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Originally Posted by afterthefact
But I think they (and by they, I really just mean Zach De La Rocha) wanted to. And for a little while, and I am talking just a short little while, they may have had enough fans to do it. Unfortunately their fans tended not to be the guerilla-warior minutemen type they had hoped for, but instead a bunch of middle-school aged potheads. But if you were a band and you had the high aspirations of a D.C. mutiny, you would know that you would need more than just the hype at your local indie record store to build your army. So they were signed to Sony; they used that though to their advantage to get more people to believe in their message, however ridiculous the message may have been. Being signed to a major record label didn't kill the dream. What killed it was the fact that the band, besides Zach, lost interest and didn't care anymore and just wanted to play music (you might be able to say they were audio slaves? lol hahaha j/k), and that, as already mentioned, their fan base consisted of a bunch of stoners that were never really going to do anything.
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".. and thats a
true story folks.." phil lesh sept 17, 1974
People should separate RATM the band/ideology from the content of RATM's art/music/lyrics. The problem with art is that people get way to caught up in the personality of the artist.. whether we are talking about Caravaggio or Picasso.. which is why the Bible is
anonymous, and the Ku'ran would have been smart to claim such anonymity as well.. the freedom of anonymity is that you concentrate on the feeling of the art itself, for art's sake, rather than the personality cult of the artists. Iconography and early Church paintings were equally unsigned for the same reasons..
Art should be judged for art's sake. In revolutionary art, true, the credentials/credibility of the artists tend to play a crucial role in judging/interpreting the art, but is that the way it should be? Does not revolutionary art give a voice and language for expression of revolution? Come off it, is Dancin in the Streets that revolutionary a tune? And yet when they were 'dancing' in those streets in 68, folks they knew the truth of the movement. This is like philosophical argument they ask kids in school, "who was a more effective leader, MLK jr (the populist/mainstream) or Malcolm X (underground/militant)?" It is an insulting question, regardless of the motives or the means, if the people are moved towards the movement where is the judgement?
all in all..
