It’s a widely known fact that this podcast is a loyal follower of both Sendero Luminoso and Sinn Féin. We all want to bring down the pigs, obviously.
It’s lesser known that I am a Rage Against the Machine fan, much like friend-of-the-blog Paul Ryan. We are bringing back our long-standing Dog Days Classics series for an unlikely entry: RATM’s swan song, Renegades (2000), the cover album they crapped out almost definitely to fulfill the terms of a record contract. (Prince’s Chaos and Disorder is another absolute gem in this category.)
I never really liked Rage in their 1990s heyday. I wasn’t into metal and, even though I was very much on the left as a young sprig, their politics supporting Sendero Luminoso and whatnot seemed extremely performative and frankly fucking stupid. The only Marxist voice speaking in America was the guys doing “Bulls on Parade”? No wonder Jello Biafra ran for president.
But this album fucking rules. It’s largely because it’s not their songs — it’s a collection of covers of Bob Dylan, Eric B and Rakim, Cypress Hill, and Bruce Springsteen, among others (MC5, Minor Threat, Rolling Stones.) Their taste is exquisite and wide-ranging.
I listen to this record all the time when I’m frustrated or angry and need to expel some bad feelings. “Pistol Grip Pump” in particular is great for this purpose. Hearing “I’m Housin'” next to “Street Fighting Man” is pure adderall.
I come back to it in part because of what it says about Rage in their twilight. You’re a Marxist rap-metal band and you’re doing a cover of Springsteen’s “Ghost of Tom Joad”? And “Maggie’s Farm”? It seems like they were on to something.
He pulls a prayer book out of his sleeping bag
Preacher lights up a butt and he takes a drag
Waiting for when the last shall be first and the first shall be last
In a cardboard box ‘neath the underpass
Got a one-way ticket to the promised land
You got a hole in your belly and a gun in your hand
Sleeping on a pillow of solid rock
Bathing in the city aqueduct…The highway is alive tonight
Where it’s headed, everybody knows
I’m sitting down here in the campfire light
Waiting on the ghost of Tom Joad
Now Tom said, “Mom, wherever there’s a cop beating a guy
Wherever a hungry newborn baby cries
Where there’s a fight against the blood and hatred in the air
Look for me, Mom, I’ll be there
Wherever somebody’s fighting for a place to stand
Or a decent job or a helping hand
Wherever somebody’s struggling to be free
Look in their eyes, Ma, and you’ll see me
Springsteen wrote and recorded this in 1995, and Rage covered it a few years later. It has a little bit of the whiskey priest from Graham Greene’s 1940 novel The Power and the Glory. But what Bruce sensed was what was already happening: hundreds of thousands of people trying to get across the southern border to the U.S. to find some kind of life. This has been going on at least since NAFTA, but artists and policymakers alike want to avoid it. Bruce saw that the new Okie was a Mexican guy sleeping under a bridge, hoping to avoid our new Stasi called “ICE.” And Rage went and ran with it, making the radical implications as clear as they were in “Renegades of Funk” or “Maggie’s Farm.”
Every single track on this record slaps. Even though I’m not really a Rage fan, this is one of my favorite albums of all time, no question.
If you have other ideas for books, movies, TV shows, records, or other media that inspired you, please let us know at tropicsofmeta@gmail.com and we can make something work!
Casey Baskin is an editorial adviser and contributor at Tropics of Meta and a writer based in Batavia, Ohio.