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Rage Against the Machine
Rage Against The Machine changed the shape of music with their rampant self-titled debut album in 1992. Here was a politically charged troupe who took advantage of major label backing yet spoke out on issues that few stars in the spotlight dared to never afraid to insist their message was just as important as the music. The sales came in the millions and critical acclaim besieged them until De La Rocha left the band in 2000. Instead of attempting to replace the inimitable orator, Morello and Co. threw a curveball and hired ex-Soundgarden throat Chris Cornell to create a new band Audioslave.Yet there was always the genius of Rage Against The Machine in the background and in 2007 the band reformed with De La Rocha included. Millions have waited a long time to see the spectacle unfold once again. This is the story of how a Harvard graduate and a poetic activist welded together, along with several capable cohorts, to create a bastion of youth revival and change through the medium of their striking, innovative material; a glutton of musical riches which continues to amaze and inspire today.
- GenresMusic
208 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2008
4 people are currently reading
94 people want to read
About the author
Paul Stenning
20 books1 followerPaul Stenning is a ghostwriter and author of 30 books. His work has been published in 15 different languages. He is a best-selling author in several countries – from the UK to Brazil and Bulgaria – and has sold over one million books worldwide.
His best-known work is Success – By Those Who’ve Made It (featuring Mario Andretti, Frank Abagnale, DJ Jazzy Jeff and more) as well as best-selling biographies of Robert Pattinson and Guns N' Roses.
In recent years, Stenning has gone beyond celebrity interviewing to writing books focused on service, self-help, and inspiration. He has worked with several of the leading figures in the genre.
Notable recent ghostwriting clients include The World’s Most Travelled Man, Don Parrish, a pioneering physicist and a Philosophy professor.
Since 1997, Paul has also written for numerous major magazines including FHM, Front, Rolling Stone, and Record Collector.
From 2011, until its closure in 2017, he was a regular columnist for the Cyprus Weekly, the top-selling English language newspaper in Cyprus.
Paul has a keen interest in poetry and his first contribution to a book was as a poet, in the 2000 collection Magical Memories, edited by Poetry Now’s Heather Killingray.
Since 2018 he has been the official poet for the tourist board of Guinea-Bissau, combining his love for poetry and travel writing.
Many of his books have been published in foreign languages; from Japanese to Portuguese. Altogether he has works in 15 different languages.
Outside of writing Paul has worked as assistant to the financial advisor for Take That and once worked at a famous comedy club working directly with many high profile comedians including Peter Kay.
Meat Loaf has sung to him in person and he has been kissed by actress Linda Hamilton!
He has also had hundreds of official photographs taken by the Royal Family photographer, Arthur Edwards MBE.
As a rock DJ he has warmed up the crowd prior to concerts by No Doubt, Motörhead and Lynyrd Skynyrd.
Based predominantly in Cyprus, he lives with his wife and home schooled daughter and together they enjoy world travel.
His best-known work is Success – By Those Who’ve Made It (featuring Mario Andretti, Frank Abagnale, DJ Jazzy Jeff and more) as well as best-selling biographies of Robert Pattinson and Guns N' Roses.
In recent years, Stenning has gone beyond celebrity interviewing to writing books focused on service, self-help, and inspiration. He has worked with several of the leading figures in the genre.
Notable recent ghostwriting clients include The World’s Most Travelled Man, Don Parrish, a pioneering physicist and a Philosophy professor.
Since 1997, Paul has also written for numerous major magazines including FHM, Front, Rolling Stone, and Record Collector.
From 2011, until its closure in 2017, he was a regular columnist for the Cyprus Weekly, the top-selling English language newspaper in Cyprus.
Paul has a keen interest in poetry and his first contribution to a book was as a poet, in the 2000 collection Magical Memories, edited by Poetry Now’s Heather Killingray.
Since 2018 he has been the official poet for the tourist board of Guinea-Bissau, combining his love for poetry and travel writing.
Many of his books have been published in foreign languages; from Japanese to Portuguese. Altogether he has works in 15 different languages.
Outside of writing Paul has worked as assistant to the financial advisor for Take That and once worked at a famous comedy club working directly with many high profile comedians including Peter Kay.
