Rage Against the Machine opening its Lollapalooza 2008 Saturday headliner set with "Testify." (Band takes stage at 1:20 mark.)
Fifteen years after their first Lollapalooza, Rage Against the Machine pounded through their hits during a set unsurprisingly marred by violence and crowd-control problems Saturday night at the south end of Hutchinson field, creating a din whose ferocity matched the mosh pit it incited, a sweaty crush of limbs that brought the concert to a (thankfully temporary) halt more than once. They opened with "Testify" and closed with "Killing in the Name of." In between, people got hurt, barricades were trampled, Obama was somewhat lamely called out and many f-bombs were dropped.
As one teenage girl said to a friend after the show: "That was the most dangerous thing I've ever done."
After sprinting out of the gates with "Testify" and "Bulls on Parade" frontman Zach de la Rocha cut the band off near the end of its third song, "People of the Sun" to urge the crowd to back up and "look after each other."
"We got enough problems out there in the streets with these f---ed up politicians and cops...Save that s--- for the streets," he said, eliciting snickers from a guy near me, who shouted "Rage against injury!"
But problems continued, in the pit and elsewhere. Ten minutes later, after wrapping up "Know Your Enemy," de la Rocha again asked the crowd to back up, now more or less pleading and threatening to cut the set short if the crush up front continued. During this second, near four-minute hiatus the band huddled ominously at the front of the stage and handed the mic over to security to dole out more warnings.
To complicate matters, about 30 minutes into the set a crowd estimated by witnesses at being between 400 and 1000 people crashed a security gate near Columbus and Balbo after police opened it to let out a bus, according to one witness. The rush was stopped only by a dozen officers on horseback according to the Sun-Times.
Is it so surprising that a band whose music orders people to "rise up" would have a rowdier crowd than Radiohead's the night before? There did seem to be a stronger police presence for Saturday's headliner. Police were clearing the stairs this time after the Radiohead crowd had blocked them the night before.
After the show, the crowd, still riled up, streamed out into the Loop, chanting, climbing lamp posts and generally have a good time. Seeing the otherwise deserted loop full of bodies moving towards the El felt more than a little like a scene out of Cloverfield, but instead of fleeing from a monster, the crowd was being nudged along by a quartet of mounted Chicago police officers.
Obligatory Political Call-Out during "Wake Up"
In what seems like a tradition, de la Rocha used the instrumental break on "Wake Up" to fire some lefty, but generally anti-authoritarian politics at the crowd in which he called out "brother Obama" and spoke of a "new generation" of young blacks and latinos who don't care about national politics and who are going to force a reckoning.
Here's the audio, recorded from the field. It's indecipherable in places, but gives a sense of the high drama.
I've uploaded it to the Internet Archive.
Transcription:
"For these last eight years, all we've heard about is a mysterious outside force that threatedns our security and our liveihood everyday... *indecipherable* ...that some outside force is threatening our wayof life and our jobs and our livelihoods...and after *indecipherable*...it must dawn on us that its the big government that is the terrorist force sitting across from us.
"And I'm not just talking about the Bush administration, but the whole sick, conformist apparatus *indecipherable*
"They're supposed to step up and be our voice and congress they turned their backs on us. They turned their backs on the workers. They turned their backs on the soldiers. They got right behind Bush lock step and got this country into another sick war.
"Now we know brother Obama. We know brother Obama. But I tell you what, if he comes to power come November and he doesn't start pulling troops out of Afghanistan, I know a lot of people who are gonna stand up and burn down every office of every Senate.
"All this now we've been seeing is just the beginning, it's just the beginning. And no matter what happens in these *indecipherable*, I'll say this. That there is a generation of young black and latino brothers and sisters that are gonna force everyone in this country to make a decision very soon about what side they're going to stand on. And they're a generation of kids who don't give a f--- about national politics. They care about bread. They care about water. They care about housing and they care about justice. And they ain't gonna f---ing stand for any of that siii. They're just gonna take it.
"This new generation of blacks and latinos *indecipherable* are gonna make this country an offer it can't refuse. So wake up!
The Set:
Save for the distraction of wondering if they'd get to finish the set, the performance itself was near flawless. Rage hasn't lost a step. There's an interview with guitarist Tom Morello on their live DVD in which he says, with the exception of the UK's Prodigy, he's never met a band that could match Rage's energy on stage. Saturday's show definitely lived up to that promise. Morello and De la Rocha were in near-constant motion and played to the roar of the crowd all night long. When they returned for their encore, Morello came out sporting a Cubs cap, pissing off every Sox fan within earshot.
Setlist
- Testify
- Bulls on Parade
- People of the Sun
- Bomb Track
- Know Your Enemy
- Bullet in Your Head
- Born of a Broken Man
- Guerilla Radio
- Ashes in the Fall
- Calm Like a Bomb
- Sleep Now in the Fire
- Wake Up
- Freedom
- Killing in the Name of
Other people writing about this
- TimeOut Chicago: Rage Calls Out Barack And, Not Surprsingly, Creates Some Chaos
- Jim DeRogatis' Lollapalooza Blog
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BradFlora
Brad Flora is CEO of WindyCitizen.com, a web service that lets people share their favorite Chicago news and events with their friends and neighbors. More
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