[Original post date should have been 5/3/24]
My introduction to this week's tune came via MTV while watching videos as part of my job (seriously--one never knew where the next hit was coming from, and it helped to keep up with what MTV was playing). Though I knew of the band, I'd never heard their music (combination of being music not suited for the plasticity of malls and their shoppers as well as their albums being replete with parental warning stickers). Have to admit--and regular readers (all three of you) may suspect this--I wasn't expecting to like it as the band was not my usual fare. But like it I did....
Rage Against the Machine (hereafter RATM) started in Los Angeles in 1991, and never made any bones that they were anything other than a political band. They had a relatively short recording career, releasing their first studio album in 1992 and their last in 2000 before their first break up. They would reunite in 2007 and tour together for the next four years, before disbanding again until 2019. Minus the COVID-19 years, they'd tour again until 2024, before once again calling it quits. From my half-assed research, I gathered that the band (which, by the way, has had all four members--Zach de la Rocha, Tom Morello, Tim Commerford, and Brad Wilk--remain since their beginning) got along well enough on the road, but that those ever-present creative differences wreaked havoc when they were in the studio. Still and all, RATM has sold over sixteen million albums, won two Grammy Awards, and were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame just last year. For their career, the band released four albums, with two of them hitting #1 and all four selling at least platinum, and seventeen singles, only one of which hit the Billboard Hot 100. As an aside, while I am not an expert on RATM, I think it is a testament to the band's greatness to have had the level of commercial success they've had despite the fact that neither record labels nor music buyers have ever been particularly fond of overtly political bands.
Fun Fact: Guitarist Tom Morello has a degree from Harvard. That's one you don't see every day in rock and roll bands....
"Bulls on Parade" was the first single released from their second album, the politically savvy entitled Evil Empire. While the single did not chart on the Billboard Hot 100, it did reach #8 on the U.K. Singles Chart. The album was one of their two #1 LPs.
"Bulls on Parade" is a diatribe about the U.S. Military and the arms industry, and the damage they both do to Americans not only physically, but emotionally, financially, and morally as well (color me shocked it didn't hit the top ten in America on the singles chart). Zach de la Rocha's lyrics are raw and on point, and he sings with a purpose and an anger that conjures Che Guevara. Tom Morello's guitar solo (the song's link above explains how he achieved it) somehow makes a guitar sound like a vinyl LP scratching--and that doesn't even include its explosive enhancement of de la Rocha's vocals. Commerford on bass and Wilks on drums drive it through the fucking door, to steal a phrase. It's probably related to Trump fatigue, but I found as the week wore on the more I listened to it, the more I liked it. Come wit' it now, indeed.
Lyric Sheet: "Weapons, not homes, not food, not shoes/Not need, feel the war, cannibal animal...Rally round the family/With a pocketful of shells..."
Enjoy:
Republicans = Nazis
Peace,
emaycee
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