Maxim Mental

We regret to inform you that unfortunately due to a family emergency, we have to postpone our tour. New dates will be announced very soon. We apologize for the short notice, & any inconvenience. All tickets will be honored at the rescheduled dates & we hope to still see you there!

Vinyl preorders go up this Friday, including a retail exclusive, & Dine Alone exclusive variant.

https://maximmentalstream.com/maximalism

The debut album from Maxim Mental (Max Bemis of Say Anything) is out in 2 weeks!! Pre-save the record on Spotify or Apple Music now for your chance to win a signed test pressing! https://maximmentalstream.com/maximalism

https://maxbemis.bandcamp.com/track/angeles-de-los-angelinos

Angeles (Los Angelinos)
Demo by Say Anything, Post Oliver, Pre Pandemic

Since we're auctioning off the art for Say Anything's first record today, I'm reminded of how birthed from the belly of the beast called L. A the entire aura of that record is. One might argue the very DNA of the band itself smells like a Fairfax alleyway.

In honor of that, I figured I'd finally share a recently discovered demo I recorded right before my band called it a day, a cover of my favorite L. A song not called "I Love L.A", which I'll dedicate to the man who birthed it from the steaming maw of a genius, Rob Schnapf.

Rob has sheparded the creation of many of my favorite records and, along with being a cranky genius of his own right, is a voice for positivity, kind intentions and "realness" in a town full of liars and thieves, I mean, uh, palm trees and whatnot... Coke. People do coke a lot there.

Watching my wife bravely destroy her demons in an inspiring bid for sobriety has helped me define myself as someone who will always be in awe of a true innocent. I believe Rob is awed by them too (I wouldn't call him one though), and how disgusting it is when that innocence is exploited for the gain of a self perpetuating, self destructing machine. I was born in New York but I was carved out and destroyed and rebuilt by L. A before I was even legal, enough so to write a debut LP about how the process of doing so was like living in the Truman Show.
Thus, all the evil I have witnessed within the creative industry is less surprising to me than a bitter reminder of why I wage war, fuel for a punk rock anger problem I still struggle with.

I sang this for Sherri and Elliot ( and Aimee Mann, who I'd be an idiot not to credit for the intro and making me cry every day for three years).

I am but a tumor on the discography full of beautiful voices Rob has mixed tight doubles for in his dank, wonderful East L. A Sound Cub. The best of them, like Elliot and my wife, remind jaded folks like me that some people just like to sing and we should allow them that innocence without expecting them to be as broken as the rest of us... They deserve their wholeness and we deserve not to lose them. . Also homie did that new Joyce-Joyce and it's tight AF.

-mm

Angeles (De Los Angelinos), by Say Anything track by Say Anything

Next Mental Monday we'll be doing something a little different to give back, while giving you an opportunity to own cool memorabilia, something silly, or a piece of Say Anything / Max / Sherri Bemis history. From backstage passes, rare posters, test presses, to signed microphones, original art, & so much more!

Guys, this is my contribution to the pantheon of sick-ass poignant Instas snapped during a moment of emotional crisis, thus calling into sus how much of a crisis it could have been to allow oneself the thought "yo I should snap this priceless s**t right the f**k now while these tears remain leaky and effervescent."

To be fair, there was a reason for it; i felt it appropriate and surreal because I wrote a song about not killing yourself and it is my fav song on my new Maxim Mental album. It is both weird and not at all weird that I find myself weeping the day the world first hears it; these days I do cry...often to "These Days"

Anyway, please listen to it and know wanting to not have to deal with the exhausting cycle of joy then no more joy and then joy again is totally something we all feel.

If someone asks you "r u ok" in what is clearly a sadistic tone... f**k no, dude. Nobody is okay. That's why the Way brothers returned, and that persists past any false promise of normalcy that the end of a hard time provides.

The truest joy is in knowing you can still feel love and sadness at all and are not some sellout ass tool. Normalize wanting to not be alive and you'll not want to full on die. Just keep trucking towards joy, which can be followed out of the dark, like my snuggly daughter next to me who additionally helped save Moon Knight when he was battling that Sun Cult and hallucinated her face in order to muster superhuman punchies.

After receiving a solid hug from my wife I am now out of said minicrisis and ready to post about my pro-choice, life-posi jam "Grace Beyond Christ" coming out today 4 all u Prideful Juners.Title refers to my lady's brand of sexually charged grace. That which dwarfs that of both Jesus and Grace Kelly (with or without wings)

She'd give a dog a bone.

Since my awesome and by all accounts butch assistant Sean, who is staying at our house, probably just heard me cry, that's actually kind of cool given he has no doubt cried at some point to my own emo music;
Thus my crying may have helped him know that I in turn ... am also emo.
We all have the ol 'motions (can I start a subgenre called motionscore?)

You got this.

MM

https://youtu.be/SFO5AWjd-jI

Maxim Mental - Grace Beyond Christ (Visual Accompaniment) Maxim Mental debut album 'Make Team Presents Maxim Mental in Maximalism' is out July 8. Stream Grace Beyond Christ: https://maximmentalstream.com/GBC Follow ...

Catch Max out on the east coast this July & the west coast this August!