There are too many words to describe the atmosphere. Apprehension, anticipation, aggression, anxiety and that’s just the beginning of the alphabet. The noise is next to deafening and the crowd size is gargantuan. Despite this it feels like this gig is mine, as if the band is putting it on just for me. Yet, this is how the whole crowd, filled with some of the most dedicated fans, must feel. Stuck in the middle of the desert, everyone has been waiting for this moment for seven years, and never in our wildest dreams would we have thought it would happen. All of a sudden the screens show one person who appears to be equally excited, agitated and raring to go as anyone else in the crowd. This person grows into a frenzy that no one else can match. He cannot stop moving; jumping up and down, he is engaged and extremely eager for the performance to start. This is because this man is Zack Del La Rocha, the lead singer of Rage Against The Machine.
Two years earlier I was sitting in my common room at 6th form with a friend discussing a gig we were about to go to. This inevitably lead to conversations of our favourite ever gigs, and bands we have to see “before we die.” The conversation took a depressing turn as we both agreed upon Rage Against the Machine, but realised we would probably never see them; as far as we knew their break up in 2000 was irreversible. The conversation then turned to fantasy as we discussed how much money we would pay to see them live. We came up with the reasonable sum of £500, of course in this fantasy we are affluent enough to afford it. This band changed our lives, and became the soundtrack of our transition into teenagers and throughout our growing adolescent years.
Two years on and this conversation had turned into a distant memory….
