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Rage Against the Machine was the genre-spawning debut album by rap-metal band Rage Against The Machine, released November 11, 1992. The songs tend to feature political mantras as rapped vocals. The album peaked at #17 in the UK albums chart, #1 on Billboard’s Heatseekers chart and #45 on the Billboard Top 200 chart.

The rapped vocals and funk-metal guitars mixed with hard hip-hop/funk beats and grooves were a massive deviation from the traditonal rock/metal of the time, but before long “Nu-Metal” arrived on the scene, making such genre crossovers commonplace.

Guitar sound

Tom Morello’s guitar technique stays on fairly traditional territory on this album, compared to subsequent albums, tending to be more influenced by funk and metal, as opposed to the more experimental hip-hop-influenced guitar styles Morello strays towards on later Rage albums.

What do magazines know, anyway?

In 2001 the album Rage Against the Machine was named in Q magazine as one of the “50 Heaviest Albums Of All Time” (which is rubbish, as anyone that has heard the wealth of thrash and death metal that is out there would agree). The album is included in the book “1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die”. In 2003, the album was ranked #368 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the “500 Greatest Albums Of All Time”.

Turn it up to 11

The album is known for its high production values, which are almost to the strictest audiophile standards. Some audiophile magazines and websites even go as far as using the album — in particular the song “Take the Power Back” — to test amplifiers and speakers.

Tool

One of the songs, “Know Your Enemy”, features Tool / A Perfect Circle vocalist Maynard James Keenan on “additional vocals”.  Keenan has occasionally appeared onstage with Rage to perform the song.

Who?

“Acclaimed” BBC Radio 1 DJ Zane Lowe named Rage Against the Machine as one of four albums to be added to his list of ‘Masterpieces’, and his personal favourite album, on December 2nd, 2008 (although repeatedly naming the singer as ‘De La Rocker’).

That man’s on fire!

The cover artwork features a famous photo of Thích Quảng Đức, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, burning himself to death in Saigon in 1963. The monk was protesting President Ngô Đình Diệm’s administration for oppressing the Buddhist religion. The photograph drew international attention and persuaded U.S. President John F. Kennedy to withdraw support of the Ngô Đình Diệm’s government. It was taken by Associated Press correspondent Malcolm Browne; a similar photograph earned the award of World Press Photo of the Year in 1963.

Political Inspiration

Activists such as Provisional IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands and Black Panther Party founder Huey P. Newton are listed in the “Thanks For Inspiration” section. Also thanked were Ian and Alec MacKaye – De La Rocha was “Straight Edge” at the time, though he later took up smoking.

Lyrics

The lyrics for each song were printed in the album booklet with the exception of those for “Killing in the Name”, which were omitted; the booklet reads “2. KILLING IN THE NAME”, skips the lyrics and continues with the next song.

No synths

The statement “no samples, keyboards or synthesizers used in the making of this record” appears at the end of the sleeve notes, and similar statements were made in the band’s subsequent albums. The band also refer to themselves as “Guilty Parties” in the sleeve notes of each album.

Track listing

“Bombtrack” – 4:05
“Killing in the Name” – 5:14
“Take the Power Back” – 5:37
“Settle for Nothing” – 4:48
“Bullet in the Head” – 5:09
“Know Your Enemy” – 4:55
“Wake Up” – 6:04
“Fistful of Steel” – 5:31
“Township Rebellion” – 5:24
“Freedom” – 6:06

Anger Is a Gift bonus disc:

“Darkness” – 3:40
“Year of tha Boomerang” – 4:02
“Freedom” (Remix) – 6:14
“Take the Power Back” (Live) – 6:12

“Guilty Parties”

Rage Against the Machine – Production, Art Direction

Zack de la Rocha – Vocals
Tim Commerford – Bass (credited as “Timmy C.”)
Brad Wilk – Drums
Tom Morello – Guitars
Maynard James Keenan – Additional vocals (“Know Your Enemy”)
Stephen Perkins – Additional percussion (“Know Your Enemy”)

Garth ‘GGGarth’ Richardson – Producer, Engineer
Stan Katayama – Engineer
Craig Doubet – Assistant Engieer
Jeff Sheehan – Assistant Engineer
Bob Ludwig – Mastering
Midas – Mixing / Production
Andy Wallace – Mixing
Steve Sisco – Mixing Assistant

and Nicky Lindeman – Art Direction

Just buy it already.

