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August 24th, 2:30 PM: I'm standing in front of my house with some friends, half-dressed and barely awake when a van pulls up. "Grab your bag and get in." My company flees as I scramble for a proper pair of pants, grab my gunny sack, which is stuffed to the limit with enough supplies to face down any problem that might present itself, and jump in. I'm on my way to see Rage Against the Machine, re-united and headlining the Battle of Alpine Valley.
The van departs, makes the requisite pre-trip stops, dropping people off, picking things up, dashing around town to pick up any last items that may have been forgotten, and hits the highway around 4:00 PM. Toll Road. Skyway. I-94. Clear sailing straight through to the great dairy state of Wisconsin. We nourish ourselves on a strict diet of Primus, Rage Against the Machine, and Tool; no room for food on this trip.
The back roads of Wisconsin are gently-rolling lanes more apt for a lazy afternoon drive than a twisted race course for hundreds of cars packed with Rage fans, rabid from the sheer thrill of watching Tom Morello, Zack de la Rocha, Tim Commerford, and Brad Wilk take the stage together for the first time in 7 years.
The last mile leading to the venue took as long to traverse as the first 130 with traffic backed up to the horizon in four directions. We entangled ourselves in one of these lines around 7:00 PM, the showtime listed on our tickets, and resigned ourselves to the inevitability of missing the opening band, Queens of the Stone Age, and started to doubt whether we'd see Rage's opening number. Indeed, the sky filled with rain clouds and poured rain on the throngs of congested fans, a bad omen on any day.
An hour later, we reached the top of a modest country hill and could see the venue. We felt as though we'd conquered Everest. and dug in for the final leg of our journey, a slow crawl through a quagmire of merging traffic, event staff, and mud-covered parking lots. But the rain stopped, the clouds parted, and what little was left of the sun shone through, giving one the faintest notion that when Rage Against the Machine reunites, even the heavens stop and listen.
Our driver deftly dispensed with the hassle of parking, dumped whatever sharp or banned items we might've been carrying, and trekked to the outside lawn of the Alpine Valley Music Theater. A lovely Wisconsin farm girl scanned our tickets and we were in. Rage Against the Machine. One night only. One Midwest show. And we were there, albeit with less-than-spectacular lawn seating, a situation that desperately needed to be overcome.
The lawn was gone. The pre-show precipitation and thrashing of feet had washed away all of Alpine Valley's turf. The scene was reminiscent of Woodstock: a hill swamped with thousands of barely-clothed bodies, caked in mud and stoned to the gills, writhing around en masse, waiting for their counter-culture icons to take the stage. But this was not a scene for civilized folk or even a journalist, for that matter. So I planted my size 13 boots in the mud, slid down to the pavilion, and prepared to do battle with event security.
A quick hop, a couple skips, and one jump later and I was in the belly of the beast, standing high and mighty on firm ground with a commanding view of the entire venue. The only thing missing now was the headlining band and they would be out soon enough. The amphitheater boomed with intermittent chants of "Rage! Rage! Rage!" and the lights dimmed as a 30 foot tall flag of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation slowly rose from the stage.
Tim runs out. Then Brad. Then Tom. Then an 80-something year old woman grabs the microphone and silences the 35,300 seat theater without uttering a single word. When she finally spoke, her voice rang out loud and clear.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to introduce the best mother fucking band in the world - Rage Against the Machine!" and the crowd exploded as Zack took the stage and opened the hour and a half long set with "Testify." The set covered just about anything anyone from veteran fans to casual listeners could have asked for. They covered all of the hits from "Bombtrack" to "Guerrilla Radio" to "Bulls on Parade" and ended the show's 3 song encore with "Killing in the Name." The only CD from their discography not represented was the cover album Renegades, but when a band reunites after 7 years, few people are likely to complain that they only played original material.
The show was punctuated with a great deal of audience participation. Hardly a song passed without the audience contributing back up vocals for Zack or even stealing entire choruses. The lowest level of the Alpine Valley Theater throbbed with the energy of hundreds bodies heaving and pulsating to the rhythm of the music. The occasional body surfer would get swept up into the frenzy and find himself carried like an electrical current through the energy of the crowd.
In all, the music was phenomenal. The energy was incredible (somehow, the four musicians on stage managed to exude even more energy than the entire sold-out crowd). But as great as the show was, it made one despair that the group ever disbanded in the first place. The absence of the band's pointed political discussion and fearless, no-holds-barred delivery of these positions can still be felt today. Rage Against the Machine was a popular, and therefore powerful, means of disseminating information and opinions that lay outside the mainstream. Whether or not any of their fans went out and started their own pirate radio station, the band exposed millions of listeners to alternative viewpoints and served as a rallying point for those interested in becoming involved with their strongly humanist ideologies. Unfortunately, since the dissolution of the band, though the individual members remained politically active in the interim, no single entity in the music industry has come close to providing the caliber of leadership or sense of unity that Rage Against the Machine offered. Hopefully, they're here to stay this time.
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