Meat Loaf has sung to him in person and he has been kissed by actress Linda Hamilton!
He has also had hundreds of official photographs taken by the Royal Family photographer, Arthur Edwards MBE.
As a rock DJ he has warmed up the crowd prior to concerts by No Doubt, Motörhead and Lynyrd Skynyrd.
Based predominantly in Cyprus, he lives with his wife and home schooled daughter and together they enjoy world travel.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
September 9, 2019
This book is straightforward in covering the rise of RATM, especially of one certain, very interesting, person in our era who wasn’t divided three ways down the middle like most: Zach “De La Rocha” (“of the rose”), their Chieftain.
There was no fluffy “peace, peace” in him that almost every movement for actual Peace in society always gets beyond to become anything.
One has to dismiss the Commford, military brat, dense, thug jocks too once one does go far enough down that route though - and this goes into how and why Zach did that as well. You can really learn a lot about starting whatever revolution you see central to life by reading about his winding - more than “auto” - biography.
A few of us who are left not whipped are always like him, in some real - but not eyes wide shut cultic - way looking for people like this all the time through history and still standing. That is who we are going to be among.
Being just 1. shamanistic alone, just 2. wisely sensitive alone or just 3. emotionally ready enough to revolt in some way alone is not enough. It has to be all 3 in the right way or none of the three are real and fizzle out on their own as silly. Almost everyone is just one of these ways only and then fall flat on their face. It seems you need the right mix of flour, water and yeast to make bread or it is merde. Such De La Rocha had and has. So anything you can learn about him is pure gold.
I find it interesting the last known recorded spot the Templars sailed out from with their gold when they were being persecuted in 1317 AD by that dead soul (inventor of “attourney’s”) Philip the Fair was the port city “De La Rocha.” I do believe in racial consciousness and it being more important than the self to follow but not as important as the higher self in all of us where harmonious conscience exists and separately grows. So it appears Zach followed both, both as a Mechica zeitgeist and a gentleman with conscience. But you can have different strains in you of race consciousness. He also had a dangerous canaano sephardic converso background to him which rises one into the middle of world controversy and dealings being of such blood, as Dylan of himself even noted, but then he used that in a way of conscience with his higher shamanic self, directing such. We do know he had a third one too I earlier mentioned being a De La Rocha. Historically the Rosicrucians started only a short while after the Templars fled, they of the early Rosy Cross who I believe helped William Wallace (long before the War of the Roses came down into Yorke) and who were central to later history in the West staying liberated and creative. Such memory in him is the most interesting of all the three different strains in him to me, very in-terresting, that De La Rocha (of the rose) one; even more than the Mechica and Canaano.
We who are like him are more than those just being a good householder: “good at life but do not believe in it.” A mere good householder just knows one or two of these three trans racial and metaphysical qualities enumerated earlier before the race memory digression - which is not enough and lopsided. This book shows how Zach had all 3 plus fullfilled his 3 collective racial memories in the right way (not that it intended to show that, one just sees it if you have eyes to see it). There are many called to be in such way but few workers of the field (of Magic). You watch Zach in concert and he was one though, just electrifyingly magic. It flowed from his conscience (which is trialectic according to the ancient world).
What am I trying to capture here to show what this book shows about him? In all 3 earlier enumerated, one has to not just be continually creative in a finer cultural way with them but ready to be somewhat on the opposing side of the Pontius Pilate types there on the opposite side of we on the active side of infinity.
Pontius Pilate types are those who are good at life and don’t believe in it also like us but are dead souls comptrolling “the masses unconsciously enamoured by these comptrollers pseudo-cleverness.” They are on the opposite, dark whirlpool side of the diamond of humanity, not the “inner angelic transcendent messenger” angular side of the diamond.
You are not awake till you see how to be a counteractive alternative to them, moving completely sideways from them permanently in all ways in oneself (yet maintaining, if one can, the path of non-violence). Call this the Angel Underground in one or higher conscience or what have you.
It’s not just caring about a few emotional piccadillo pet causes of your own but 70 that transform one into more continually experiencing noumenal self-consciousness and wider world wisdom as a group among we spirit-being revolutionary “Hebrews/Aryans/Black Panthers” of Spirit (not mere bio-racists or pseudo-universalist apparatchiks making materialist money and resource bids for our kinds and family and for our material selves like the dead souls).
