Rage Against The Machine Free Gig

“You shattered sweet Joe McElderry’s dreams of a number one chart debut with your bizarre Facebook organised “anarchic” act of people power, doing what everyone told you…”

… which could, alternatively, be viewed as simply buying a single that you would prefer to hear plastered all over the airwaves for two weeks. Less an act of anarchy, more an act of avoiding having to listen to a mid-pubescent saccharine cover version of a song by a teenage Disney star.

The person next to me at a coffee shop right now is painting her nails… I’m not sure which is more annoying, reading that you called Rage Against The Machine a “one hit wonders”, or having to smell nail polish as I have a coffee.

Here are a couple of alternative phrases you could have used:
“Grammy award winning rock icons, Rage Against The Machine”
“Kerrang! Hall of Fame legends, Rage Against The Machine”

I mean really… do a little research before you write.

I think the key point here is that you call yourself RATM_FAN. I suspect the majority of people who put RATM back in the charts recently couldn’t name another track by them without the help of Wikipedia.

And also, before the reissue of Killing in the Name, they only actually made it into the UK top 20 once, with Bullet in the Head.

Now, most of my favourite bands probably haven’t even managed that, and there’s obviously a big debate about radio play and its influence over chart placing, particularly in the 90s, that is best left for a more appropriate occasion, but, judged purely on chart placings, they’re the epitome of a one hit wonder.

Bulls On Parade Number 8

What a wonderful article!
Talk about wearing your colours on your sleeve.
What annoys you more? The fact that Joe never made it to number one in his first week (please note that he WAS number in week 2 once the RATM campaign was over) or the fact that the alternative community was actually organised enough to pull this feat off via Facebook despite the best efforts of Simon Cowell and his empire and all the pro X-Factor journalism that was going on at the time.

Are you a genuine Joe fan (and empathise with him) or do you just not like it because a song that isn’t to your taste actually got to #1?

If you had even bothered to research this you would have known that it was not about RATM, it could have been ANY song. It was all about a bunch of people in society expressing their disgust at being force fed manufactured pop-pap year in, year out.

The fact that Joe was then toppled by Lady Gaga one week after his #1 kind of shows exactly what the record buying public thought of Joe and after that he went into freefall anyway!

You are an ignorant moron, who knows nothing about music, please please please kill yourself, grunge rock? do you even know what grunge rock is? try Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains, Stone Temple Pilots, Mudhoney, Soundgarden, not RATM, twat.

Okay, I missed that in the list when I checked. Two-hit wonder then.

You might want to calm down a bit, dude. And, judging by your photo, you were about two when most of those bands existed.

If we’re going to get into genre definitions half of those bands were only ever classified as grunge by default due to lazy marketing strategies.

Yes that well known term “2 hit wonder”

I quote myself from my blog on the subject

“None of what has happened is of any great consequence. But it has made people excited, interested, furious, snooty about something that before now they had completely taken for granted. What happens next year? Everyone will be trying to compete with the X Factor single and that’s the way it should be. But not just the Xmas #1. Not even music. None of it matters beyond the fact if you give people something to get interested in, something they feel they have a stake in that they wanna see either happen or not happen, they’ll turn up. Can you imagine if we all took a general election this seriously?”

Getting pissed off that RATM won is completely missing the point of why this whole fiasco was brilliant.

Who said they were pissed off about RATM getting to number one?

Oh come along, this advert is fantastically skewed.

To be honest, I can’t believe no one’s picked me up on ‘apopolyptic’

Lindsey, why didn’t you mention that Simon Cowell owns the rights to all sony tracks and has become a multi millionaire from rage being number 1. i mean without that he wouldn’t have been able to pay for poor sweet Joe to go on holiday

Oh dear Lindsey! It seems that you are still very sensitive about this subject and it has obviously caused you a great deal of stress and hurt.

It’s a shame really that someone of your obvious intellectual capacity could write such a sarcastic and biased article based purely upon your own point of view.

The fact of the matter is ‘Rage Against the Machine’ are one of the most talented rock bands of all time and to slate them in the way you just have is actually rather childish!

If you’re serious about Journalism I would suggest that you keep your personal opinion out of your articles because it comes across that you are just a bitter and twisted individual!

“If you’re serious about Journalism I would suggest that you keep your personal opinion out of your articles because it comes across that you are just a bitter and twisted individual!”

Yes, Lindsey is definitely the one who’s coming across as bitter and twisted here.

