RATM in 2007 (there aren’t many more recent photos around)Photo: Bryan Bedder (Getty Images)
This weekend, at Wisconsin’s Alpine Valley music venue, Rage Against The Machine played their first live show together in 11 years — a reunion that was announced way back in 2019 (see the prescient headline on this story) and was supposed to coincide with the presidential elections ahead they are delayed due to COVID. And as you’d expect from Rage Against The Machine, there was plenty to rage about. (Uh oh, don’t let some incredibly stupid people find out!)
As reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, there was little actual onstage speech or banter at the show, but a screen behind the band regularly showed pertinent images such as “a border guard posing menacingly with a barking German shepherd,” “a police officer from El Paso van burning in slow motion,” and “a blindfolded boy tearing open a piñata that looked like an ICE agent.” The most direct message, however (yes, more direct than a child slapping an ICE agent’s pinata) was a projected on-screen statement about the Supreme Court’s Roe v. to fall calf:
Forced births in a country where black midwives suffer two to three times more maternal mortality than white midwives. Forced birth in a country where gun violence is the number one killer of children and young people. BREAK THE SUPREME COURT.
Elsewhere during the show, there was apparently an “engrossing” moment where Zack de la Rocha “quietly repeated” the line “I think I heard a shot” over and over during “Wake Up” and the lyrics to himself “Killing In The Name”. ‘ (which recently went viral as part of a radio station’s marketing programme) were changed to mention that it’s not just the police but some politicians who are ‘burning crosses’.
The Journal Sentinel also notes that Rage is donating $475,000 from ticket sales for that show and two others at the United Center near Chicago to “reproductive rights organizations in Wisconsin and Illinois.”