Music Mondays
It’s inevitable working in a guitar shop that we end up having heated conversations about music. So we decided to take it to the web with Music Mondays. Every Monday someone from our staff is going to write a blog about music – specifically one particular album, artist or song. We’ll be covering anything, from the first albums that inspired us to become musicians to great hidden gems that we feel never got the recognition they deserved. Anyways, enjoy, and be sure to leave your comments and continue the discussion.
It’s just another bombtrack…
My iPod is littered with a lot of crap I listened to in high school and will never listen to again. But in that mess are a few albums that I know I can always go back to and get the same response. Rage Against the Machine’s first release, self-titled, is one of those albums. I was only 7 when it was released in 1992, but when I caught up to it I couldn’t let it go.
Explicit Lyrics
Rage went on to put out two more studio albums of originals — Evil Empire and The Battle of Los Angeles. To me, the message and the quality were present for the most part, but it didn’t stand up to the self-titled release. Both albums had hits, but neither were a front-to-back success. Shortly after they broke up in 2007 the band released Renegades, which was a cover album. Meh. A few songs are catchy. I like “In My Eyes” and “Pistol Grip Pump.” I don’t think they made videos for those songs, but you can listen to them on Youtube.
Apparently the band started playing shows again with the original lineup in 2007 when they realized the Chris Cornell-led Audioslave was God-awful. The band is currently playing in Europe and says they might do a new studio album. Given the current political events, I think it could be awesome.
Official site: http://www.ratm.com/
From Wikipedia:
Rage Against the Machine is an American rock band, formed in 1991 in Los Angeles, California. The band’s line-up comprises vocalist Zack de la Rocha, guitarist Tom Morello, bassist Tim Commerford and drummer Brad Wilk. Critics have noted Rage Against the Machine for its “fiercely polemical music, which brewed sloganeering leftist rants against corporate America, cultural imperialism, and government oppression into a Molotov cocktail of punk, hip-hop, and thrash.”[1] Rage Against the Machine drew inspiration from early heavy metal instrumentation, as well as rap acts such as Afrika Bambaataa,[1] Public Enemy and Urban Dance Squad.[2]
