I felt kind of guity about owning a ripped copy of the album, so I bit the bullet and did a legal download for a change. I feel like I did a good thing
What's *******? Why does RATM give a damn about illegal downloading? Or some pop artist? These guys did their best to start a riot at every show. Are they even together anymore? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Zack and the band split; I don't know the details. Chris Cornell of Soundgarden joined the band and it became Audioslave. Their first CD was dynamite with Tom Morello's amazing little guitar solos, but I suspect its style of rock and roll made it more popular among Soundgarden fans than Rage fans.
It's got nothing to do with that. The single at no 1 during christmas is a big deal in the UK. The last three years it has been the winner of the X factor (American Idol type show I assume), which finishes just before xmas and the record company gives the winner their single to record and release at just the right time. A month ago some people started a facebook group to get Killing in the Name to no 1 over christmas. The songs churned out by these x factor winners are generic soppy, love ballads. It is to music what fast food is to great cuisine. The lazy single-buying public digest it easily but it is mostly formulaic, soppy trash that is forgotten about in years to come. So it's no so much about RATM, it is about breaking away from record company manipulation and getting an actual rebellious rock song at the top. Killing in the Name is a fine choice.
Hey, don't be so hard on pop culture. It serves a valid purpose by connecting with people at the moment. All any art has to do, at the minimum, is to make somebody happy (or evoke almost any other emotion, for that matter), no matter how briefly. As Frank Zappa said, "Music is the only true religion. It says it will make you happy, and it does." Sure, by some measure the "best" art is art that transcends its time and still speaks to people centuries later like Shakespeare and Bach. But that doesn't mean there isn't lots of perfectly "good" art that only manages to speak to the people of one generation, one year, or one day. I'm a rock musician and I certainly appreciate "classic" rock that has stood the test of time like the Beatles and Pink Floyd. I also appreciate classical symphonic and chamber music like Prokofiev, classical pop music like Benny Goodman, classical country music like Hank Williams, and classical rock and roll like Chuck Berry. But that does not make me ashamed to also appreciate the more fleeting satisfaction of Kelly Clarkson (a product of "American Idol") saying she's going to learn how to fly without forgetting the ones she loves, Sara Bareilles telling some doofus she's not going to write him a love song just because she's a songwriter and could do it, or (most especially) Sheryl Crow urging the children of Abraham to lay down their fears, swallow their tears and look to their hearts.
Apparently the song still has meaning in Britain Mark Steel, December, 2009: I think it's going to take a surgeon to remove this grin I've had, since it was revealed who was Christmas number one. And the brilliant thing is a song can't let you down by betraying its ideals. So there's no worry that by Thursday the chorus will have changed from "Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me", to "All right, just this once, but I warn you I'm losing my patience". Now all those places where, every year, they force us to listen to "Step Into Christmas" and "Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time", on the assumption this drivel is popular, should be forced to play Rage Against The Machine, which has proved its Christmas likeability. It would be so much more festive in Asda to hear "You justify those who died – bing bong, don't forget our chestnut paté is great value at three for the price of two, that's a whole tin of super Christmas paté FREE – I WON'T DO YOU WHAT YOU TELL ME." Surely it ought to be law that it must be played at railway stations, in hospital waiting rooms, at children's parties and every 20 minutes on Magic FM. But an awkward minority seems to disagree. X Factor fans have been articulating their anger on their website, with comments such as, and I promise these are genuine, "If Rage are any good how come they didn't even get past the audition stage of X Factor?" Or there's "If they're an old band, how come I've never heard of them, when I know most music from Westlife to Lady Gaga?" And 2001: Just as significant, in its own way, was the dismissal of 'young people', by politicians and most of the media, as 'no longer interested in politics'. But having trampled on every outbreak of protest for several years, New Labour could hardly expect anyone who was young, angry and idealistic to look to them. It would be as likely as a seventeen-year-old deciding that she was so furious at the inhumanity of Western banks towards African nations, that she was going to join a wine-tasting society. So a few weeks before the end of the millennium, tens of thousands protested in Seattle, temporarily halting the conference of the World Trade Organization. A few weeks later I had the pleasure of feeling woefully old at a Rage Against the Machine gig at Wembley. I felt as if everyone around me was thinking, 'Who's that old bloke? He must be from the record company.' I looked down from my distant seat at twelve thousand people, roaring 'Free Mumia' and 'Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me'. 'Aah,' I thought to myself, 'our future is safe in their hands.' A few days after the gig, I caught myself acting out a scene that was the synthesis of the eighteen-year-old and thirty-nine-year-old me, screaming to, 'Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me' but while I was hoovering the carpet. (266)____________________ Notes: Steel, Mark. "Where next in the battle against the establishment?" The Independent. December 23, 2009. Independent.co.uk. December 28, 2009. http://www.independent.co.uk/opinio...battle-against-the-establishment-1848137.html —————. Reasons to be Cheerful. London: Scribner, 2002.
You and me both, brother, I've been buying up games that I'd pirated. Mind you, only the really good ones, you know, like WIC, Bioshock, TF2. .etc..