This way of trans-political, trans-materialist politic is the emotional body Buddha said is part of the fourfold path to developing in one bringing disillusionment from samsaric existence here and awaking (so you can “do” something metaphysical and not just do life with a little “L” stuff like the sleepers and the dead or be a listlessly disengaged self tinkerer like they who became immortal but bored - as portrayed in the movie Zardoz).
Zach actually manifested the right mix of all three influences going on in this society that is divided and conquered three ways down the middle, a society that usually keeps it all divided and useless and so is a useless society globally until the 3 mix again.
What do I mean to show he had that most of us only think we have (and that this book shows he had)?
It is easy to see, one can even see it on this site.
There are those in one camp who have a magnetic center like an itch itching itself for the shamanic actual experience of the noumenal spirit world amidst us (both in us energically and in the materia). They have had such and continue to seek such and it is more important than life with a little “L” itself: seekers of the Unknown, not just churchgoers or “philosophers.” But those who have this alone are loons going off the cliffs of modernity, it is not enough. Here is one division in modernity of people we who are like Zach wait to reintegrate among us and who are in more numbers than us. They are all over this site too. Let’s call them conspiracy theory alien watchers (though I am revolted by such bad jacketing of a label). Zach was and is fully this and more (he loved and recommended Castaneda books and has friends in Orange County I know of he identified with who were affiliated with some of the Hindu Guru’s there).
There are also in high numbers those here on this site and in the world who are wide spanningly thoughtful and penetratively able to see into the essence of not just 7 but 17 or 70 gendre’s of thought in the world and through time and put their empathetic feet into the shoes of each capturing the quintessence of each as if they are those very people. But this quality isolated makes one merely a smiley-eyed burned out case, a school-child painting mustaches on old statues and leering (as in a stupor) that “no one is so hopelessly disengaged and skeptical as oneself.” Anyone who looks closely at Buddha’s teaching sees such hipsterism is death of the emotional body so necessary to the 4 ways and not real disidentification from Samsara illusion at all and makes one a shell ghost instead of a spirit in active infinity. Such are another large type of peoples one sees everywhere (including on this site) and we wait for them to integrate with us who are the above and this way combined jointly, combined is the key (these camps don’t like each other usually - one thinks the other less in the know). Call these second one’s the academia waylayers. People lik Zach and myself are both and we get both and that is why this book is so good in as much as it reveals such a rare person like this.
Zach was fully shaman and fully sensitive peceptive sage like both of these in right combination and still is. He most certainly was not just the lazy know it all skeptic leerer or mystery seeker accidentally sometimes coming upon certain metaphysical experiences on his good days.
Then, third camp of the many, there are those who are neither the above much, they just don’t have time for it, but they are actively emotionally ready to do something in life to where they want to do something about their own or many people’s deeper cause or racial consciousness like Zach de la Rocha. But this alone, without the shamanic higher self and the spirit of empathetic universal wisdom, will often turn one as if without a rudder into the lower path of violence or cause you to accidentally, revoltingly crush with limited consciousness those amidst your opposition who have the previous two qualities of humanity one should most promote in equal measure regardless of their cause or skin color.
So we who are all 3 find those with prickly burrs in this camp of zealots (whom Christ associated with but wasn’t fully) instead among them who are exiting this camp and instead, not loosing it’s momentum, becoming active, psychological and esoteric in inner exodus, becoming spiritually Hebrews, inner Aryanists or inner Black Panthers of Spirit. We unite away from (not persecute) those mere hard-line bio-racists or limited perspective liberal do-gooders and comptrollers on witch hunts. The latter both are in mass race unconsciousness or lower ego unconscious money and power and material resource grab competition or mechanical negative emotions amidst eachother and against each other and especially accidentally against we spirit revolutionaries they don’t get or see or understand at all, neither of these two sides in this outer exoteric movement camp.
They are they who can fall into hands of the dead souls who behave like goyim, thugs or white trash slicksters psychologically inside, regardless their dna or social cause, in order to get what they want of an ephemeral sort.
