Rage Against the Machine - The People of the Sun

I remember seeing this 10" a bunch of times in the shop I bought it from before eventually deciding to get it. Over the years I'd been going in there sometimes they'd have a copy and other times they wouldn't. On all the times it was there before May 2003 they also had a bunch of other records I wanted to buy instead, so it never made it into my purchases. But as the years went by, the amount of money I was spending on records increased, so it was no surprise that I did finally pick it up. I also bought Siamese Dream and Pretty Hate Machine on vinyl that day, so it was a strong day for a very particular part of my record collection.

The record itself is a strange one - I never quite got the bottom of why it was released on Revelation Records, a label I wouldn't have thought would have normally had much to do with band like Rage. They'd been on a major label from the start and Epic released the cd and 7" versions of single. At the time I thought it was odd that it was on a record label that I wasn't that familiar with (of course, I eventually got to know Revelation Records well), and that a single would be so readily available so many years after it was released. I think in a lot of ways I stopped caring about the answers to these questions - they don't keep me awake at night.

It's a nice little record for a number of reasons - you've got some live songs, a collaboration/cover with Chuck D from Public Enemy and some non-album songs. The three album tracks are all from Evil Empire, which in 2019 has become the Rage album I play the most often - I think its underdog status back in the day helps, partly because I didn't over do it back in the early 2000's; I know the self-titled album like the back of my hand, and whilst The Battle of Los Angeles had some huge songs, they weren't the lasting classics I thought they'd be. People of the Sun and Bulls on Parade are the studio versions and both great singles. Without a Face is a huge late-album gem and the outro never fails to put a smile on my face. The live recording is a great reminder of how incredible they were to watch.

The other songs are fascinating - with Chuck D they cover Public Enemy's Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos and segue pretty much seemlessly into Zapata's Blood, a great song that often appears live, but never in the studio (at least, in my limited research). Hadda Be Playing on the Jukebox is a funny one - an Allen Ginsburg poem set to music, recorded live in Detroit in 1993. At 8-minutes, the duration is actually one of the most interesting things about it - when forced to stretch themselves over more than 5-minutes (due to the length of the poem) the band almost lean into post-rock. The relationship between Zach's vocals and the three instruments is perfect - when Zach gets louder, the music is there rising up and teasing him on; and when he does get loud, he shouts in a way you never hear elsewhere. But he's not necessarily leading everything - Tom's guitars show hints of the peaks to come from early on, as do Brad's drums. Like I said, almost post-rock in the way it holds back but gives hints of whats to come throughout. I like it. Makes you wonder what could have happened if they'd played more music like this - I don't imagine it would have been anywhere near as popular, but it would have made for very interesting listening. Worth the entry fee for that song alone.

Format: 10", insert
Tracks: 5
Cost: £9 new
Bought: FM Music, Southampton
When: 03/05/03
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: none

Rage Against the Machine - Renegades

Rage Against the Machine's last LP was never in the running for the position of "Best RATM album" - being a collection of covers it had no chance of even really comparable. In a lot of ways, that was lucky, the three albums they did write have all gone down in history as being great in their own ways. Renegades makes for a curious addition, albeit a very enjoyable one.

I found this copy of Renegades in a record shop in Bournemouth about 2 years after it was released (for a bargain £9) and a few months after picking up their debut on vinyl. I hadn't bought the cd of Renegades when it came out but remember borrowing a copy from my friend Johnny. It was a good album, but I wasn't into it anywhere near as much as I was their actual albums. A lot of the covers are of old-school hip-hop songs, which I didn't know the originals of (in fact, I don't think I knew any of the originals that well the first time around - a lot have fallen into place since). On top of that, Zach's rapping is great on RATM songs, but not always brilliant on more traditional hip hop.

Microphone Fiend is huge and the whole band shines on it - there isn't a song on the rest of the album that could open it as well as Microphone Fiend does. Renegades of Funk got a lot of play on MTV around the release, so is effectively the single. It starts strong, but all the band are too low in the mix - it could easily be a great RATM song, but the funk aspect is too strong; I miss the metal. Devo's Beautiful World is lovely and thoroughly unexpected. I'm glad Rage didn't write any songs as slow and touching as this, because it wouldn't have worked on any of the albums, so this is a great chance to hear how it might have turned out. Under any other circumstance, I'd love to hear these musicians write and play more songs like this, but not as Rage; it's brilliantly brooding. I'm Housin' has one of the best riffs on the album (closely followed by The Ghost of Tom Joad).

I hadn't heard much Minor Threat when I first heard Renegades - just a few covers - but by the time I got the LP I was a big fan of Minor Threat. I've heard a lot of Minor Threat covers in my time, and this sits somewhere in the middle - not great but not bad. Zach does a good job of Ian's "what the fuck have you done?", but it doesn't hurt anywhere near as much as when Ian sings it. The flow from that to Cypress Hill's How I Could Just Kill a Man doesn't work in my opinion - it's moments like that that remind you you're listening to a collection of songs, not an album.

One final note, I love the poem on the picture sleeve (and spread across a number of pages in the cd booklet) - it's just brilliantly simple and concise. I'm not much of a poetry fan, but I like that one a lot.

Format: 12", picture sleeve
Tracks: 12
Cost: £9 new
Bought: Bournemouth
When: 29/10/02
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Rage Against the Machine - Evil Empire

I suppose this was Rage Against the Machine's "difficult second album"; I certainly remember it being considered so back in the day. It was the start of 2000 when I properly got into Rage and by that point the three main albums had been released, with the covers album Renegades to appear a year later. We'd heard the self-titled album and everything we read told us that Evil Empire hadn't been so good but The Battle of Los Angeles was brilliant. Playing those albums now, I'd (controversially) say they're all as good as each other. Sure, RATM and LA have more of the big songs, but Evil Empire still packs a punch. I can see how people's viewpoints were different in 1996 and 1999, but here in 2013 Evil Empire is quite an incredible follow-up (despite taking four years to come out).