[Tries to put foot in mouth. Fails as tongue is planted too firmly in cheek]

Au Contraire DeanN! I am a ray of sunshine! =)

You’ve got to love the irony of calling someone an “ignorant moron” whilst visibly struggling to construct anything that resembles an English sentence.

How is a band that has sold over 15 Million records a “One Hit Wonder”? Honestly

RATM are about as alternative as my cock. They’re purveyors of blande shite music for blande shite people.

Because, despite all of those sales, they’ve only had the one ‘hit’. Go ask the person working in your local newsagent to name two RATM songs and then come tell me how many hits they’ve had.

Just a few quick points to make;

1. Its called “Killing in the name” not “killing in the name of”

2. Rage aren’t a grunge band.

3. Rage are not a one hit wonder as pointed out. They have had a more lenghty and successful career than Joe McElderry (a good example, along with most other pop idol winnders of a one hit wonder) will ever have.

4. It was a great victory and proved that talented, passionate musicians can beat generic, manufactured acts with very little going for them except a huge amount of marketing power by Cowell and Sony.

That is all.

It proved that some fans of ‘alternative’ music like to feel like they’ve taken a stand against ‘the man’, when all they’ve done is bring back a major-label band with a song that outstayed its welcome 18 years ago.

This wasn’t a stand against anything, this was the result of viral marketing campaign. X Factor will return. Simon Cowell will make a lot more money. Joe McElderry will disappear, only to be replaced by next year’s winner. The status quo will not feel threatened.

And sadly you have completely missed the point as have most people who feel they are qualified to comment on the campaign when they weren’t involved and didn’t even bother to research what actually happened.
This was NEVER about getting rid of X Factor or Simon Cowell.
It was never about threatening the status quo.
It was a moment in time where we stood together as one and said for this one instance we will not tolerate another sub-standard X Factor cover version as the Xmas number one.
We achieved what we set out to do, we proved we could do it despite the media and the industry trying to thwart us.
We aren’t interested in doing it again, we’ve done it.
We’ve all gone back to our “normal” lives again and yet we still see ill written articles such as this coming out when it’s all over and done with!

An ill will article? It was promoting the gig.

Why do you care about the number one slot? The charts became an irrelevance in the mid 90s when the major labels forced the BPI to change the chart eligibility rules so that any single containing more than four songs would be excluded from the chart on the basis that the extra song constituted unfair competition.

And the media didn’t try to thwart the campaign. By covering the campaign at all they were actively providing supporting it.

The bigger threat to the likes of Simon Cowell wasn’t the song that briefly prevented Joe McElderry from being number one, it’s the song that knocked him off the number one spot.

Yes silly me, reading the start of the article it was obviously all about promoting the gig! Read the opening lines and tell me that it isn’t a snide backhanded swipe!

I don’t care about the charts per se, never have done. I like what I like whether it is popular or not. I buy obscure music and I buy chart music. Most of the stuff I listen to is alternative and nowhere near mainstream. I joined the campaign due to feeling mischevious and wanting to have some fun!

Yes, the media did try and thwart the campaign, you obviously didn’t look too hard at the tabloids that, let’s face it, probably had the highest X Factor readership and made no qualms about trying to smear the campaign. What I did find interesting though was that it actually divided the industry and I was surprised at where the pro and anti campaign people came from. If nothing else it made everyone take a very brief look at what was happening even if they then went back to business as usual afterwards. The campaigners did, as I said, it’s over and done now, a nice little piece of history where the little man stood up against the might of the music industry and pulled off a little coup.

I already mentioned Lady Gaga further up in my argument and that RATM didn’t dent Joe’s dreams, he would still have been knocked off of number 1 by Lady Gaga the week after he got to number, he just had to wait an extra week to get there before he bombed out again. All we did with the campaign was add some additional competition and made it a three horse race rather than two.

Of course, it was a conspiracy engineered deviously. I’m talking about the swine flu scam that will have you get a vaccine that you don’t need.

I hate X-factor slush and RATM.

In theory, that was my Christmas screwed twice over, so thanks to all concerned.

But, actually, I managed just fine. Because – and bear with me, as this is obviously a very difficult concept – I generally take the simple expedient of:-

1. not watching anything pertaining to Simon Cowell (this works a treat, try it)

2. not repeatedly listening to anything I really don’t like (eg. changing radio station, or turning it off, if a song really pisses me off … erm, we have both the fingers and the technology, no?)