Zach was one, fully emotionally engaged in a self-awakening way like this third way too but maybe his form of communism got him a little too involved in changing the materia only - which is fine but limited. But he took it’s momentum and went on into a next stage beyond this third way cause he was the other two camps in equal measure; such a rare thing. One always looks for people with all 3 if you are the same.
I don’t think he was just a simple “give us the resources back” communist (3rd line emotionally engaged). He said one of the main reasons he shut down RATM indefinitely was people weren’t really understanding the essence of what he was singing about. Maybe they could go be gung ho communists against the corrupted rich but they weren’t metaphysically understanding all he was singing about, just little parts of the bigger world revolution people would just grab on to one part of.
I don’t think he regrets the zealots doing this or even sometimes getting violent but the energy he was trying to spread was metaphysical and sagific in equal parts to zealous, and those former two are the parts almost everyone dropped the ball on and missed about him. He knew the war way is just a black crow handing out tickets to Pinnochio’s isle where all turn to animals then wood there.
So he didn’t drop his inner momentum, he just moved without humanity following him when he saw people couldn’t figure out how to mix all three in themselves like he did and he called us to:
Spirituality with perspective of wisdom with active politics.
So he just gave up. People just don’t have all 3 anymore and if they do you had better learn more about them and be friends with them or you will miss out on real life.
This book basically shows that journey of such a person.
He doesn’t just sing about the Zapatista’s being supressed, he talks about the Religious Priests of Hiroshima getting the bomb dropped on them in particular for some reason (they could have choose another city) and he is angry enough to move mountains in others when he sings about it; and he did.
I read in another retrospective of him besides this book, another interview of him, where he said Bono was worried and called him on to his plain/plane and asked him if he realized people are going to wars in eastern europe killing eachother listening to his music as they do. Cause he doesn’t just sing about the rope on the throat upon pages and scapegoats, he sings of libraries that used to be great but now are mind and mayan cemetaries. He brings one‘s Shamanic self into revolt against the materialists.
He told Bono so be it. Yet he was and is more than just a bloody revolutionary and people weren’t getting him on this level and he knew it. He didn’t feel Bono was right but he didn’t feel whiskered bomb carriers were right so what do you do at that point when society is asleep to simple power structures they need to non-violently remove and not idolize and you are growing up into a ghost town filled with puzzle factories for the polite to gnab you into? I guess you just go hang out with Michael Stipe and Paul Banks and write some real esoteric shit (like he did).
You just have to go on and keep trying to mix all 3 in you when gogol’s dead souls start coming and the rest of the world of the mechanics don’t believe you.
And he did.
And so do we finding each other, through books like this; no...through people like Zach.
So I recommend anything about him one can get one’s hands on like this sorta passable book; but his interviews even moreso.
“The stars are never sleeping; the dead one’s and the living.” - David Bowie
There was no fluffy “peace, peace” in him that almost every movement for actual Peace in society always gets beyond to become anything.
One has to dismiss the Commford, military brat, dense, thug jocks too once one does go far enough down that route though - and this goes into how and why Zach did that as well. You can really learn a lot about starting whatever revolution you see central to life by reading about his winding - more than “auto” - biography.
A few of us who are left not whipped are always like him, in some real - but not eyes wide shut cultic - way looking for people like this all the time through history and still standing. That is who we are going to be among.
Being just 1. shamanistic alone, just 2. wisely sensitive alone or just 3. emotionally ready enough to revolt in some way alone is not enough. It has to be all 3 in the right way or none of the three are real and fizzle out on their own as silly. Almost everyone is just one of these ways only and then fall flat on their face. It seems you need the right mix of flour, water and yeast to make bread or it is merde. Such De La Rocha had and has. So anything you can learn about him is pure gold.
I find it interesting the last known recorded spot the Templars sailed out from with their gold when they were being persecuted in 1317 AD by that dead soul (inventor of “attourney’s”) Philip the Fair was the port city “De La Rocha.” I do believe in racial consciousness and it being more important than the self to follow but not as important as the higher self in all of us where harmonious conscience exists and separately grows. So it appears Zach followed both, both as a Mechica zeitgeist and a gentleman with conscience. But you can have different strains in you of race consciousness. He also had a dangerous canaano sephardic converso background to him which rises one into the middle of world controversy and dealings being of such blood, as Dylan of himself even noted, but then he used that in a way of conscience with his higher shamanic self, directing such. We do know he had a third one too I earlier mentioned being a De La Rocha. Historically the Rosicrucians started only a short while after the Templars fled, they of the early Rosy Cross who I believe helped William Wallace (long before the War of the Roses came down into Yorke) and who were central to later history in the West staying liberated and creative. Such memory in him is the most interesting of all the three different strains in him to me, very in-terresting, that De La Rocha (of the rose) one; even more than the Mechica and Canaano.
