As we grew restless from waiting for the band to set up, I spent some time running some thoughts through my head on the overall meaning of this concert. Heady, overwrought stuff, especially considering that this was a ROCK concert in which we were expected to just jump up and down in a haphazard manner in some sort of conjunction with the music. But thinking was done, and not just because I needed a way to escape the reality that a multitude of fires had been started and that I was surrounded by freakin' idiots, which surely didn't help considering the circumstances.
There was much reflection on whether or not I felt that I was too old for Rage. Part of this was due to a much broader contemplation that I was undergoing as I struggle between the worlds of school and professionalism (i.e. the capitalistic death sentence of my creativity), while part of it was the band itself. Rage was strongly tied to my adolescence (and yeah, it's weird to write of that in the past tense), and going to this concert seemed somewhat of a not-quite-desperate attempt to hang on to that adolescence. When explaining my summer plans to people, I often alluded to a general concert that would be the goal of a road trip, as if I was embarrassed to fully state my intentions. After all, my entire summer was planned around this one weekend, and to pin it all on a band that I identified with when I was about 14 seemed kind of pathetic.
But fuck that. I forgot about "growing up" and all that shit once I caught a glimpse of Zack et al. heading out onto the stage. Even though they were the size of termites (ants are such a dated comparison), the moment wasn't diminished at all. I knew "Guerrilla Radio" would kickstart the show (after being tipped off with the roadie testing out the guitar & delay combo, producing the unmistakable tone that is the intro), and the anticipation kept building as Tom lit into his intro. The tension was at its breaking point, when finally Zack launched in with the full band with a "Set it off!" that tore the roof off the place. Chaos. Energetic chaos, at that. It was the most massive push I had felt in a crowd, as we were shoved about 5 feet ahead of our original position, and we became lost in the sea of the unwashed masses.
From then on, Rage had us completely. Everybody seemed to know all the words, as 7 years away from the game had given everyone time to properly digest 3 albums worth of incendiary material. There would be no surprises tonight, we were prepared for anything. And the band rose to the occasion, tearing into their old hits with vigor. Tim and Brad were comfortable holding down the low end, and Tom went into agit-mode, as only the geekiest guitar player this side of the dude from Cheap Trick can.
The main attraction, though, was Zack. Everyone else we had seen in action with Audioslave--Zack was the new addition to what we knew. And he didn't disappoint. There is nothing quite like seeing Zack dancing around on stage as he shouts his sloganized lyrics into the mic--my favorite move being the lean-to-the-side skip across the stage (words fail to adequately describe this unique maneuver). But the question remained, what could have been.
It is the eternal question--why the breakup? It's all the more poignant considering the political hell that we endured this decade so far. It was most eloquently put by The Onion in a throw-away article "Where Are You Rage Against The Machine, When We Need You Most?" While the rest of the band threw away their musical legacy with Audioslave (more on that in a second), what was Zack doing? I was certain that he had been executed as part of some covert CIA op, but the more that I think about it the more I believe that it was merely the result of pure frustration with the lack of results from the movement he hoped to engineer. After some point, the slogans seem empty, and all the passion in the world can't overcome that.
Which is why the time seems somewhat apropos for the return of de la Rocha. The country as a whole is restless and damn pissed at the political establishment, and the youths have no one else to turn to. And that is where Zack probably senses some hope. We saw this when he addressed the crowd in his one speech of the night, proclaiming our generation as the one with the potential to truly be "The Greatest Generation" (however, he was probably unaware of the irony that WDR felt in these statements, considering we had just witnessed this generation of nitwits attempt to burn themselves alive). It's this potential that has re-lit his internal fire.
The other bandmates did their part, no doubt. But at this point Audioslave will hang over as a great shadow over each one of them. The very definition of wasted potential--middling radio rock would be fine if we created a supergroup from the ashes of Seven Mary Three and Toad the Wet Sprocket, but what we had were two of the most dynamic and creative forces of the 90's alternative scene crapping out creatively. While Zack maintains some integrity from his reclusive behavior, Tom looks like the jackass as he essentially sold out his politics to join a Machine itself. My hero, the guitar player with the Ivy League Govy degree, his star dulled.
As for the rest of the show, it doesn't take much to describe it. The set was fairly standard, with nothing particularly adventurous--though I did appreciate the inclusion of two relative rarities from Evil Empire, "Vietnow" and "Down Rodeo". The band was as tighter than what you would expect of 7 years of rust--Zhuang and Reefer noted a couple of slip-ups on Zack's part, while I was more attuned to the lack of cohesion on a couple of full band hits elsewhere. But those are truly just nit-picks of miserly old bastards (which we are, to an extent).
And with that we gathered ourselves and wandered into the parking lot, drained. And while the rage would build up once again with the mass idiocy that was the parking lot traffic, we had at least this moment. In one sense, it captured the end of one era. And that's all that I can say.
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