Protest Band Leader's Notes From the Edge

Max and the Marginalized -- Max Bernstein, left, Jon Ryggy and Dave Watrous -- brings its political protestations to D.C.'s Velvet Lounge tonight. (Plan A Media)

Per the Max and the Marginalized songs, which Bernstein writes and sings: Bush is brutally bad, but McCain might be "Worse Where It Counts," meaning as commander in chief. And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is a disappointment, but not nearly as much as Sen. Joe Lieberman, leader of what Bernstein calls, in song, a "Coalition of Turncoats."

His songs feature few heroes but many villains. Literally: When Sen. Jesse Helms passed away, Bernstein's response was "It's Awkward When Bad People Die."

The songs are, theoretically, released every Thursday. (In reality, they're sometimes posted late -- particularly if the band is touring.) First comes the scramble to find what Bernstein calls "the thesis of the song." He writes the music and then the lyrics, for which Bernstein consults a rhyming dictionary and the Internet. "I definitely have to do a good amount of research, looking for evidence," he says. Also, he sometimes Googles for inspiration. "If I'm not feeling it, I look for stuff that'll make me mad enough to write."

Record, mix, rush-release. Punk rock!

"Ideologically speaking, this is absolutely a punk-rock band," he says. "Punk rock and blogs are the exact same things to their respective fields. . . . Blogs are absolutely to newspapers what punk rock was to Bad Company."

Bernstein's brown hair shoots both up and out, locked in a perpetual state of bed head. He is wearing a T-shirt, black jeans, hipster glasses and about a week's worth of facial fuzz.

He grew up in New York, started playing guitar when he was 5 and got into hardcore music in the eighth grade when a friend shared his collection of albums and seven-inch singles by the likes of Minor Threat and Jawbreaker. Bernstein formed a hardcore band by the name of Shelf Life in high school, then moved to Los Angeles after two years at New York University. "I just wanted to be in a band and go on tour," he says.

The Actual came together in Southern California, got management and label deals, and connected with Scott Weiland, at the time the frontman for Velvet Revolver. Weiland co-produced the Actual's album, "In Stitches," last year. "I wrote it in 2003, it came out in 2007 -- and it probably sounded right for 2001," Bernstein says.

Now, protest songs.

"It's a whole different reason for doing it," he says. "With the Actual, the obvious thing we used to keep score was how well we did with merchandise at the end of the night." These days, Bernstein says, victories are more difficult to measure. For instance: "A girl from South Dakota who is way into us just switched her major to politics." He is beaming.

About the name: Kind of funny for a band led by a guy with those bloodlines, isn't it?

Marginalized!

"I personally do not feel economically marginalized," Bernstein says. "But reasonable voices of dissent have been marginalized and pushed off into the fringe."

So, he's speaking up -- and out. The hits -- the broadsides -- just keep on coming, and will continue, Bernstein says, no matter what happens in the November election.

"We're going to keep doing this beyond the Bush administration. If some of the wind comes out of our sails as the result of a Democratic victory, I'm okay with that. But I don't really see us running out of things to protest. I just might have to look in other places."