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Video Review |
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Rage Against the Machine is music to bust a
gut to. Music voted most likely to inspire Road Rage. I don't recommend
listening to RATM while stuck in bumper to bumper highway traffic. Might just find
yourself flying down the shoulder at an unreasonable speed screaming at the cop you know
will be pulling you over any minute. Or mabye you are in one of those nice Sport Utility Vehicles (making you a defacto member of the Machine) and you decide to try out some of those moves you saw on the commercial that made you buy that bad boy anyway. So you try driving your SUV clean over those little wussy Japanese import cars you have grown to hate even more since you played the Ghost of Tom Joad for the sixth time today. The long and the short of it is, kids, don't listen to Rage in the car. Bad for your health, not to mention your insurace premium. Can I get a witness? Hosanna? Alleluia? Amen. For one minute let me forget that I saw the tour that the footage of The Ghost of Tom Joad and Vietnow was taken from. Let's forget that I was making a silly fool of myself barely restraining myself from banging my head on the floor. I was right there with the rest of the 20,000 kids screaming "Fuck you I won't do what you tell me!" Let me focus on this video. I'm in my apartment watching this video making a silly fool out of myself. I'm banging my head and making that three fingered heavy metal hand sign everyone thinks is the sign of the devil and always uses whenever they scream OZZY (but what it really means is "I love you" in American Sign Language) and screaming along with 20,000 kids. This video collection inspires this reviewer to use the most tired and overused expression in music: this ROCKS! If you've seen RATM before, you know that Zack has an unusually active stage presence. Be on the lookout during the first two songs for his manic flailing to be even less graceful than usual; he has a broken foot. Rage has a captivating effect on their audience. It is astounding to see thousands of German kids pogo-bouncing in perfect synchronization to Zack and the boys when they slam into "People of the Sun." Herd mentality and crowd control in germany have always been interesting phenomena to me. But I digress. Rage Against the Machine plowing through "Killing in the Name Of" is perhaps some of the best use of live video footage this hipster has ever seen. Not to mention the reason electric guitars were invented. Look out for the matronly woman introducing the band in the Netherlands. She gives some speech about boycotting stores that censor music. She is the founder of Parents for Rock and Rap. She's also the mother of either Tom on guitar or Tim on bass...sorry, kiddies. Forgot the specifics of this bit of rock trivia today. As for the uncensored video clips... I don't watch MTV, or the Big M as I like to call it. I stopped watching MTV sometime during the Real World season after the one with Eric, the aspiring rap-star-actor, and the WhatsHerName, the innocent country girl. I was overcome with fright when I saw Eric hosting the Grind, an insipid dance show trying to approximate Soul Train with nothing but melanin-challenged folks. I realized that the Big M was truly the evil incestuous beast I had begun to suspect and turned it off for good. So, I don't know the difference between the uncensored versions of Rage's videos contained on this tape and the ostensibly censored Big M versions. We can assume that the Big M's versions have a few more bleeps, or maybe we can assume that some of these videos were considered inappropriate for the market. I do know that these videos are, for the most part, excellent bits of live footage with highlighting the bands unusual gift for rocking out. The special effects are kept to a refreshing minimum, so there is not much between you and the music. It also seems (admittedly mostly from the length of Zack's hair and the size of the audiences) that these videos are from an early moment in their greatness. In order to properly savor the videos I suggest you watch them through once and then watch them again with the remote control firmly placed in your hand ready to stop at any moment. See, Rage flashes important political rhetoric at an amazing rate during the videos. "Hey! You put political history in my rock and roll! You put rock and roll in my political history!" RATM is one of the coolest bands ever to step into a McDonalds (they were, in fact, spotted at a McDonalds somewhere in the Midwest during this last tour). Political Punk-Hop never looked and sounded as good as Rage's dulcet tones. Remember how mad you'd get at all the wrongs of the world you had only just begun to see when you were 14? Rage Against the Machine reminds you how that anger felt, reminds you that those injustices still exist today and you are still supposed to be angry about them. And we can even forgive them for eating at McDonalds, which is the definition of the Machine. I guess even RATM can't be expected to Rage 24/7. --review by Alison Stroll |
