One of my favorite bands from my high school/college years has reunited, at least for a handful of shows.

Rage Against The Machine played its first concert in seven years on Sunday night (April 29th) to close the Coachella Festival in Indio, California, giving the packed audience classics from all three of the band’s original studio albums, as well as a brief sample of the political rhetoric that the group was known for in its Nineties heyday. Opening with “Testify” from The Battle of Los Angeles, Rage ripped through 12 songs before the quartet encored with its signature tune, “Killing in the Name.”

Personally, I’d like to see them actually put out some new music, provided it isn’t as abysmal as the work done lately by the same guys with Chris Cornell in place of Zach de la Rocha under the guise of Audio Slave.  For those of you anti-Dixie Chicks types who think that you can’t consume music/art/movies made by people whom you disagree with politically, I don’t buy into that.  Quite frankly, I think I’d have to throw away 90% of my CD’s and DVD’s if I tried to apply that logic.  Along that vein, Rage’s lead singer picked up right where he left off.

Although singer Zack de la Rocha kept his comments to a minimum during the show, he did say during “Wake Up” that the Bush Administration “needs to be tried, hung and shot. We need to treat them like the war criminals they are.”

Sounds about right based on the content of their lyrics and the commentary provided when I went to see them in Atlanta many moons ago.  Tom Morello apparently thinks the world revolves around the band.

Guitarist Tom Morello told us that one of the reasons Rage decided to return was to speak out on the current political climate: “Is it coincidence that in the seven years that Rage Against The Machine has been away, that the country has slid into a right-wing purgatory? Hard to say. Just taking a look at the dire times that we live in and, you know, Rage was certainly the most outspoken political voice in rock music throughout the Nineties, I mean, I think it’s long overdue that, you know, Rage comes back and has a say.”

Yeah, right Tom, we’d all be fat and happy (as opposed to just fat) if zit faced kids had been able to mosh for the last seven years.

Actually, what always amused me about bands like RATM that espouse anti-authority, anti-conformity propaganda was that at their concerts the lead singer would put down the mic during the chorus of their formulaic, made for radio (i.e. made for capitalism) songs and the crowd of sheep would dutifully bleat out the words.  Between songs the singers would engage in call and return antics and the crowds, again, would dutifully conform to the singers wishes.  The irony was not lost on me. I believe that at a Tool concert I went to in B’ham (at which I had to stand in the rain AND missed Auburn’s shocking upset of Florida - still worth it, though) their lead singer, Maynard, started up such a call and return, which I thought was odd, and then mocked the crowd for complying.  Amusing.

Video of the RATM concert is on YouTube of course.

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This entry was posted by Brian on Wednesday, May 2nd, 2007 at 11:28 pm and is filed under Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Please note the copyright policy.