Evil Empire was the first RATM album I bought. I'd taped Hugh's copy of the debut album shortly after he bought it, but it was a year before I found the cd of Evil Empire in the MVC sale for £7 (I had way less disposable cash back then). A few months later I bought the other two albums too. It's funny how other people's opinions of music can affect yours - I remember thinking less of this album simply because I'd heard that other people didn't like it as much. It's a pretty irrational thing to do, but it happens all the time. I try not to read reviews of albums I'm excited about for that very reason, but sometimes it's the easiest thing to do. The other week I thought to myself that I should ask around to see if the Atoms for Peace album is actually any good before remembering that it's 2013 and I can probably find most of the songs on the internet and form an opinion of my own. Of course I haven't got round to doing that yet, but I can't afford to buy the album at the moment anyway, so it doesn't matter either way. 

Anyway, I bought this LP on a huge record buying binge in Selectadisc in Nottingham on a trip to the city to see The Paper Chase for the first time (I was living in Lancaster and Nottingham was the nearest Paper Chase show to me; my sister lived in Derby so I dragged her along and disguised the whole thing (badly) as a visit to see her). I bought a lot of vinyl that day including this one for £7, yet again. Like I said in the post about the self-titled album, I don't play Rage very often these days because I played them so much back in the day. It's been great fun spinning this album today though. I wonder if there'll after be a time when Rage doesn't getting my moving in my seat and rapping along. People of the Sun and Bulls on Parade were always the big hits on Evil Empire (and Down Rodeo had some of Rage's smartest lyrics), but Revolver and Without a Face are equally huge songs too.

Format: 12", picture sleeve

Tracks: 11

Cost: £7 new

Bought: Selectadisc, Nottingham

When: 15/03/04

Colour: Black

Etching: none

mp3s: no

Rage Against the Machine - Rage Against the Machine

I was at a gig the other week and between bands they played Rage Against the Machine's self-titled debut. It was playing too loud for conversation, so all the non-smokers were just stood there enjoying it and remembering what a great album it is. I, for one, had long forgotten how great it is; I'd loved it back in the day and listened to it so often I didn't feel I had to anymore - I knew it backwards. However, in those years that passed with Rage only being played sporadically, my memory of what an excellent album this is faded. It's now 20 years old and it still blows me away.

I'd never heard of Rage Against the Machine until the 29th of December 1999, when some friends and I had gone record shopping in the many second-hand shops of Bournemouth. I'd filled out my Manics collection (on cd) and picked up Ignition by The Offspring. Hugh bought a couple of cds, one of them Rage's debut and their name first passed my ears as we stood outside the shop comparing our purchases. Back then we all taped each other's cds so I recorded Hugh's copy and eventually bought a copy a year later when a friend's brother was shifting all of his cds for a fiver each (I think he'd recorded them all onto mini-disc, a move he'd surely come to regret). A year or so later I was in Newbury Comics in Boston, found the LP and picked it up along with some Tool records, Gorilla Biscuits and a Rival Schools 7"). I knew it was a classic and was pretty pleased to have it on vinyl (the album has one of the most brutal covers out there - not many records have an actual picture of a man dying on the front, although that's probably a good thing).

Now, nearly 13 years after first hearing this album, it's still incredible. As soon as each song starts it's nearly impossible to not drum along or mime the bass or guitar or rap every single word that Zach spits. I could never listen to this album when I was revising for exams because it makes it so hard to focus on the task at hand. Years later it's still stealing my attention. Sure, lines like "fuck you I won't do what you tell me" sound a little cliché these days, but the songs are so good you just don't care. I couldn't possibly list my favourite songs as there's not a bad one on there, but Bombtrack, Take the Power Back and the outro to Bullet in the Head always stayed with me.

Rage were up there with the first bands I ever saw live - my 8th gig was the Sunday of Reading Festival in 2000 where we saw, what would be for a while at least, Rage's last UK show - and they were incredible. The pit down the front was ferocious and I cautiously stayed a bit further back. I remember taking comfort in the fact I wasn't the only one also "singing" the guitar bits. I would see them two more times, including the free Finsbury Park "Thank You" show for getting them the Christmas number one spot. A lot of people I knew were against the campaign to get RATM to number one citing such arguments as "when did you last care about who had the number one single?", etc (even arguing it was unfair to the X-Factor winner). However, I was all for the idea, to the extent I even downloaded a song I have the mp3 of. Yes, I've not given a shit about the singles chart in a very long time, but as a kid I certainly did, and I loved the idea that people could come together to affect something like that. I get the point of X-Factor, but I'm not it's target audience and hope I never am, so it pleases me to see people with fond memories of non-pop music taking the power back, as it were.

Musically it was excellent, but in other ways the Finsbury Park show was an odd one. I figured the audience would be much younger, but I'd say that on average the crowd were the same age as me and upwards. It made me a bit sad to think that in the years since Rage broke up kids just weren't getting into them. The idea of passing through your teenage years without Killing in the Name just seems wrong.

This album has just been re-issued in a variety of formats, and the 2cd+dvd package looks pretty nice. The deluxe boxset looks even nicer, but probably out of my price range for an album I already have two copies of. If I didn't own this LP I'd probably be more tempted (it also comes with the dvd of the Finsbury Park gig, which would be nice to re-live).


Format: 12", picture sleeve
Tracks: 10
Cost: £6.30 new
Bought: Newbury Comics, Boston
When: 05/08/02
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no