Now, I admit, I don’t work in retail or somewhere you’re obliged to listen to Radio X-factor, or whatever. That sucks. But my guess would be that precisely as many people are pissed off by RATM on rotation, as the latest X-factor clone. Where’s the improvement here?

As for the momentous importance of this ‘victory’, well, shocking news for some of the above posters, it’s only a song contest. As someone says above ‘Can you imagine if we all took a general election this seriously?’ — in short, no I can’t imagine that. A shame, really, because that would be something worthwhile, as opposed to this juvenile bullshit. Sure, it was slightly funny for about two minutes; but no more.

Seriously, if you think this was radical or anarchic, you’re very easily pleased. The Facebookers successfully created a slightly revised popularity contest to counter the popularity contest they objected to in the first place … erm, yeah, well done.

As for the RATM fans getting pissed-off here – c’mon guys, lighten up. Did no-one ever tease you before, ever? I mean, I just looked at the band’s pics and you’ve got that guy with the cheap perm for a start … seriously in need of some Frizz-ease …

[troll and rant now over ...]

*facepalm*

The Author of this short article is clearly a biased idiot.
probably some silly little girl who fancies this x factor bloke.
You have no reason to beleive whatsoever that he was “told” to start his rebellion. Also, In future, before writting an article, Id do a bit of research, Cause you look like an idiot writting an award winning Hip hop/rock band off as “grunge rock one hit wonders”. Especially when they have more than one hit. :/

RATM are clearly just fab. I think we all understand that now. Yay RATM! Keep raging against that machine, lads – Lindsey is clearly then man in disguise – let her have it.

Celine Dion has more Grammys than RATM, mind you. But then she really rocks, no?

“Seriously, if you think this was radical or anarchic, you’re very easily pleased.”

I never heard any of the RATM campaigners claiming that their actions were “radical” or “anarchic”. In fact, the only references to “radical” or “anarchic” behaviour seemed to be from those opposed to the RATM campaign. Sounds like a classic case of inverse snobbery to me.

But otherwise, I agree with Lee. Musical taste will always be subjective. For every fan of alternative music, there will always (sadly) be a fan of grandma-pleasing tat. Arguing about it online is considerably more pointless than ‘voting’ with purchases.

For my part, I was happy that my 80p download contributed microscopically to a track that I like (albeit a sanitised version) receiving marginally more radio airplay than a track that I don’t like. But that’s it — it happened last year and we’re now in mid-February. It’s just not important.

“Cause you look like an idiot writting an article”

People in glass houses, youeatweiners…

How many of these people getting well aggy over the original article care about the number 1 chart position? Follow it, commentate on it, buy new releases they genuinely want to make it?

“This was NEVER about getting rid of X Factor or Simon Cowell….
It was a moment in time where we stood together as one and said for this one instance we will not tolerate another sub-standard X Factor cover version as the Xmas number one.”

Er, I may be confused, but doesn’t that mean it WAS about X Factor? Or do you just want the quality of the X Factor contestants to be higher?

Lee Jackson and Adrienne Cooper, you both deserve a cupcake.

RuthL, I suggest you read my post again as you are responding to me out of context by not reading it properly.
I said this was never about GETTING RID of X Factor or Simon Cowell, and NOT this was never about X Factor!

Ah, so it WAS about X Factor. See, I don’t watch it so I’m not that bothered.

Bravo, bravo. You all stood against ‘the man’ and united under a common cause. All that money went into the major label’s pockets anyway, it really makes no difference.

Why does it take these dumb campaigns to get good music to the top of the charts in the first place? Maybe for a change people should just go out and buy music that they love, rather than ‘uniting for a cause’.

Both Joe McElderry and Rage have their redeeming factors, but the fact that this has become such a big issue is a joke in itself. This isn’t a story, let me know when an independent artist gets to the top of the charts at Christmas.

All you people who are annoyed about the whole thing, whether or not you wanted the X factor or RATM to win, or even if you didn’t care. The fact that it annoys you pleases me, and prompts me to do it again next year.

I bought RATM even though I bought it on cassette single when it came out, and limited edition white vinyl, and then the album on cd, and then a digital copy a couple of years ago. I wanted to help upset the routine the charts have got into, and then it became apparent that some people were getting particularly snooty about the whole thing, so I nearly bought it again. Perhaps whoever it is that orchestrates these things will choose a song that you approve of next year. It made the charts interesting for the first time in five years.

