Karl Klockars

Dear Rage Against The Machine:

Time will very likely not be kind to you.

Now, I’m not necessarily thinking in terms of musically – you’re just as much to blame for the rap-rock attack of the mid-nineties and early 2000s as much as anyone else. I think in terms of a musical catalogue, history will be fair, even barring the whole “Audioslave” debacle. (Why didn’t you guys just go with the name “Citizen” like you meant to? I’m pretty sure the reason the band broke up was because saying “Audioslave” was pretty embarassing. I blame Chris Cornell.)

And despite the fact that you’re godfathers of the movement that culminated in Limp Bizkit and Crazytown, most people are more than willing to look past that and just focus on you guys. Exceptionally strong rhythm section, amazing guitar work, neck-breaking riffs and frighteningly thoughtful lyrics. Nice job, fellas.

I’ll even allow bonus points for the fact that you, Tom Morello, are from Libertyville. Home-town boy makes good in the rock n’ roll world, and your last name doesn’t end in “-organ.” Thanks to you, I ended up in some random van late at night talking about Lollapalooza with one of the members of Babes in Toyland. I think she was living out of it at the time, but it’s a good story. I’ll tell you it someday. Then you’ll probably offer to put together a benefit show for her, which would be nice.

But here’s my problem with you guys – your timing seriously sucks.

Let’s start off with my first exposure to you: the MTV Buzz Bin (what marketing asshole decided that was a good name for anything?) featuring your video about Leonard Peltier. Nothing wrong with that, was there? Strong lead single, catchy, very counterculture, definitely a political band. Good deal. We needed one in the mid-90′s. Clinton wasn’t really much of a machine to Rage against, but hey. Whatever.

From there, albums and videos followed, tours and tshirts were sold, and everyone got on your case about being a kinda pinko commie band on a major label. I never really accepted your whole “we’re using the system to bring down the system” line of BS. Doesn’t matter, I don’t hold it against you very much. Everyone wants to sell records. Don’t blame you for a second for grabbing for that brass ring.

And all along, you were a unified front. Fighting for the little guy, promoting your ideology, to the point where in a Guitar World article about road necessities, where everyone else was listing things like “videogames, acid and chicks, man!” you were listing a bibliography. Who needs guitar strings and tuners when you have Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky?

Great! Good! Fantastic job. So…where were you in the new millenium?

It would appear that during the nineties, when things were pretty cool and laid back, you were all over everything fighting the system, damning the man. And then when the big bad Bush administration moved in…nothing. Crickets. Zilch.

I’m sure there’s a fantastic reason for all of this. Maybe you guys weren’t getting along, maybe someone in the band voted Republican once when they were 19 and didn’t tell the rest of you. But it would seem that with the last seven or eight years of political fuckery, there was nary a peep. You were singing about rocks and crap with AudioWhatever, but not much by way of any real Rage-style activism.

Of course, it’s easy to say that you couldn’t have seen it coming – you broke up in late october of 2000. Is it unfair to say that without Rage Against The Machine, well….raging, that George Bush is all your fault? Of course it’s unfair! And I’m sure it’s terribly unfair to point fingers at you for getting together after the country has started to swing back to the Left again.

The only thing is…it’s just so damned convenient. Clinton leaves, you guys break up. Huge Republican influence on the nation, people start swinging conservatron by the thousands…no Rage. Democrats retake the House and Senate? “Hey, we’ll play Coachella! Sure thing!” See what I’m getting at here?

Was it just the lack of pure communal joy and socialist bliss that made you guys implode? Was Rage Against The Machine a bellweather for political attitudes throughout the nation? Should we be thrilled that a reformed Rage is back for now, indicating that maybe things will get better again, now that you’ve deemed it okay to return?

Maybe things will be better than ever now. Maybe Barack Obama will choose “Freedom” as his campaign music. It’d be a better choice than any Hootie and the Blowfish record, that’s for sure. Then we can all ride the wave of RATM joy back into a Democratic nation, and you can continue to rage against other things that have popped into our collective consciousness in the past 8 years or so.

But where were you when music needed you? Was it the Saturday Night Live upside-down flag incident that pushed your last button? Lorne Michaels apologizes, I’m sure. We all do. And now we’re regretting that presence that you could have had all throughout the new millenium. And now that you’re back, people are going to notice when you were gone. All very convenient.

But I still choose to blame Chris Cornell.