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Yes. The<\/em> Rage Against the Machine, whose last live appearance was in 2011, at a festival called LA Rising. That year I was in Los Angeles, sans car, barely skimming the surface of what the city had to offer. So of course I missed it, and the band never performed together again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n RATM has been on my top 5 Acts to Watch Live, and it looks like next year is when I make it out to Coachella again, after 5 years of staying away from the festival. Or maybe it may make more sense to just head out to New Mexico or Arizona to see the band, considering Coachella logistics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Also, I cringe at the thought of being an RATM fan 20 years ago, with little context to their music, other than them being this angry-sounding band with catchy guitar riffs that were great to head-bang to. “The Machine” in their name, in my head, correlated to the System, and of course, we all hated the system, which was all teachers and dumb rules and everything that reeked of adulthood. So it felt good to sing along with “Fuck you I won’t do what to tell me”. It did not help that I heard their music for the first time on the Matrix OST, which obfuscated their political messages even more. In a time when I was still trying to define what “cool” was, and whether I was part of that club or not, Rage Against The Machine’s music presented the right kind of credentials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was much, much later that a better knowledge of US politics, history, and culture helped me understand the “Rage” in their name<\/a>. The band’s lyrics are, in case you didn’t know already, at odds with US domestic and foreign policy, and are a direct critique of corporations, cultural imperialism, and systemic oppression of marginalized groups in America. Once upon a time, I wondered at why exactly the band spoke of convicted murderers<\/a> and revolutionary Mexican organizations<\/a>, and wondered if they were taking performance art too far by insisting on shooting a video in front of the New York Stock Exchange<\/a>, or hanging upside down flags from their speakers during a live TV show. I had misgivings about the violent protests their music seemed to incite<\/a>, and sort of understood why they were the only band in the infamous Clear Channel memorandum<\/a> to have all <\/em>songs banned from radio channels in the aftermath of 9\/11.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But you live and learn. Twenty years later, I know America a little differently than I did back when I just graduated college. I am a lot more aware, both from a cultural and sociopolitical standpoint, about what makes this country tick, and the undercurrents of wrongness that pervade American society. The truths to power that the band spits out through their music feel like a necessary part of the American discourse. “Some of those that work forces, are the same that burn crosses” now hold more import than the chorus of ‘Killing in the Name’. And the song that plays at the end of The Matrix, the one that introduced me to the band, has these lines:<\/p>\n\n\n\nNetworks at work, keepin' people calm
\nYa know they murdered X and tried to blame it on Islam
\nHe turned the power to the have-nots
\nAnd then came the shot<\/pre>\n\n\n\n