We who are like him are more than those just being a good householder: “good at life but do not believe in it.” A mere good householder just knows one or two of these three trans racial and metaphysical qualities enumerated earlier before the race memory digression - which is not enough and lopsided. This book shows how Zach had all 3 plus fullfilled his 3 collective racial memories in the right way (not that it intended to show that, one just sees it if you have eyes to see it). There are many called to be in such way but few workers of the field (of Magic). You watch Zach in concert and he was one though, just electrifyingly magic. It flowed from his conscience (which is trialectic according to the ancient world).
What am I trying to capture here to show what this book shows about him? In all 3 earlier enumerated, one has to not just be continually creative in a finer cultural way with them but ready to be somewhat on the opposing side of the Pontius Pilate types there on the opposite side of we on the active side of infinity.
Pontius Pilate types are those who are good at life and don’t believe in it also like us but are dead souls comptrolling “the masses unconsciously enamoured by these comptrollers pseudo-cleverness.” They are on the opposite, dark whirlpool side of the diamond of humanity, not the “inner angelic transcendent messenger” angular side of the diamond.
You are not awake till you see how to be a counteractive alternative to them, moving completely sideways from them permanently in all ways in oneself (yet maintaining, if one can, the path of non-violence). Call this the Angel Underground in one or higher conscience or what have you.
It’s not just caring about a few emotional piccadillo pet causes of your own but 70 that transform one into more continually experiencing noumenal self-consciousness and wider world wisdom as a group among we spirit-being revolutionary “Hebrews/Aryans/Black Panthers” of Spirit (not mere bio-racists or pseudo-universalist apparatchiks making materialist money and resource bids for our kinds and family and for our material selves like the dead souls).
This way of trans-political, trans-materialist politic is the emotional body Buddha said is part of the fourfold path to developing in one bringing disillusionment from samsaric existence here and awaking (so you can “do” something metaphysical and not just do life with a little “L” stuff like the sleepers and the dead or be a listlessly disengaged self tinkerer like they who became immortal but bored - as portrayed in the movie Zardoz).
Zach actually manifested the right mix of all three influences going on in this society that is divided and conquered three ways down the middle, a society that usually keeps it all divided and useless and so is a useless society globally until the 3 mix again.
What do I mean to show he had that most of us only think we have (and that this book shows he had)?
It is easy to see, one can even see it on this site.
There are those in one camp who have a magnetic center like an itch itching itself for the shamanic actual experience of the noumenal spirit world amidst us (both in us energically and in the materia). They have had such and continue to seek such and it is more important than life with a little “L” itself: seekers of the Unknown, not just churchgoers or “philosophers.” But those who have this alone are loons going off the cliffs of modernity, it is not enough. Here is one division in modernity of people we who are like Zach wait to reintegrate among us and who are in more numbers than us. They are all over this site too. Let’s call them conspiracy theory alien watchers (though I am revolted by such bad jacketing of a label). Zach was and is fully this and more (he loved and recommended Castaneda books and has friends in Orange County I know of he identified with who were affiliated with some of the Hindu Guru’s there).
There are also in high numbers those here on this site and in the world who are wide spanningly thoughtful and penetratively able to see into the essence of not just 7 but 17 or 70 gendre’s of thought in the world and through time and put their empathetic feet into the shoes of each capturing the quintessence of each as if they are those very people. But this quality isolated makes one merely a smiley-eyed burned out case, a school-child painting mustaches on old statues and leering (as in a stupor) that “no one is so hopelessly disengaged and skeptical as oneself.” Anyone who looks closely at Buddha’s teaching sees such hipsterism is death of the emotional body so necessary to the 4 ways and not real disidentification from Samsara illusion at all and makes one a shell ghost instead of a spirit in active infinity. Such are another large type of peoples one sees everywhere (including on this site) and we wait for them to integrate with us who are the above and this way combined jointly, combined is the key (these camps don’t like each other usually - one thinks the other less in the know). Call these second one’s the academia waylayers. People lik Zach and myself are both and we get both and that is why this book is so good in as much as it reveals such a rare person like this.
