Muscian posts compositions online that target the current political scene

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By L. KENT WOLGAMOTT / GZO

Max and the Marginalized is a 21st century political band.

Rather than writing a bunch of songs and making a CD that would be outdated before it could be pressed, Max Bernstein comes up with a song every week, gets it recorded and posts it on the Internet, on both the band’s Web site and on the Huffington Post.

The latter is an indicator of Bernstein’s politics. He worked for  Bill Richardson’s presidential campaign, and his agenda is consistently progressive, lampooning conservatives and sticking it to GOP presidential nominee John McCain.

So how did the son of Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein and writer Nora Ephron come up with the idea to do a song a week?

“I was talking to somebody about how opinion columnists write a column every week, and I thought ‘Could I do that with a song every week?’” Bernstein said. “It started as a challenge. It’s hard, but I manage to pull it off every week. It’s kind of the best way to do this and stay weighed in.”

So far, singer/guitarist Bernstein has finished 42 songs and he and bassist Dave Watrous and drummer Jon Ryggy have done the music tracks for four more. Bernstein will add the lyrics from the road on the band’s month-long tour that will bring it to Box Awesome on Tuesday.

Writing political songs in the 24/7 cable news/Internet era isn’t easy, even for someone who is fully immersed in the issues and conflicts of the day.

“The speed of media has increased rapidly, and the speed of topicality is moving even faster,” Bernstein said in a Monday telephone interview. “I guarantee you in three days nobody will be talking about the New Yorker cover. I’ve gotten caught by that. I had a song written about Scott McClellan that was outdated before it was recorded. So I ended up rewriting the lyrics about (Sen. Joe) Lieberman.”

That song is called “Coalition of Turncoats,” the title reflecting Bernstein’s biting sense of humor. Another recent offering titled “It’s Awkward When Bad People Die” touched on the eulogizing of the late Sen. Jesse Helms, the ultraconservative Republican who was a thorn in the side of progressives for decades.

The names of the songs are important, Bernstein said, because that’s how the songs are born — one of the issues/events of the week forms itself into a title in his head and he starts writing. Musically, Max and the Marginalized have a few fallback sounds — Kinks-derived power pop, for one. But there’s a wide variety of rock styles in the band’s material.

Before Max and the Marginalized, Bernstein led The Actual, a three-piece post-punk band that called it quits in 2007.

“The Actual broke up for a lot of little reasons, and we still all love each other,” he said. “But there was something that felt wrong about that process. I found it very hard to sell myself to kids, to say, ‘Help me out so we could continue to do this.’ There are lots of good bands out there doing that, and we were just another good band.

“This is easier for me to do without shame. With this, because I feel so strongly about what I’m singing about … we don’t want people to listen to us so we can become a bigger band. We want people to listen to us because if enough people listen to us, it might make a difference. I know that’s idealistic and naive.”

Max and the Marginalized is calling the tour that began Tuesday “Hello America! Goodbye Money!,” an acknowledgement that with $4 a gallon gas and low pay from clubs it’s going to be difficult to break even, much less make any cash.

But Bernstein said the up side of the tour is that the band is playing all over the country for the first time, including stops in the Northeast where it has never played before. And he’s happy that there are stops in both “red” and “blue” states, even though he knows that he’s likely to run into some who disagree with his politics.

“We’ve played in South Dakota and got hissed at,” Bernstein said. “The response has usually been good, but every now and then … we play a bar in South Dakota and a guy afterward is telling me Obama is Muslim.”

Max and the Marginalized don’t just annoy right wingers or toe the Democratic party line.

The band’s first song was against the death penalty, which many Democrats favor, and two weeks ago he took a shot at Obama’s move toward the center with a little tune called “It Isn’t The Thing That I Bought.”

That song is also a sign that Max and the Marginalized will still be around after Nov. 4, regardless of who wins the election.

“Of course I want a Democrat in the White House,” Bernstein said. “But I don’t think we’re going to run out of things to sing about if that happens, especially if Obama is as disappointing as he has been the last two weeks.”

Reach L. Kent Wolgamott at 473-7244 or kwolgamott@journalstar.com.