Guerrilla Radio

Oh goodness me. Now I'm not a huge fan of rage, but I was wondering what people say about political bands when they're on mtv etc. And it confirmed my suspicions that you end up with half of them being meatheads "yeah man that riff is so dope, makes me wanna beat up some fags" and the other half interpreting it as anti-society in general and not anti-imperialist anti-authority political commentary "yeah fuck the world man, rage tell it like it is people=shit lol". Both listen to ratm and miss the message they are desperate to get out through mass media, which i guess they would expect when it comes with corporate shit that waters everything down to an image. So to most people they are an image, a t shirt.

I listen to punk music. In fact, rage against the machine were going to release their first album on ebullition ( ebullition.com/ ), a brilliant independent political hardcore label. Of course pop-punk bands you see on mtv aren't political, that's why they're on mtv. Try listening to the majority of the world's music, independent music where people want to keep their artistic integrity and dignity instead of contributing to the four corporations controlling the music world. Try punk bands like fugazi, propagandhi, born against, minor threat, mission of burma, the minutemen (omg jackass theme dude), etc. See the intelligent discussions about them on songmeanings. Of course not all punk bands are political and not all are anti-authority (though ridding a small percentage of the world of their power over the rest is a fundamentally good idea is it not? read chomsky), but who cares, it's just a word. I call things punk by both musical and cultural themes, you might differ, it doesn't matter. The point is that rage share common ground with so much independent music in the last half century, and I assume they tried to get a message out to people being brainwashed by mtv (black-clad 'i hate everything' people included, that's a huge market) I guess it doesn't work too well, but thank god theres bands like that to open up a few young people to a more just and humane way of living. And this song is about that too, about ideas opposed to capitalist structures that control the media subverting it to reach the mainstream. Thanks for listening.