Zach was fully shaman and fully sensitive peceptive sage like both of these in right combination and still is. He most certainly was not just the lazy know it all skeptic leerer or mystery seeker accidentally sometimes coming upon certain metaphysical experiences on his good days.
Then, third camp of the many, there are those who are neither the above much, they just don’t have time for it, but they are actively emotionally ready to do something in life to where they want to do something about their own or many people’s deeper cause or racial consciousness like Zach de la Rocha. But this alone, without the shamanic higher self and the spirit of empathetic universal wisdom, will often turn one as if without a rudder into the lower path of violence or cause you to accidentally, revoltingly crush with limited consciousness those amidst your opposition who have the previous two qualities of humanity one should most promote in equal measure regardless of their cause or skin color.
So we who are all 3 find those with prickly burrs in this camp of zealots (whom Christ associated with but wasn’t fully) instead among them who are exiting this camp and instead, not loosing it’s momentum, becoming active, psychological and esoteric in inner exodus, becoming spiritually Hebrews, inner Aryanists or inner Black Panthers of Spirit. We unite away from (not persecute) those mere hard-line bio-racists or limited perspective liberal do-gooders and comptrollers on witch hunts. The latter both are in mass race unconsciousness or lower ego unconscious money and power and material resource grab competition or mechanical negative emotions amidst eachother and against each other and especially accidentally against we spirit revolutionaries they don’t get or see or understand at all, neither of these two sides in this outer exoteric movement camp.
They are they who can fall into hands of the dead souls who behave like goyim, thugs or white trash slicksters psychologically inside, regardless their dna or social cause, in order to get what they want of an ephemeral sort.
Zach was one, fully emotionally engaged in a self-awakening way like this third way too but maybe his form of communism got him a little too involved in changing the materia only - which is fine but limited. But he took it’s momentum and went on into a next stage beyond this third way cause he was the other two camps in equal measure; such a rare thing. One always looks for people with all 3 if you are the same.
I don’t think he was just a simple “give us the resources back” communist (3rd line emotionally engaged). He said one of the main reasons he shut down RATM indefinitely was people weren’t really understanding the essence of what he was singing about. Maybe they could go be gung ho communists against the corrupted rich but they weren’t metaphysically understanding all he was singing about, just little parts of the bigger world revolution people would just grab on to one part of.
I don’t think he regrets the zealots doing this or even sometimes getting violent but the energy he was trying to spread was metaphysical and sagific in equal parts to zealous, and those former two are the parts almost everyone dropped the ball on and missed about him. He knew the war way is just a black crow handing out tickets to Pinnochio’s isle where all turn to animals then wood there.
So he didn’t drop his inner momentum, he just moved without humanity following him when he saw people couldn’t figure out how to mix all three in themselves like he did and he called us to:
Spirituality with perspective of wisdom with active politics.
So he just gave up. People just don’t have all 3 anymore and if they do you had better learn more about them and be friends with them or you will miss out on real life.
This book basically shows that journey of such a person.
He doesn’t just sing about the Zapatista’s being supressed, he talks about the Religious Priests of Hiroshima getting the bomb dropped on them in particular for some reason (they could have choose another city) and he is angry enough to move mountains in others when he sings about it; and he did.
I read in another retrospective of him besides this book, another interview of him, where he said Bono was worried and called him on to his plain/plane and asked him if he realized people are going to wars in eastern europe killing eachother listening to his music as they do. Cause he doesn’t just sing about the rope on the throat upon pages and scapegoats, he sings of libraries that used to be great but now are mind and mayan cemetaries. He brings one‘s Shamanic self into revolt against the materialists.
