Rage Against the Machine – Rage Against the Machine
I remember the first time I heard it and the feeling I got. It wasn’t a feeling of pure interest or a sense of wonder and amazement. What it was, was envy. I was so fucking jealous that my brother discovered this album before I did that I couldn’t handle myself. I pretended the album was my discovery…and for about 2 weeks it was. Then the rest of America caught wind.
RATM is an utterly demanding album. Steeped in the lore of troubled folk heroes alongside the rebellious righteousness of South African music and Reggae, containing the zeal and ferocity of speed metal while meshing the rawness of underground punks, this album created a genre of music.
The political fervor of the moment was a simmering fire ready to explode and ignite a revolution of expression and thought. Sometimes it takes the most desperate of times to bring out the truest of the soul. This album sincerely altered my perspective of the world around me and thus caused me to delve deeper in the acts of humanity in history, past and present.
I wrote papers on Imperialism, the Monroe Doctrine, Manifest Destiny. Read of the Nazi army and evaluated the micro culture of the world I knew and interacted with on a daily basis.
I took AP studio art my senior year of HS and the writing of Zach De La Rocha is apparent as a major influence throughout my work. I wasn’t so much caught up in the words themselves at times, rather the right and need for them to be spoken. I have always sought to challenge the norm, be above the common and shallow and fight against a controlling mindset of the regulators. This allowed me to keep my edge at a private school where assimilation was the rite to success.
A powerful album in a multitude of aspects.
I remember the first time I heard it and the feeling I got. It wasn’t a feeling of pure interest or a sense of wonder and amazement. What it was, was envy. I was so fucking jealous that my brother discovered this album before I did that I couldn’t handle myself. I pretended the album was my discovery…and for about 2 weeks it was. Then the rest of America caught wind.
RATM is an utterly demanding album. Steeped in the lore of troubled folk heroes alongside the rebellious righteousness of South African music and Reggae, containing the zeal and ferocity of speed metal while meshing the rawness of underground punks, this album created a genre of music.
The political fervor of the moment was a simmering fire ready to explode and ignite a revolution of expression and thought. Sometimes it takes the most desperate of times to bring out the truest of the soul. This album sincerely altered my perspective of the world around me and thus caused me to delve deeper in the acts of humanity in history, past and present.
I wrote papers on Imperialism, the Monroe Doctrine, Manifest Destiny. Read of the Nazi army and evaluated the micro culture of the world I knew and interacted with on a daily basis.
I took AP studio art my senior year of HS and the writing of Zach De La Rocha is apparent as a major influence throughout my work. I wasn’t so much caught up in the words themselves at times, rather the right and need for them to be spoken. I have always sought to challenge the norm, be above the common and shallow and fight against a controlling mindset of the regulators. This allowed me to keep my edge at a private school where assimilation was the rite to success.
A powerful album in a multitude of aspects.
Check Your Head – Beastie Boys
The other side of next stage for the hip-hop/rock era was brought about by three jewish boys from the Bronx. Boys Entering Anarchist States Towards Internal Excellence. Or as you know them; BEASTIE BOYS.
This album is truly when they hit their stride. Comfortable with the mixing and sampling of all genres and expanding in their realm of musical abilities, the trio took their sound to new heights with the help of top notch producers, additional artists and the eagerness to develop a sound of their own creation.
I still consider the Boys some of the most interesting and enjoyable wordsmiths in the field of true hip-hop. The album has bits of all that was and was to come for the band and it sounded like no one else.
I loved this album and I loved this band.
I own a t-shirt of the band sitting in front of the studio when recording this album…I still keep it in my drawer to wear on occasion. That’s some damn appreciation of how much of an influence this album was on my musical evolution and my personal exploration.
The Beastie Boys were the coolest people I had ever seen. I tried to be like them, minus the rapping part. They influenced my mindset, and attitude. The exemplified the break the excepted and prove them wrong notion of art that I dug then and still do.
Most importantly, this album is a blast to listen to and it was a massive success for the band.
Rap and rock would never be the same and the Beastie Boys etched their names into the permanent metal of music history.
1 comment:
Rage rocks the stage, and that dude is on fire..
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