When Rage Against the Machine first burst onto the scene in the 1990s, they were unlike any other rock band around, and not just in terms of sound and music. Their lyrics articulated an untapped yet brewing rebellion felt by both young and old whose sense of marginalization wasn’t yet recognized by the establishment world.
Their lyrics inspired awareness, stanzas that became armaments for a cause not yet born.
They were Occupy Wall Street long before anyone camped out in Zuccotti Park. They hated the establishment politics of the Democratic Party just a couple years before Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was a kindergartner. Listen to the lyrics of their self-named debut album from 1992, and it’s all in there.
Their politics were so anti-establishment that, on the opening day of the 2000 Democratic National Convention, they decided to throw a free concert across the street from the Staples Center and kicked off the show by screaming, “Our democracy has been hijacked! Brothers and sisters, our electoral freedoms in this country are over so long as it’s controlled by corporations! Brothers and sisters, we are not going to allow these streets to be taken over by the Democrats or the Republicans!”
The crowd went crazy.
Several months later, Al Gore conceded that election, and the band would be no more for about seven years. They reemerged briefly ahead of the 2008 presidential elections with a concert in Denver where the DNC was being held, then joined veterans against the war along with their thousands of attendees for a six-mile march to the convention site for an hourslong protest of the war.
On Thursday, the venues and the tickets for their much-anticipated reunion tour went on sale. Within seconds, responses to the prices flooded social media, and justifiably so.
The band of the people, for the people, had ticket prices so astronomically high that the people couldn’t go.
Guitarist Tom Morello insisted days before the launch that any astronomically priced tickets weren’t legitimate tickets, tweeting:
Those outrageous prices are all SCALPERS. NO tickets are on sale til THURS 11am your local time (wherever you are) at https://t.co/u94zQ8C1fi. Don’t be fooled! Don’t be #sad https://t.co/NNBwLJepk2
— Tom Morello (@tmorello) February 11, 2020
Then came the real tickets, and everyone was still sad.
At venues such as the Target Center, Capital One Arena, and Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse (are you getting a corporate vibe?), the cheapest nosebleed tickets will run you at least $125, plus fees to whatever corporation is selling the tickets. At some venues, such as the NMSU Pan American Center in New Mexico, a standing room-only floor ticket will cost you $750, plus a whopping $121.30 in pesky Ticketmaster fees.
The hypocrisy of astronomical prices was not missed by even the most devout fans.
“That Rage Against the Machine makes music for the people who cannot afford tickets to go see Rage Against the Machine is absurd,” said John Brabender, a political consultant who led the successful effort to put the progressive rock group Yes into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
It also fuels a distrust that already exists in our culture and politics that these entertainers or politicians or bureaucrats really don’t have the people’s back and will eventually sell out for their own benefit.
“It certainly is hypocritical; now, only the affluent can see them, and they’ve made it hard for people who can’t afford to see them, irrationally spending more than they can afford,” said Brabender.
The ticket prices are an example of losing your authenticity. It makes people wonder who the band really is. Did they ever really stand for anything? Was it all just an act? It makes Rage Against the Machine no different from a politician — say, Michael Bloomberg, who has decided to work with and pay “social media influencers” to post memes to make Bloomberg look witty and discerning.
If our present culture and politics have taught us anything in the past few years, the one thing people gravitate toward is authenticity, even if it breaks orthodoxies. Think of President Trump for Republicans or Ocasio-Cortez for Democrats. Love them or hate them, the only thing that would sink them is if they became part of the swamp.
As for Rage Against the Machine, they just jumped into the musical equivalent of the swamp. Good luck maintaining your countercultural street cred after this.
