Last month we hipped you to a Rage Against The Machine video showing the band in their early stages before they recorded a self-titled debut that brought the group both commercial and critical success. For today’s Full Show Friday, we fast-forward the clock four years from that early clip and bring you 85 hard-nosed minutes of rap metal from Rage Against The Machine’s August 13th, 1996 performance at the Electric Factory in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Zac, Tim, Brad and Tom had just released their second album, Evil Empire, a few months earlier and mixed some of the amazing tracks from that album such as Bulls On Parade, Vietnow and People Of The Sun with the songs such as Freedom, Bombtrack and Killing In The Name from the first Rage album that put them on the map. This footage seems to be shot by a fan, but the quality is most excellent and it’s well worth the watch. Take a look…

Rage Against The Machine @ Electric Factory – 8/13/96

Set: Know Your Enemy, Bulls on Parade, Vietnow, Without a Face, Fistful of Steel, Snakecharmer, Bombtrack, Down Rodeo, Bullet in The Head, People of the Sun, Killing in the Name, Wind Below, Free Mumia Jams, Freedom

Just months after forming in Los Angeles and over six months before the release of their self-titled debut album, Rage Against The Machine played one of their first gigs ever at Zed’s Records in Long Beach, California. The gig was shot with two cameras and shows off the power and energy that would soon turn them into a commercially successful and critically acclaimed band.

A few days ago a killer transfer of the Zed’s Records gig turned up on YouTube…

Set: Bombtrack, Darkness of Greed, Take The Power Back, Bullet In The Head, Settle For Nothing, Killing In The Name, Know Your Enemy, Freedom

With the list of musicians taking a stand against Arizona’s recently passed controversial immigration law SB 1070 by participating in The Sound Strike growing, two of the more vocal opponents of this controversial legislation will team up for a benefit concert to take place in L.A. On July 23, Rage Against The Machine, who are no strangers to these type things, will join up with Conor Oberst & The Mystic Valley Band to play the Hollywood Palladium.

Proceeds from the benefit show along with donations made directly to the organization are expected to exceed over $300,000 which will “provide much needed resources to community organizations, student groups, legal defense funds and assist activists targeting key voting districts for voter registration” against the law that is set to go into effect on July 29.

• List Time: Top 10 Controversial Music Videos
• Emmet Malloy working on a Nick Drake doc, book & tribute album
• Cover Alert: Passion Pit tackle The Smashing Pumpkins
• Peter Sarsgaard to play bluegrass icon Bill Monroe in new biopic
• Download This: AD’s L’Adventure Television tribute
• Prog-rockers Rush are being sued over a canceled concert

Finally, in what seems like a step towards The Beatles material finally getting a digital release, EMI Music will be reissuing 15 albums from the Fab Four’s label Apple Records this October. Of the albums that will be remastered and released on both CD and for the first time ever as digital downloads will be James Taylor’s self-titled debut, four albums from Badfinger, two from Billy Preston as well as more obscure material from likes of John Tavener, Doris Troy, Mary Hopkin and the Modern Jazz Quartet.

Originally Published February 3rd, 2009

I’m sure your first thought when you got the news that Phish played Killing In The Name at their July 4th tour closer was, “Hey, didn’t they do that for Cover Wars?” – Well – you’re right we did, back in February of ’09. A lot has changed in the last 17 months, including the audio playlists we used to use don’t work anymore thanks to the death of IMEEM. I’ve been meaning to go back through our old editions & fix the audio, & well – this is as good a start as any. There will be no voting this week, we’ve closed the poll as the Disco Biscuits won fair & square the first time around and even made it pretty far in the first annual March Madness Cover Wars Madness if you recall.

This track is from Rage Against The Machine’s 1992 debut self-titled album. The album topped out at #45 on The Billboard Top 200 in 1994. With this week’s artists covering the tune, it’s hard to determine if the bands are going for a legitimate angry performance or are going for a more satirical approach. Well, in some cases it’s clearer than others. Regardless of the intent, it’s always a crowd-pleaser.

The Contestants:

Audioslave: Since three of the four members that recorded the original version are in this group, I have decided not to include Audioslave as an available choice in the voting, ’cause that just wouldn’t be fair. But check below for an Audioslave performance from the Quart Festival in 2005. For those that might not know, that’s Chris Cornell of Soundgarden on lead vocals.

READ ON after the jump for the scoop on this week’s competitors…

Over the past few years we’ve seen an explosion in the number of music festivals across the nation. While the bands that play these festies have made out like gangbusters, what about the local promoters that keep the calendar full of live music during the rest of the year?

