Caught in the Act

___The crowd was in a hostile mood--- and it was still more than two hours before Rage Against the Machine was scheduled to take the stage. Black-leather-wearing skinheads strolled across the arena floor jostling anyone that dared stand in their way. Tough-looking bikers stood their ground, openly smoking marijuana and taunting the near-by police. At the same time, long-haired kids holding up a variety of politically relevant banners, ranging from "Save the Rainforest" to the ever-popular "Che Guevera, Si! Bill Clinton, No!" wandered around somewhat aimlessly, hoping against hope to find others sympathetic to their left-wing causes. It as a hot, steamy night, the perfect environment for tempers to boil over and fist fights to break out throughout the hall--- and break out they did, making security guards scurry and the police spring into action. It was an almost surreal environment, a bizarre mix of '60s social activism and '90s violent conflict, and the 5,000 gathered fans seemed intent on expressing their anger, frustration and hostility through every move they made and every word they spoke.
___ Sequestered backstage in the relative serenity of their dressing room, Rage Against the Machine members Tom Morello, Zach de la Rocha, Tim Bob and Brad Wilk remained somewhat oblivious to the tense situation out front. It wasn't as if this sort of conflict was new to these guys, after all they had encountered similar crowds in such distant ports of call as Rome and Rio as well as in closer-to-home locales like L.A. and San Antonio. But for Rage Against the Machine, an angry, active, aggressive crowd is almost an expected---and desired---constant. After all, the music this band has presented both on their triple-platinum, self-titled debut disc, and on their recent chart-topping Evil Empire, remains without peer as hard rock's most politically potent and incendiary message--- and Rage proudly stand as the form's most potent and incendiary messengers.
___"Some people want to dismiss us as just being rabble rousers," de la Rocha said. "But that attitude comes from people who don't understand us. there are a lot of people out there right now who seem to at least want to understand what we're doing; that's very encouraging. We've grown to expect people in the mainstream press wanting to just call us a bunch of whiners and then move on. They don't want to waste their time dealing with a rock and roll band with a political point of view. They don't know what to make of us and how to handle us. We like that."
___While de la Rocha may feel that the mainstream press doesn't have a clue regarding Rage Against the Machine's political stance, their audience has no such problems. As soon as the band took the stage, and started ripping into such potent, highly-charged songs as Freedom (which was dedicated to Native American activist Leonard Peltier) their surprise 1993 hit, Killing in the Name, and their recent controversial MTV favorite Bulls on Parade (a tirade against American military practices) the crowd was on its feet, cheering rage on and singing along to every song. With morello's hendrix-inspired guitar excursions leading the way, and de la Rocha's unique rap-come-rock vocals further inciting the assembled throng, at times it seemed the evening's proceedings were about to break into a full-scale riot. de la Rocha, however, never had a doubt that he had the crowd under his total control.
___"The thing is to keep 'em interested," he said at the show's end. "They care about these issues as much as we do. But they have their agendas and we have ours. Not every cause we support will be supported by everyone listening to us. That's okay. As long as they feel strongly about something. We want to make the people think. We want to open their eyes. We want them to know that the world is far from perfect. If we can get even a small percentage of people to get beyond the music and listen to what we're saying in our lyrics, then we're really accomplishing something.

Adam Hipple

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