He's a nice bloke going through one hell of a rough patch.
I started writing a post, here, but none of the words are coming out in anything like the right order and I've spent ten minutes just watching the cursor blink taunts at me, so I'm afraid I'm going to rest on my laurels for a bit and just quote a post I wrote six months ago. I hope that's alright by everyone.
The man's trying his hardest, bless him, and I think he just wants two things at once. He's... not troubled, but the poor fellow does not need me making snidey comments on the internet. He's ambivalent. Wants the best for everyone but, simultaneously, can't stand not being a part of the best for everyone. Twice. That's not so hard to sympathise with, is it? Not to sound too morose but I have that feeling on a daily basis! Then to chuck a podium at the poor sod and let a thousand well-intentioned fans prod him to tell the truth until he bursts, while a thousand others tell him he's an awful person in the privacy of his own home... can anyone say with any confidence they'd be even a smidge more graceful? I'd like to think I'd be able to compose myself - it's easy to sit behind a desk and hold up a scoreboard - but honestly, I wouldn't even be able to write a single Adrenaline Mob song. Not even Psychosane! I'd just be sat at home breaking my fingers on walls.
The PR's dreadful, but in fairness, so's replaying events from a year ago in your head and trying to work out where you messed up. If he looks like he's bitter it's probably 'cos he's bitter. Which doesn't make it innately more sufferable - we're his exes as much as the band are, (and I'm happy to deliver brain-bleach for £1.00 a pop, by the way) and we're thereby just as entitled to be sick of his theatrics as he is to be hamming it up like a third year drama student. I'm ultimately on our side - I do wish he wouldn't make it everyone else's problem, but in the end we're all just seven billion idiots muddling our way to the graveyard. For every day he says something silly, there are about sixty he holds it in. That's an okay whack for something that's consumed twenty-five years of a man's life. Who can blame something as flawed as a human for not always being able to keep work and life separate? I can barely keep my pants and my head separate.
Though I will say that briefs make brilliant commando masks.
Look at the way this decade started for him. End of last decade, beginning of this one, he lost two jobs and a close family member. You never get over that. It's very easy for us, as armchair critics, to cynically play his life like a game of chess - "The correct formula to save maximum face would be to leave a 35% margin of interpretation so that the fans are not only placated but they gain the ability to project their own explanations into the blah-blah-honk-honk-smug." Not so easy when you're part of the game, because you start rationalising, and seeing other avenues, and gambling, and all that while a choir of little voices in the back of your head tunelessly blare the words "YOU'RE SHIT" at you with the cumulative volume of every messageboard assassin who's ever decided his opinion deserves to be broadcast.
An armchair critic can turn it all off. Switch off your computer and suddenly you're a thousand miles away. You don't stand to lose anything if you're wrong. Mike, meanwhile, could lose a leg, 'cos the bloody thing's a minefield. I might not always like everything he has to say nowadays, but as much as I don't envy him, I can also never really blame him. He's a good bloke in a bad situation. Who's never felt like that? I wish him all the best, and hope the change pans out as well for Mike as it did for Dream Theater. If the Flying Colors album's anything to go by, some of his best work might still be ahead of him. This split might, with a bit of luck, end up being the best thing that happened to everyone involved.
Topic: Why you don't like MP? (Read 8337 times)