The Chicago Tribune takes an in depth look at the impact of Lollapalooza, and the festival’s radius clauses, on the local scene. We don’t blame Jerry Mickelson, founder and partner of Jam Productions, for feeling squeezed out.

Let’s get over the hump by squeezing out some links:

• Tom Morello joins Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band in Anaheim
• MMJ’s Jim James breaks down five tracks on the new album
• The Music Box catches up with Ratdog’s Mark Karan
• Chuck Klosterman tries to figure out where the money that used to be spent on CDs has gone now that everyone steals music
• Get a sneak peak at the Austin City Limits festival lineup
• Sound Engineer Dan Healy recounts touring with DSO
• Does it get any worse than the lineup from this festival?

Why don’t we end the column with something that you probably knew already. A recent study found that a dose of Coldplay’s music helped a number of Britons fall asleep at the speed of sound. Gwyneth Paltrow must sleep well.

Festivals, they’re fucking everywhere these days, so you’d think we would be opposed to any new festies entering the overcrowded fray. For the most part that’s true, but we’d make one exception upon seeing Dean Ween’s latest entry on his Brownie Troop 666 blog. Deaner drops the news that Ween is considering a festival of its own near New Hope towards the end of the summer.

The possibilities are endless, though we envision a lineup full of the band’s friends and side projects including Bustle In Your Hedgerow, The Moistboyz, Chris Harford & the Band of Changes and Amandla. Right now Deaner is just looking to gauge interest in BrownStock, so be sure to send him a line through his blog to urge him to make this a reality. Now let’s check out what else is happening this week:

• Delayed Again: Metallica’s new album will probably be released around the same time as Chinese Democracy (coming soon!)
• We’re not batshit crazy after all: Justice NO LONGER headlining MSG
• Dominant Ticketmaster prepares for battle with Live Nation
• Gothamist interviews John Linnell of They Might Be Giants
• Stereogum’s OldStand looks at Spin Magazine’s April 1993 issue
• Glide speaks with singer/songwriter Matt Nathanson about his latest album
• Grateful Dead: The Next Generation — Grahame Lesh hopes to take his band, Crystal City, to the next level
• Has anyone gotten more press this month than The Whigs?
• Australia’s Big Day Out festival started strong, thanks to terrific performances by Rage, Bjork, Arcade Fire and others

Finally, The Daily Swarm points us to SF Weekly’s list of Top 10 Beards in Modern Music. Great list, but how can you miss Iron and Wine’s Sam Beam?

Mike Gordon and Bill Kreutzmann will continue their trend of playing in lush tropical locales on January 5th in Costa Rica. Steve Kimock will be busy sailing the seas on Jam Cruise, so the former members of Phish and the Grateful Dead picked Max Creek’s Scott Murawski to join them on guitar. Kreutzmann first played with Gordon as part of SerialPod in December 2005, while Murawski was a member of the Phish bass player’s solo band in 2003. No word yet on whether Trey and Phil will continue their trend of playing crappy old arenas in New York State.

Now let’s celebrate the end of the week with a batch of linkage:

• Billboard runs down the 25 Best Rock Posters of All Time
• Help save drummer Johnny Vidacovich’s house
• Garth Hudson talks to Anthony DeCurtis about Dylan and The Band
• Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks reveal the track list for their upcoming album Emotional Trash, due in March
• Early rumors suggest Rage Against The Machine will headline Vineland
• Ronnie Wood wants to collaborate with Band of Horses
• The Sex Pistols plot their return to the road
• Journey finds a new lead singer via YouTube
• Fresh Bread took some amazing photos of the beautiful Grace Potter
• Our good friends over at the sports blog Ghosts of Wayne Fontes count down their Top 10 favorite Harry Hoods of all time (no 6/22/00?!)

Finally, Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle found humor in three things near and dear to my heart: New Jersey, Asian stoners and those delicious little sliders. The boys are back, and this time they’re fucked. Check out the NSFW trailer for Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, in theaters April 25th.

Rounder Records promoted Ween’s latest record in typical fashion, sending out preview copies to 100 journalists in the hopes of building buzz. The plan backfired when one of the scribes leaked La Cucharacha onto the Interweb two months before the release date. Dean Ween became violent when he heard that the fruits of his labor was freely available as shitty sounding MP3s with no cover art. We certainly understand Deaner’s frustration, but if Ween had released an album in the past four years, they would realize Internet leaks are par for the course.

