Rage, Reunion & Revolution

by Stephen Tringali

This year’s Coachella Music & Arts Festival is going to be big for one specific reason, and that reason should be pretty clear now that it’s been more than a week since The Los Angeles Times broke the news: Rage Against The Machine are reuniting to headline the final night of the three-day alt-rock festival.

I waited this long to address the news because I was hoping for some kind of development, some kind of additional agreement made by the ‘90s rap-metal gods that might just provoke more excitement than their reunion did.

But nothing came. No U.S. tour in the works. No new album slated for 2008 release. No talk of abolishing Audioslave or of Zach de la Rocha abandoning his curiously unproductive solo career. Rage is sticking to their initial announcement, a reunion that will remain intact for one show and one show only.

For a fan who wasn’t old enough to appreciate Rage during their active years and only discovered them in his senior year of high school, this is incredibly disappointing news for many reasons, the least of which being that I cannot possibly fly out to California and witness their one live performance.

The most disappointing news, in fact, is that Rage is not taking the stand that it should amid the current political environment. If the band found so much to bemoan during the comparatively peaceful years of Bill Clinton, imagine what they might produce with President George W. Bush standing in as inspiration.

I’m seeing a sun-drenched Coachella audience chanting the chorus to “Killing in the Name” with so much ferocity that Homeland Security raises the terror alert level. I’m imagining a “Bulls on Parade” romp so loud it cannot be heard, only felt. But deflating my optimistic imagery is the picture of an American nation accepting Rage just as it did in the ‘90s — by head banging to the hard rock and not by heeding to the heavy rhetoric.

I must admit to falling under that category. I like Rage’s music as much as the next person, but listening to de la Rocha’s political bark isn’t going to push me any closer to embracing The Revolution. What his controversial lyrics did do, though, was give the band’s music a genuine potency.

That’s much more than what can be said for Audioslave’s vocal work. Honestly, who can hear the sincerity in Chris Cornell’s voice? Please, if you can, explain the secret to understanding it so that I can stop wondering how one terrible lyricist could tame some of the most incendiary instrumentation of the past fifteen years.

Even if a full blown Rage reunion wouldn’t set the nation’s collective conscience aflame with new questions and new demands, they could potentially solve a problem addressed earlier on this blog in Rick Rockwell’s “The Paltry Anti-War Songbook on Iraq.” We can only hope that this upcoming Coachella performance will lead the band to reconsider their reunion promises.

Update: For the latest on the Rage reunion, please see, "Resurgent Rage Means Adios to Audioslave."

(Promotional photo of Rage Against the Machine from Sony. To see Rage performing "Killing in the Name" please see below.)



Rage Against the Machine
Rage reunion
RATM
music
rock music
Add to Technorati Favorites


Subscribe in a reader