He told Bono so be it. Yet he was and is more than just a bloody revolutionary and people weren’t getting him on this level and he knew it. He didn’t feel Bono was right but he didn’t feel whiskered bomb carriers were right so what do you do at that point when society is asleep to simple power structures they need to non-violently remove and not idolize and you are growing up into a ghost town filled with puzzle factories for the polite to gnab you into? I guess you just go hang out with Michael Stipe and Paul Banks and write some real esoteric shit (like he did).
You just have to go on and keep trying to mix all 3 in you when gogol’s dead souls start coming and the rest of the world of the mechanics don’t believe you.
And he did.
And so do we finding each other, through books like this; no...through people like Zach.
So I recommend anything about him one can get one’s hands on like this sorta passable book; but his interviews even moreso.
“The stars are never sleeping; the dead one’s and the living.” - David Bowie
July 31, 2024
Incredible and informative book. It tells quite a lot about the band and their views, and also introduces the readers to leftist politics and injustice happening around the world. Personally, I learnt many new things, and the subjects that were spoken about were important, such as police brutality, rascism, violence towards minorities etc.
Rage against the machine is one of the most powerful bands coming out of the United States, a so called land of the free, which restricts oppressed people's opinions. These kinds of topics should be more widely spoken of.
The only thing which I didn't really enjoy, was the part about Audioslave. I get that it's good to know what happened after RATM broke up for the first time, but the section seemed odd when the rest of the book was socially informative, and it really didn't give us anything useful. It felt like an unseasoned element in the middle of the best dish I've ever eaten.
Rage against the machine is one of the most powerful bands coming out of the United States, a so called land of the free, which restricts oppressed people's opinions. These kinds of topics should be more widely spoken of.
The only thing which I didn't really enjoy, was the part about Audioslave. I get that it's good to know what happened after RATM broke up for the first time, but the section seemed odd when the rest of the book was socially informative, and it really didn't give us anything useful. It felt like an unseasoned element in the middle of the best dish I've ever eaten.
September 27, 2020
This five-star rating probably has more to do with the band, and its members than the book, but I can't separate it out at the moment. I just know I'm fired up! I knew a bit about RATM, but not nearly enough. I would still like to learn more and intend to seek out further information. They are such an interesting, talented group that found a way to work within the corporate music industry while maintaining their integrity...for a time at least. I hope they are able to find their footing again. They have so much to offer! This book has been sitting next to my computer, and I've been looking up and listening to the different bands and songs to help me put what I've read into context. While I never stopped loving RATM's music and message, my feelings have been reawakened and energized.
July 22, 2025
An extensive look not only at RATM and their career, but also at the history of protest music, as well as a comprehensive look at the events that inspired the band to take certain stands and why. I liked the historical aspects in this book. While most of the music bits were a bit too opinionated, I thought it explored their discography well enough. Legendary in their own right, the words on these pages easily remind the reader why they have achieved that status. ✊️
June 4, 2018
Paljon protestimusiikin historiaa sekä bändin henkilöiden taustoja. Kirjassa mm. perataan bändin aikajana albumi albumilta ja avataan kappaleita, niiden sanoituksien merkitystä sekä bändin aiheuttamaa mediamylläkkää ja sivuprojekteja.
Kyseessä ensimmäinen tutustuminen tällaiseen elämänkertaan..
Biisit raikaamaan lukiessa - toimii!
Kyseessä ensimmäinen tutustuminen tällaiseen elämänkertaan..
Biisit raikaamaan lukiessa - toimii!
May 24, 2019
A fanboy's tribute to his favourite band...
The love and admiration for all things RATM was obvious and as a hardcore fan myself, I can relate. However some of the description and writing is a bit too much
Nevertheless this has been an enjoyable read and fans of Rage will need to give this a go
The love and admiration for all things RATM was obvious and as a hardcore fan myself, I can relate. However some of the description and writing is a bit too much
Nevertheless this has been an enjoyable read and fans of Rage will need to give this a go
Read
September 11, 2022Amateurish
March 29, 2024
Partly ok, especially the backgrounds and the history. Reviews of each song of each album were a bit boring.
August 16, 2017
"Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!..."
Paul Stenningin kirja yhdestä merkittävimmästä poliittisesta yhtyeestä, Rage Against the Machinestä, on valitettavan tylsä. Bändin lyriikat ja esiintymiset ovat sisältäneet aineksia, joihin jopa Valkoinen Talo on ottanut kantaa. Stenning käy kuitenkin tapahtumia läpi puolilakonisesti ja turhankin asialliseen sävyyn.