• Rage Against The Machine urged the crowd at the Voodoo Festival in New Orleans this weekend to fight alleged government belligerence
• Metallica’s acoustic set was one highlight at the Bridge School Benefit
• The newly launched Jamtopia brings you the best videos on YouTube
• A proposed Woodstock museum in Bethel is now a big campaign issue
• Cracked lists the Top 10 Cowbell Songs
• Welcome to the game, gents: Brick and mortar stores are finally starting to sell music in a variety of digital formats
• The definition of selling out has changed drastically
• Pollstar explores why more artists aren’t selling live recordings

Finally, control of oink.cd has been returned to the OiNK administrators, who supply a link to a list of torrents sites to use now that OiNK is out of action.

Australia’s toilets may or may not flush counterclockwise, but one thing is certain: While we’re freezing our nips off in January and February, the Aussies and Kiwis will be enjoying the traveling summertime festival known as Big Day Out. The initial lineup came out today, and it’s solid to quite solid: Rage Against The Machine, Bjork, Arcade Fire, Battles, LCD Soundsystem, Billy Bragg and many more will play the six-day, six-city festival. Vacation down under, anyone? [More]

The Rage Reunion rolls on: The third-annual Vegoose Festival has announced Rage Against The Machine will co-headline this year’s Halloween weekend in Vegas. The festival’s promoters, Superfly Presents and A.C. Entertainment, have declined to officially name any other acts on the bill until July. Interestingly, Rage will also co-headline the Voodoo Music Experience in New Orleans that same weekend.

The full lineup is yet to be released, but after today’s Rage-as-headliner announcement, we gotta ask: Has Superfly forsaken the hippie jambands that built their festivals? First Bonnaroo, now Vegoose? Just today a Las Vegas television station listed the other headliners as Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, The Killers, and the Dave Matthews Band, none of which exactly brings the Birkenstocks running (maybe DMB, if this were Vegoose ’95).

Now that the record industry has tanked, both indie and mainstream acts have jumped at the big money that large festivals offer them. Jamband-heavy festivals like Wakarusa and Gathering of the Vibes aren’t huge money makers, while the more varied Lollapalooza, Bonnaroo and Coachella festivals are swimming in dough — Bonnaroo made $17 million fucking dollars this year with a less noodle-y lineup.

Perhaps the problem stems from the fact that the “festival season” has expanded from three sun-drenched months to the entire year. Both Vegoose and New Orleans’ Voodoo Music Experience take place in October, a month that used to feature bands touring colleges, theaters and arenas by themselves. We are smack dab in the middle of the traditional touring season, and many music fans don’t have enough disposable income to see concerts and begin paying for a late October trip to Las Vegas.

Since Bonnaroo began in 2002, live music fans have seen festivals added in nearly every month of the year. Pick any month and you can name a big festivals that has a hold on the month: There are simply too many festivals, and we wouldn’t be surprised if some of them tank as we move forward. With so many festivals and only a finite number of acts, these festies are running out of creative lineup ideas. There’s only so much Franti and Keller a traveling audience can take.

Hey, we’ll always have Langerado.

Another communiqué from TJ: “Tom Morello is backstage here, just said he’s probably going to play with Tool tonight. Richard Thompson was awesome.”

Let’s hope Mr. Morello’s telling the troof to our intrepid reporter. Stay tuned for more coverage, and don’t forget to read TJ’s Day One Overview…

• And click here for the rest of this week’s Bonnaroo coverage

Update from from the field (5:20 pm Eastern): John Paul Jones is sitting in with Gillian Welch right this very second…that’s gotta sound delicious. Watch here.

Update from the field (10 am Eastern Saturday): Rage-filled Morello indeed joined Tool last night for Lateralus. Tool also played Jambi, Stinkfist, The Pot, 46&2, Schism (extended), Rosetta Stoned, Flood, Wings For Marie, 10,000 Days, Vicarious and Aenema. Fun was had by all.

The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival kicks into high gear today for its second weekend of greatness. And thanks to the AT&T Blueroom webcast, we can share in the fun from far distances. Rod Stewart, Norah Jones and Galactic will be among the bands featured on Saturday’s webcast, while Sunday brings us Irma Thomas, Harry Connick Jr., Bonnie Raitt and many more.

