My experience at this year's Rock the Bells festival in San Francisco can only be described as "off the chain", and brings full circle a journey that began some time ago when a high school english teacher asked my class: "How can you rage against a machine ?".  Well, duh, it's like banging on the television to improve its' reception, we don't know why it works, and some may recommend against it, but it seems to work, so we do it. ;)

During the daytime, I got to see Flava Flav's son up on stage with him, and great performances from the rest of Public Enemy, The Roots, Cypress Hill, and Wu-Tang Clan, and missed a bunch of acts which came on while I was eating breakfast and negotiating my ticket.  The highlight of the daylight hours was definitely when, while medicating, I spotted some folks trying to sneak in through the back fence by rowing a raft through the bay and into McCovey Cove.  They got busted - and I have pictures of it all - but it was the most clever shit I've seen in a while, and as I told them while they were being escorted out, they get an A-plus.  Don't get me wrong, I want to see people support artists and all, but I think these might be the best RATM fans ever.

Getting back to the main event, Rage's performance - and the crowd participation - was pretty wild, and I was really excited to be in the crowd because back home, in San Antonio, they had trouble getting police officers to work security.  Watching on video, it actually looks pretty tame, but you should keep in mind three things:

1. There is like a six-to-ten-story wall of speakers on each side of them, seriously, I think you need a special license for this many speakers on a fault line.
   
2. Zach is more of an MC - like a rapper - than a traditional rock vocalist, hence rage's headlining of a hip-hop fest.
   
3. The linked video is the very last play of their encore performance, probably around 10:30pm.
   

They make a point to have a big group hug at the end as if to say, "Don't worry, dear fans, we don't hate each other, we just got bored."

Other notable points about the evening, there were lots of murmurs in the crowd about safety long before rage came on, a lot of the pure hip hop fans started to clear out while Wu-Tang was still on stage, the second stage closed down long before Rage came on, and I swear the crowd tripled in size while I was paying attention to Method Man, the RZA, and the GZA.  As an aside, even though the perception may be that the stages were packed with "gangster" rappers, the message was pretty strongly focused on peace, unity, and respect all around.

For what I would estimate is 45 minutes following, the crowd milled around to the best of Bob Marley and was shown video of:

1. Traditional RATM images, esp the red zapatista star on black - a reminder that we are getting what we came for, if we are ready, and a warning if we are not.
   
2. An animation of a little girl and a little boy playing patty cake - a gentle reminder that we are all friends here.
   
3. Waves crashing on shore - ocean beach, maybe?
4. Images of the universe - a reminder that we are all a small part of something big and to discourage supernovas?
   
5. Footage from the day's performers - seriously, we are all friends here, remember like an hour ago, with Flav?
   

So, then Rage played their ass off for an hour, capping off the strongly anti-war and anti-bush day, where all of the performers seemed at least as excited to be in San Francisco as they would be to be in Springfield.  We spent about 15 minutes demanding that encore, which ended with the entire crowd screaming "Fuck You, I won't do what you tell me!", directly followed by probably over 100 thousand folks taking to the streets of San Francisco.  My buddy and I bounced around for about an hour trying to find somewhere still open that we could grab a bite and a couple of pints, with no luck, and ran into an offshoot of the crowd on Kearny, a block south of Bush st.  When we encountered the group, they were chanting:

    "Whose streets? Our Streets!"

When the "Bush" intersection was visible, the person leading the group, who I'm pretty sure was so drunk that his friend was holding him up by the back of his shirt, screamed: "Fuck Bush!" which rallied everyone for about 15 seconds before a motorcycle officer made some electronic sounds to let us all know that, like, traffic needs to get through.  I imagine some drivers may have been a bit put off by the experience, but hey, it was not much worse than the crowd on the 4th of July, which leads me to conclude that Rage fans can be categorically described as being patriotic - at least in this country.

All in all, it was .. maybe .. worth the $200 I spent on tickets, I mean, there's a good chance I won't be able to see them again, at least for a long while, but ouch - the price and the sunburn both still sting a little, and I'm a bit dissappointed not to hear "No Shelter". ;)

Oh, yeah, I heard some people say that rage was "off key" or "out of practice" or, whatever, the band is about political activism and TFYQA, I don't even think they could hear themselves inbetween all those speakers, and they may actually have been concerned for everyone's safety if they played *too* well.  Hell, the crowd sang half the show.  It was all I could do over the sound of us to tell what song was playing.