expect I'll be able to return to it one day and not feel sick over it. I still listen to David Bowie, The Beatles, and Fall Out Boy, and I don't think doing so is a sign of support for some of the really awful, predatory acts that have been committed by those artists. Sometimes people are complex and that includes having the capability of both doing pretty awful shit, as well as creating something extraordinarily beautiful that connects with millions. If we went back and purged the world of all art created by artists guilty of hurting/manipulating others, I think we'd be worse off.

That being said, my girlfriend and I do agree that Jesse Lacey is a piece of shit. I don't want to hear any more from him unless it's a statement that he is privately reaching out to his victim(s) to take ownership, apologize, and attempt to make things as right as can be possibly made. I guess that's my final word on all of this.

 

That last paragraph hits it on the head. I can only imagine he was upfront about cheating once finally caught to her, but I can guaren fuckin' tee he didn't tell her there were multiple girls that were 15-17. That's probably going to be the straw that broke the camels back. At this point his wife is just as much as a victim of manipulation, and that piss poor excuse of a press release was just another piece of manipulation lobbed right at her

 

My random/drunk 2 cents (i'll likely regret this post):

What Jesse did is absolutely terrible, and I hope everyone he hurt is able to get the support and help they need to overcome this. With that said - what can someone who messed up this bad ever do to try and fix things/make amends to those he wronged/earn back our trust? Do we really live in a time where we think that what you do 15 years ago is an accurate representation of the person you are today? Do we not learn from our (massive) mistakes and try to fix things? (15 years ago me was a piece-o-shit, and 30 yr old me doesn't remotely reflect how that kid acted)

The tough thing for me is that the music made by Jesse (AND THE OTHER MEMBERS OF BN) has had a huge impact on my life. It's gotten me through some super tough times, and has a huge emotional value to me. Science Fiction resonated for so many reasons I don't want to get into..... but now I'm supposed to throw it out due to the things Jesse fucked up 15 years ago?

(sidenote: boycotting a band you love is super shitty for the 3 other members that were, as far as we know, not being pieces of trash...... not like they have families to feed or anything)

 

Is anyone else all that surprised by his past? The main reason I never enjoyed Brand New was due to their creepy ass lyrics that I could never personally vibe with. You can’t write stuff like he has with such conviction over the span of multiple full length records without having the real life experiences to back it up. The creepy edgelord shit he’d sing of was always a turn off.

 

I mean I deeply related to the lyrics but I would never do anything like that

Plus lyrics don't always come from true experiences

 

guy with "nutsack" in his username and a dick avi calling someone an "edgelord". right.

 

There's a big difference between being an asshole 15 years ago and sexually manipulating an underage girl. Also consider that he hasn't really been held accountable for his actions until this point and that he didn't even acknowledge her age in his statement. This comes nowhere near close to "learning from a mistake".

 

Yeah it’s almost like some harmless dumb joke name and avi isn’t the equivalent of a sexual predator. Are you familiar with the concept of having a little fun? If you could refute my actual critique instead of insulting my purposely dumb name that would be cool.

 

You just compared 30 year old self to your 15 year old self. He was 26 and older when he did these things. So he was well into adulthood. And think of it like this. 15 year old self is indeed different from 30 year old self from the years of experience and knowledge. Now imagine the how the few that we know about that were 15 and 17. It's 15 years later and it took them being dragged through years of emotional abuse to realize how fucked up it was. He made these relationships last for years as well. The way the 3 stories that have come out so far read is that he esstentially kept them in a draw like a toy and played with them when convenient for him and then put them back in the drawer once he was done playing til the next time he had the urge to play

And once again ages 15 and 17 are the ages of the two girls. Sober up and leave your two cents with a clear head