So, today was the day – who got tickets?

Website is being well flakey, took me 5 minutes to even get on it. I have now been stuck in a queue for 45 minutes. It is a slow painful process!

OK, this bit:
“I mean, I just looked at the band’s pics and you’ve got that guy with the cheap perm for a start … seriously in need of some Frizz-ease … ”

…is racist. Zack de la Rocha is mixed-race so to suggest he somehow ought to change his hair to make it straight, and comparing it to a “cheap perm”, is actually, flat-out racist. Did you think before you posted this? Lindsey, I’m disappointed that the Londonist moderators let this comment through.

Would you go up to a non-white person you didn’t know, on the Tube, say, and tell them that their hair looked like a “cheap perm” and was in need of some Frizz-Ease? Would you? I really hope not.

Bomb Track, Sleep Now In The Fire, Calm like A Bomb, Wake Up, Township Rebellion, Bullet In The Head, Bulls on Parade, Testify, Guerrilla Radio, Born As Ghosts… I could go on. The fact that the Matrix film trilogy used two Rage songs kinda underlines their popularity too. Call me when McElderberry sings something used at the end of a box-office smash hit.

I know I shouldn’t let trolls get to me, even when the “troll” is on a blog I have a lot of affection for – hell, one I used to write for! – but I’m kinda annoyed by the above article. Thought you were joking when I started reading it, realised you weren’t by the end – or if you were, it wasn’t funny.

(And RATM… “grunge rock”? What?)

For the record, I have a ticket, and I am thrilled. RATM are one of the best live bands I’ve ever seen, and they have some amazing songs in their back catalogue (check out the ones I listed above for starters).

It’s easy to mock them – their fans are teenage suburban wannabe rebels, they claim to be counter-cultural yet are on a major label, they sing songs about social injustice which somehow isn’t “cool” (seriously, I’ve never understood that one – singing vapid songs about relationship angst is fine but singing about, say, the LA race riots and police brutality is out-of-bounds? Why) – but I don’t care. The band’s members wrote some great tunes (something I suspect McElderry will never do) and have left the world a better place through their considerable charity work, and their promotion of good causes. Yes, I enjoyed them when I was 15 – and I still do now, over a dozen years later.

The rights and wrongs of the RATM4Xmas campaign have been endlessly chewed over elsewhere so I’ll leave that to one side for now; I’ll just say that, as of today, the JustGiving charity page has over £101,000 raised for Shelter, with a fresh round of donations coming from people with free tickets. Not to say that anything done “for charidee” is above criticism; but food for thought, certainly.

In short, Lindsey, I’m really not happy about your piece. If it was a cynical move aimed at getting people riled up, boosting comments/pageviews etc, then that’s pretty low, but hey, it worked; if it’s genuinely what you think, then you’re painting an awful lot of people with an awfully broad brush, and with an awful lot of ignorance thrown into the mix.

Thanks JoJo – spray me with the racist tag with no justification, why don’t you? Sheesh. Truly nasty.

Unless you’re indulging in a really cunning troll, hmmm … shit, irony is difficult online.

Anyway, let’s suppose – it’s quite hard to believe – that you’re being serious. Troll or not, someone may read this and think, without referring to the above, that I’m Nick Griffin.

Sigh.

I was trying to suggest that some previous irate pro-RATM responses were ridiculously overheated, by including some deliberate provocation for effect. I had thought the and the word troll straight afterwards kind of gave that away. As in – “look, this is a troll, guys … why did you get so irate about the original blog post?”

Did I have a clue as to the guy’s racial heritage? Nope. Apparently he’s “Mexican, German, and Irish descent” (Wikipedia), so perhaps you’ll forgive me if I didn’t check out his full family tree before I made my obviously flippant remark.

But – fair enough – I am willing to make a formal apology to any Mexicans, Germans or Irish who read Londonist. The oppression your curly-haired menfolk have suffered over the past centuries, the obligatory hair-straighteners at customs checkpoints etc. …. guys, I am so sorry.

To answer your particular question – would I insult anyone on the Tube?

Well, only if I was on the platform – and they were on the train – and it was just moving off. Then, generally speaking, I would make cruel and unusual remarks about their ears and the density of their eyebrows. Particularly, those Mexico-Irish-Germans. Yeah, I really hate those bastards.

Wait – no, hang on …

“I’m disappointed that the Londonist moderators let this comment through.”