But now let’s fly around the world wide web to see what else is out there:

• Pearl Jam offers a box set featuring its last three concerts at The Gorge
• Bob Dylan is going for a young audience
• Stream Rage Against The Machine’s comeback set from Coachella
• And download and stream Monday’s Ween tour opener
• An amazing George Harrison interview from April of 1970
• Ozzy wants to record and tour with Black Sabbath
• How Marty DeBergi got Spinal Tap back together
• The Bravery, Ben Kweller, and Panic! At The Disco to headline the upcoming Smashing Pumpkins tribute album
• Tomorrow’s Bjork concert will be simulcast on WNYC
• How can you not love Got To Get Better In A Little While?

Finally, Tea Leaf Green kicks down a new podcast after a long layoff. They also offer their recent Fillmore show for $9.99. Also from the TLG world: Trevor Garrod shares the contents of his iPod with Harp Magazine. Lotta green.

Rage Against the Machine is back. The rap-rock-but-better-than-Kid-Rock’s-brand-of-rap-rock-group reunited for the first time in seven years at this weekend’s universally beloved Coachella festival, and choppy amateur videos from the performance are starting to hit that YouTube site the kids are all talking about. But right now choppy’s all we got, so here’s the best one for your amusement:

I wouldn’t quite call this burying the lede, but an interesting tidbit from the band’s stage banter flew far under the radar for its treasonous value:

The frontman addressed the crowd only once between songs, when he likened the current U.S. administration to Nazi war criminals. “They should be shot as any war criminal should be,” he said.

Damn, Zach, that’s some heavy shit for a festival crowd. I’d instead suggest saving those administration-intended bullets for the upcoming Rock the Bells concert with Wu-Tang, just in case some shit goes down. Who we kidding, shit is definitely going down on Randall’s Island. Bring an umbrella and a Kevlar vest.

• Here’s a video of Killing in the Name Of, which would be really cool if not for the kids around the camera trying to sing with the band
• Click here to find more audience-shot videos of Rage at Coachella

Tuesday brought 70-degree weather and sunshine to the New York City area, and I think I’m coming to the conclusion that I hate winter. Spring, on the other hand; that’s my jam. Hopefully the weather is nice where you are on this fine hump day. To help you get over that hump, check out these fine links from around the Interwebs:

• The best and worst afros in music today
• The tape-trading culture is not dead
• Tom Morello talks about the Rage Against The Machine rehersals
• Stylus rates the top 50 one-hit wonders
• Frank Zappa’s official site is teasing a new release
• Franz Ferdinand has released an Annual, an old idea that needs a comeback
• It seems like Elton John’s 60th Birthday Concert at Madison Square Garden was quite the affair
• Live Music Blog’s latest podcast features Apollo Sunshine
• This week’s Taper’s Section presents some rare Grateful Dead from the ’80s
• Spoon is preparing a new album for release in July
• Genesis, Ozzy, and Heart will be the subject of the next VH-1 Rock Honors
• We’re jealous: Our friend Jeff at The Passion of the Weiss caught a super-secret Beck show
  
• moe.down 8 is right around the corner
• While you are getting screwed by Ticketmaster, you may as well take advantage of their free iTunes offer

Did I miss anything? Let me know by leaving a comment below…..

The recently reunited Rage Against the Machine has added three more dates to its touring schedule. Rage will join the Wu-Tang Clan at the top of the bill of the Rock The Bells hip-hop festival that kicks off in New York at the end of July. Great, sounds like another show my parents won’t let me attend (Mom, I’m 27!).

First it was the reunion of the Wu-Tang Clan in 2004. Then it was A Tribe Called Quest later that year. Now, ROCK THE BELLS will make history again as Rage Against The Machine announces their plans to perform three exclusive engagements with the critically acclaimed world-class hip-hop festival this summer. The epic line-up will see Rage Against The Machine join Wu-Tang Clan for two dates on the west coast (August 11–NOS Events Center, San Bernardino, CA, August 18–venue TBA, San Francisco) and for Rock The Bells’ inaugural venture into New York City (July 28– Randall’s Island) for their only scheduled appearance on the eastern seaboard this year.

We’re setting the over/under on the Randall’s Island death toll at seven. Takers?

As a related aside, two years ago my friends and I looked at a huge apartment way out of my price range and way out of my desired geographic location. Moving in there made no fiscal sense, or any other sense for that matter, but we almost pulled the trigger on the place strictly because the Wu-Tang Clan had the other two lofts across the hall. Truth. Howdy, neighbors…you wanna hit this shit?

• Rage Against the Machine adds more dates [LA Times]