Kirjan lopussa pompataan bändin hajoamisen jälkeen syntyneen Audioslaven muutaman vuoden kestäneen uran kimppuun ja tässä kohden lukijaa unettaakin jo aikasta reilusti.
Voi kun Rage Against the Machinen ruutitynnytin puolikkaista eli Tom Morellosta ja Zack de la Rocha edes toinen kirjoittaisi omaelämäkerran. Stenning ei pysty tiivistämään kirjaimiksi vaikkapa "Killing in the name" biisin tunnelatausta ja merkitystä. Veikkaisin, että Morellolta tai de la Rochalta se kävisi.
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!..."
Paul Stenningin kirja yhdestä merkittävimmästä poliittisesta yhtyeestä, Rage Against the Machinestä, on valitettavan tylsä. Bändin lyriikat ja esiintymiset ovat sisältäneet aineksia, joihin jopa Valkoinen Talo on ottanut kantaa. Stenning käy kuitenkin tapahtumia läpi puolilakonisesti ja turhankin asialliseen sävyyn.
Kirjan lopussa pompataan bändin hajoamisen jälkeen syntyneen Audioslaven muutaman vuoden kestäneen uran kimppuun ja tässä kohden lukijaa unettaakin jo aikasta reilusti.
Voi kun Rage Against the Machinen ruutitynnytin puolikkaista eli Tom Morellosta ja Zack de la Rocha edes toinen kirjoittaisi omaelämäkerran. Stenning ei pysty tiivistämään kirjaimiksi vaikkapa "Killing in the name" biisin tunnelatausta ja merkitystä. Veikkaisin, että Morellolta tai de la Rochalta se kävisi.
April 18, 2023
As Musical biographies go they don’t come much better than this..
If you love the Music of Rage against the machine honestly it feels like all that you’ll need to know is right here and you feel like you get to the grass roots from the beginning which basically gives you something of a background to anti racism protest music, it’s an interesting start and it only develops better as we learn about the lives of the band members their influences and how they all ended up being in one of the 90s most influential and original bands.
Probably the only down side to this is that there is more to the story so maybe an updated version is needed with things like Killing in the name getting to Christmas number one in the UK thanks to a campaign to prevent yet another Simon Cowell artist taking the spot and then of course the subsequent free concert held in London.
Regardless the book is incredibly well written and I couldn’t put it down.
Recommended.
If you love the Music of Rage against the machine honestly it feels like all that you’ll need to know is right here and you feel like you get to the grass roots from the beginning which basically gives you something of a background to anti racism protest music, it’s an interesting start and it only develops better as we learn about the lives of the band members their influences and how they all ended up being in one of the 90s most influential and original bands.
Probably the only down side to this is that there is more to the story so maybe an updated version is needed with things like Killing in the name getting to Christmas number one in the UK thanks to a campaign to prevent yet another Simon Cowell artist taking the spot and then of course the subsequent free concert held in London.
Regardless the book is incredibly well written and I couldn’t put it down.
Recommended.
July 21, 2013
Kirja on alunperin vuonna 2008 ilmestynyt mutta vasta hiljattain suomennettu, melko nopealukuinen, kronologisessa tapahtumajärjestyksessä etenevä selonteko bändin jäsenten (erityisesti Zack de la Rochan ja Tom Morellon) taustoista sekä taustavaikuttimista lähtien aina bändiläisten nykyisiin projekteihin asti. Jäsenten omia sanomisia on koottu tässä useista toisen käden lähteistä, joten kirjassa ei ole ainakaan bändiä tuntevan näkökulmasta uutta aineistoa, vaikka on kokonaisuudessaan mielenkiintoista luettavaa. Lopussa on muutamia relevantteja lähteitä erikseen listattuna.
June 27, 2016
"Hyvä biisi pistää naputtamaan tahtia ja viihtymään tyttöystävän kanssa", Tom Morello huomautti. "Loistavan biisin pitäisi tuhota poliisilaitos ja sytyttää lähiöt palamaan. Minua kiinnostaa ainoastaan loistavien biisien tekeminen."
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