Broadly speaking, comments on Londonist are not moderated, so it’s not a case of ‘letting it through’. While we *can* delete comments where needed (e.g. to remove ‘spam’), we prefer not to censor parts of a debate unless there is a strongly compelling reason to do so.

Either way, I think it’s quite clear that the comment, whilst possibly misinformed, was not intended to be racist.

Some people appear to be taking this all just a tiny bit too seriously. Lindsey’s article was a light-hearted comment on the free gig promised by RATM after the FB campaign. Name-calling and keyboard warriorism just demonstrates a point being missed.

Nope, sorry, whatever your intentions it was racist. Your remark assumes that straight, non-frizzy hair is superior – otherwise why the remarks about taming Zack’s ‘fro using hair products, and comparing it to a “cheap perm”? Nice try, though.

“The oppression your curly-haired menfolk have suffered over the past centuries, the obligatory hair-straighteners at customs checkpoints etc.” – this illustrates my point: The racism isn’t as overt as physically forcing non-white people to straighten their hair; it’s much more subtle and insidious than that. It’s reinforcing the notion that non-frizzy hair is better, superior, that frizzy hair must be “tamed”, kept in line, controlled, and that anyone – like Mr de la Rocha – who has naturally curly/frizzy hair is a figure of fun, a clown, not to be taken seriously. It’s reinforcing a beauty standard which excludes most non-white people, unless they go to unusual lengths to change their natural features. You thought it was OK to mock the band and its fans based on the lead singer’s hair – I don’t agree. It’s a manifestation of white privilege that you are blind to.

Comments like yours help to perpetuate the cultural context which made Chris Rock’s 5-year old daughter ask him why she didn’t have “good” (i.e. “white”) hair.

I probably won’t have changed your mind on this, and I’ll admit I overreacted at first – I was still annoyed from reading the original article (see my other comment). You most likely didn’t intend to make a racist remark, but it’s still not really OK. C’mon, making fun of a non-white person for a natural physical characteristic of theirs, does that not make you uncomfortable and make you pause for thought, even a little?

Dave, fair point re moderation but doesn’t change the fact that it was racist – see explanation above…

Don’t you think that it is a little bit stupid to promote a gig whilst trying to demean the band and it’s audience at the same time?

Not in this instance, as context is everything.

Yes, I am aware of the issue of hair straightening viz afro hair. If the dude was black then it would be quite insulting/racist to suggest, even in jest, that he should straighten his hair. But he’s Mexican/German/Irish, for pete’s sake. Curly or straight hair has never been – to my knowledge – a defining feature of being Mexican, German or Irish, no? It was an entirely random insult – a troll – that was the point.

And, forgive me, I don’t think a mildly snide blog comment about a male half-Mexican singer’s hairdo feeds into the issue of black women’s image of self. Some comments are just trivial; no need to analyse them to the nth degree.

Hardly demeaning. Ironic comment on a widely-acknowledged image which is presented in a very deliberate manner by both the band and their fans.

Do you actually know the meaning of the word? This article might as well have a Halo around it and a choir of angels singing at the bottom!

Seriously… “You shattered sweet Joe McElderry’s dreams of a number one chart debut”! Is this meant to make people feel bad or have I missed something?

“If the dude was black then it would be quite insulting/racist to suggest, even in jest, that he should straighten his hair. But he’s Mexican/German/Irish, for pete’s sake.”

Keep digging, dude. Zack isn’t “black” enough to be subjected to racist comments? Er, whatever. Who died and appointed you arbiter of “blackness”? Besides, perpetuating the stereotype of frizzy-haired people as figures of fun does actually uphold racism and quietly condones racist attitudes, but eh, whatever. :rolleyes:

Sheesh.

Hair is a loaded issue, re identity politcs, for African-American women (men too, I guess) as to whether they straighten or not – I know this from the Chris Rock documentary which you cited. I’ve heard similar discussions in the UK. I could understand if any allusion whatsoever to straightening afro hair, from a white bloke, might seem racist. But that’s not what happened.

I made a casual joke about a rock singer. I had no idea what his nationality was; not his racial origin. You seem desparate to yoke this thing to some racism agenda. It’s convoluted, unreal and demeans any genuine discussion about racism.

Seriously, irony’s not that hard to understand. What is hard to understand is the lack of perspective and self-awareness of some of the people commenting on this post.

I’M ANNOYED! For some reason or other.

I, for one, am interested in hearing more about grandma-pleasing tat. May I subscribe to your newsletter?