Accountability in Music • Page 1000

took me a little to earnestly process the last couple weeks in here...

so i met up with one of my best college buddies yesterday for coffee. i casually mentioned how brand new is once again touring. he brought up this show of theirs that we went to together. bn were doing this the cool-at-the-time fight off your demons cryptic website campaign thing. i'm sure some of the "old heads" in here remember this, as well as i guess the band's team (what up, turds?) that are reading these posts.

they were a big band at that point already because of deja, but they did some really small shows because they were firing up the machine before releasing tdag including one at the century lounge in providence. i guess it was post-leak but pre-record roll out. anyways, it was like, a 150 cap venue or something like that, miniscule for the following they had. but we got tickets. it was a great time, and for a long time this was one of my favorite live music memories.

but now, thinking about how we were college freshmen at this show (4/20/2006) and 27 year old jesse was hanging out with high school sophomores is so creepy. reading the driskill allegations didn't really impact me much at all, and reading the words of aiyana's article didn't do it, but seeing those pictures on the tour bus did the trick. what an absolute dirt bag. and knowing that they were on interscope and had a team around them. wow.

as a relatively new girl dad, i can say for sure i won't be letting my kid go to shows without me until she's over the age of eighteen, and chatting with dudes on the internet is off the table. so i guess thanks for that.

y'all can tour, release records, do whatever you want. but you are 100% trash. way to go. way to stain great memories. way to be scum and duck out like chumps. get fucked.

 

I know this is known but it sucks how he was able to get away with it

 

Oh

 

1000 pages, man.

 

Glad you came down on the right side, but maybe some self-reflection is due to figure out why it would take so much for you to believe the victims or why their words didn't sway you.

 

also saying you wouldn't let your teenage daughter go to a show alone isn't not victim blaming tbh

 

I see someone's back from their ban and right back to their bizarre fucking takes.

 

you gotta fight for your crown back

 

ok lol this is a bit of a stretch

 

possibly just always weary of the whole as a father of daughters thing lol

 

I wanted to follow up on the response to my article because the conversation it sparked has been both encouraging and frustrating.

I’m deeply grateful to those who’ve read it with openness and care - survivors, people in the industry, conflicted fans. It’s been heartening to see it reach those who needed it. But I’ve also seen the other, familiar response: defensiveness, denial, and a knee-jerk instinct to protect a man’s legacy over the lives of the women he harmed. This isn’t just about one person, it’s a pattern baked into the DNA of this scene.

The alt/emo/punk-adjacent world has long had a problem with hero worship. We idolize emotionally 'vulnerable' men, grant them influence, and then conveniently ignore when they use that influence to harm and abuse others (even when they make it abundantly clear in their lyrics what kind of person they are). This cycle has repeated for decades, and still the refrain is, “I wasn’t there. I don’t know what happened.” We shift the conversation to nostalgia - to how much the music meant to us - and miss the point entirely.

That’s what I’m seeing now: fans, even those expressing solidarity, trying to salvage their personal relationship to a band by turning the conversation into a debate about whether it’s “okay” to still listen. But that question doesn’t challenge the culture, it reinforces it. It centers personal comfort over accountability and reduces harm to preference.

I acknowledge the deeply human impulse to make things about ourselves, especially when we feel uncomfortable or implicated. That’s part of how we process trauma, grief, and loss. (I’ve had phonecalls this week with journalists who spend half an hour using me as their therapist to process their feelings about Brand New.) But when it comes to harm, especially systemic or interpersonal abuse, centering our feelings as fans over the voices of victims actively reinforces the very dynamics that keep abuse hidden.

When we center ourselves (our nostalgia, our playlists, our emotional attachments) we’re not engaging with the issue, we’re actually evading it. We reduce concrete harm into a matter of taste, reframe violence as opinion. That is not accountability. As we’ve seen in this very thread, it’s self-preservation masquerading as neutrality.

As I've said before, accountability is not about punishment. It asks us to examine the structures - cultural, social, and psychological - that made the harm possible in the first place. And those structures don’t collapse just because we separate the “art” from the “artist.” Music never existed in a vacuum; it has always carried the weight of who makes it, who gets heard, and who gets erased.

Again, I'm not here to shame people for who they listen to, but if your instinctive response to learning about abuse is “but what about my relationship to his music?”, then it’s worth asking: why is your emotional attachment being treated as more urgent than someone else’s trauma? Why is your comfort prioritized over someone else’s pain? Why is it easier to interrogate a woman speaking up than to confront the man who caused the harm?

These are the questions that matter to me. Please keep sharing the article and having the hard conversations. And please keep holding Jesse Lacey and his enablers accountable.

 

Yeah I mean that’s totally fair, and I agree with that point. But given the events leading to this discussion, I think it’s totally understandable to not want to have your teenage daughter alone with a bunch of men who may or may not be predatory

 

The point is the environment needs to change, not having to protect your daughter more.

 

Sure and agreed, but if you have a cynical mindset (I do) and believe the environment has no real interest in changing, then the only next logical step is to prioritize protecting who you can.

Not saying I’d never let me daughter go to a concert or whatever, but it’ll def be a conversation and I’ll be doing plenty of research into the artists and crowds and whatnot

 

Yeah this is a classic “multiple things can be true” situation where there should be less predators in music (should be fairly obviously implied), and at the same time, until that happens it’s understandable to want to supervise your kid in some situations

 

my kid can go to shows alone when she’s an adult. the environment won’t change. ask me in a year if i listened to brand new, and the answer will be no.

i didn’t not believe the victims before, but this is the first time i ever saw admissible evidence that could have led to jesse being behind bars.

i’m doing the best i can to be an ally here and support with the words / thoughts i’ve got. i’m not perfect. as you all are aware i obviously fall on the authenticity side of the authentic vs. attachment spectrum. i tried to commit social suicide years ago, so having no internet friends is nothing new. quote me and rip on me all you want! i’m trying to help.

hey brand new – get fucked

 

I'm seeing my way out of this conversation.

But none of those images are admissible evidence that could lead him to being behind bars. Just want that to be very clear.

 

Friend sent this to me today.

 

have led. not lead. it’s beyond the statute of limitations now right? he got away with it. and yes, those pictures would certainly have been admissible evidence. they alone wouldn’t have gotten a conviction, but they would have for sure bolstered a formal complaint.

 

"Lead" or "led", you said the evidence would've led to him being behind bars. That's not true. That's all I was stating.

 

i said could’ve not would’ve.

 

Really not worth arguing about guys

 

Don't worry, even I have better things to do than argue with fucking Albe

 

BN playing anywhere in WNY is a fucking choice. One of Jesse’s victims is/was from Buffalo and this entire scene, along with Rochester, was very aware of the story.

Expecting to draw in a region where the entire scene knows you’re a pedo is a wild move.