yeah, it's like we're Rage & you should buy our anti-corporate corporate product. see how we wear a red star so that people will equate us with the Soviets (& with communism...even though it was over...which was waycooler than being down with the devil in the '90s.)

But you have to give RATM props for alerting idiots who wouldn't have known better otherwise to various social evils...

RATM was getting paid to warn people about the IMF and the World Bank before it was cool to riot in Seattle.

idiots are idiots...one can't alert them to anything.

their heads are decidedly up their own asses.

sometimes I feel like I know this all too well.

newspapers are like this every so often and do a list. Its ok if youre young and have never heard of all those albums before but after the 50th time.... you might as well do a "50 best lists of the 50 best albums of all time" list.

Its better when they add a theme, like 50 heaviest albums or 50 best summer albums or something like that. Then the usual suspects get kicked out and you get something you might not have heard of before. And 50 albums that changed music isnt that different from 50 best albums.

"When you live in a capitalistic society, the currency of the dissemination of information goes through capitalistic channels. Would Noam Chomsky object to his works being sold at Barnes & Noble? No, because that's where people buy their books. We're not interested in preaching to just the converted. It's great to play abandoned squats run by anarchists, but it's also great to be able to reach people with a revolutionary message, people from Granada Hills to Stuttgart." - Tom Morello

"I feel that it is now necessary to leave Rage because our decision-making process has completely failed. It is no longer meeting the aspirations of all four of us collectively as a band, and from my perspective, has undermined our artistic and political ideal. I am extremely proud of our work, both as activists and musicians, as well as indebted and grateful to every person who has expressed solidarity and shared this incredible experience with us." - Zack de la Rocha




You gotta be pretty angry about something to discount them just because they get paid.

bottom line: RATM's music sucked. Noam Chomsky, the world's foremost intellectual as he is billed (by his own press release no doubt), also pretty much sucks.

I'm ever so fucking sorry that I don't feel like giving everyone a detailed essay on aesthetics & a systematic annihalation of Chomsky to back up my statements.

I did once write an essay that destroyed Camus to smithereens.

Let me just write that it takes a redneck not to know redneck bullshit when they see or hear it.

But, please, acousticrock87, pretty fucking please won't you regale us with your point of view of how RATM & say, Tool, are such great philosophers & musicians?

I don't believe that at all. I merely think that Zack de la Rocha is 100% honest in his beliefs, and nothing more. I hardly agree with a word he says, but it's quite possible to admire someone for having their heart in the right place.

I think RATM and Tool's lyrics are worlds apart.

Tool rants and raves about Alien Conspiracies...

And RATM writes about Leonard Peltier. There is a HUGE difference.

If the guy had truly had his heart in the right place, as you put it, then his I.Q. would be greater than 110 which is as high as I would ever estimate that his is.

Both Zach & Maynard are examples of new age pop philosophers that wouldn't truly know the Tao of Pooh from the Tao te Ching. It's as if they are allergic to source material & it's an all-too-common malaise among today's lazy "thinkers." Throw Perry Farrell right in there with them.

That's a load of bullshit and you know it. To write the lyrical/hiphop/poetry that he does you have to have an I.Q. of higher than 110. The mere fact that Zach was a Harvard grad before he started RATM points to his having a higher than average I.Q. I don't know why you're so down on Rage, but they are undeserving of your criticism.

Perhaps you think they're corny, and they are. But, everyone that sells 3 million of a certain product usually are (I happen to think that Nirvana was incredibly corny and Kurts suicide even cornier than they were). On the corny scale for pop artists, however, they fall near the bottom. They were/are in fact intelligent...and I think that their hearts were/are actually in the right place.

Harvard grad...hehe...yeah, he seems like a spoiled little richie brat.

It was Morello that was a Harvard grad (political science, with honors). Zack was pretty poor, I think.

I find this really narrow minded. To entire genres in which I dislike I don't speak of, because there's legends in every genre. NWA founded an entire genre, G-funk, and also had a key role in the gangsta rap movement as they were one of the first gangsta rap groups. And the money and hoes is their lifestyle (at least a lot of them). Compton has tonnes of gangs in it and they actually live this kind of lifestyle, so they're just expressing it. Do you make fun of Robert Johnson because he has sad lyrics? It's just the atmosphere they live in. Just because they're played on MTV means they're bad? ugh. Now listen to their beats. Express Yourself has a deep bassline with a hint of funk in it. I think the whole concept of combining Funk and Rap together is an excellent idea for they are similar in many ways and a lot of the elements would sound good with one another.

Why don't we all just get under the covers and fucking weep about it!!!!!

Because being right on the internet is all that matters in life. If our opinion is not acknowledged as superior, well then there's no reason to live.

Crap, I wondered after I posted that whether it was Morello or De La Rocha who was the Harvard Grad.

Hah, don't worry about it. I didn't even know that. It just surprised me cause I hadn't heard it before, so I looked it up and figured it out.

the only true gangsta rap and the only real gangsta rap and the only gangsta rap that matters is GETO BOYS!

GETO BOYS! GETO BOYS! GETO BOYS!


RATM had good goals and lofty ambitions, but to claim their lyrics were quality poetry is overreaching by quite a lot.


the only thiong RATM gave to many of it's fans is the ability to pay lip service to revlutionary causes and ideals, and as soon as the next metal act came around those ideals were mostly forgotten and tossed aside, because they were superficial. not RATM, but many of the fan's ideals.

Regarding Nirvana and Nevermind.
like I said, theye wre ethe pinnacle of something. they took the dynamic stylings of the Pixies, the lyrical obtuseness of REM and the heavy sludge of Sabbatha nd combined it into something that touched fans of all these various bands and genres. That is an achievement, but what has itinfluenced? the death of punk? yes.. the final straw in the commercialisation of independent music? yes. the preponderance of self-pity, self-doubt, self-destruction in lyrical styles lately? yes.


sonic youth Daydream nation affected more people who made more bands that affected others with originality and inventiveness and vision.

nirvana clones, a la silverchair and their ilk, influence no one of consequence.

to hell with these wannabee communists. they read a bit Marx, theyve seen some romantic movies with Che and now they scream Down with capitalism. If they only could experience what it really is all about to live in such a regime....if their parents had such stories to tell that my parents and grandparents have.

QFT:cool:

Althoguh I will say 50 cent really isn't great.