An inspiring album in so many ways, and not a weak track on the whole album.  This album should be a definite purchase for any self-respecting rocker, metaller, nu-metaller, neo-goth, funkster, hip-hopper and/or fan of REAL music.

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Tags: a perfect circle, album, albums you must hear before you die, amplifiers, anger is a gift, audiophile, bombtrack, Brad Wilk, bullet in the head, fire, fistful of steel, freedom, funk, hip-hop, killing in the name, know your enemy, live, Maynard James Keenan, metal, monk, music, nu-metal, production, Rage Against The Machine, rap, real music forum, remix, rock, settle for nothing, speakers, take the power back, Tim Commerforth, Tom Morello, tool, township rebellion, wake up, year of tha boomerang, Zack De La Rocha
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CLICK HERE to buy Tom Waits’ Nighthawks At The Diner

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Nighthawks at the Diner is a 1975 album by Tom Waits, released on Asylum Records. The name is inspired by a 1942 painting by American Edward Hopper that is commonly called Nighthawks at the Diner but is actually just titled Nighthawks.

The album’s working title had been “Nighthawk Postcards from Easy Street” but they shortened it to Nighthawks at the Diner.

The album was recorded “live” in Record Plant Studios, in front of a small invited audience. This gives the record an intimate feeling as Waits spends time telling stories, jokes and explaining the stories behind his songs through seven separate introductions.

• Pete Christlieb – tenor sax
• Bill Goodwin – drums
• Jim Hughart – upright bass
• Mike Melvoin – piano, electric piano
• Tom Waits – vocals, piano, guitar

Bones Howe, the album’s producer, on the recording of the album:

“We did it as a live recording, which was unusual for an artist so new [...] Herb Cohen and I both had a sense that we needed to bring out the jazz in Waits more clearly. Tom was a great performer on stage [...] So we started talking about where we could do an album that would have a live feel to it. We thought about clubs, but the well-known ones like The Troubadour were toilets in those days. Then I remembered that Barbra Streisand had made a record at the old Record Plant Studios, when they were on 3rd Street near Cahuenga Boulevard [...] There was a room there that she got an entire orchestra into. Back in those days they would just roll the consoles around to where they needed them. So Herb and I said let’s see if we can put tables and chairs in there and get an audience in and record a show.”

Howe was mostly responsible for organising the band for the “live show”, and creating the right atmosphere for the record:

“I got Mike Melvoin on piano, and he was one of the greatest jazz arrangers ever; I had Jim Hughart on upright bass, Bill Goodwin on drums and Pete Christlieb on sax. It was a totally jazz rhythm section. Herb gave out tickets to all his friends, we set up a bar, put potato chips on the tables and we had a sell-out, two nights, two shows a night, July 30 and 31, 1975. I remember that the opening act was a stripper. Her name was Dewana and her husband was a taxi driver. So for her the band played bump-and-grind music – and there’s no jazz player who has never played a strip joint, so they knew exactly what to do. But it put the room in exactly the right mood. Then Waits came out and sang ‘Emotional Weather Report’. Then he turned around to face the band and read the classified section of the paper while they played. It was like Allen Ginsberg with a really, really good band.”

Dewana was an old-time burlesque queen whom Tom had met on one of his jaunts to the Hollywood underworld.  She warmed up the crowd – which was largely made up of friends and acquaintances of Waits and crew – and everyone was primed for a drunken voyage into an Edmund Hopper painting or a Charles Bukowski poem. Waits didn’t plan on disappointing them. Bones had put together a live band from the session musicians who had worked on The Heart of Saturday Night.

Jim Hughart, who played upright bass on the recordings recalled the experience of preparing for and recording the album:

“Preparing for this thing, we had to memorize all this stuff, ’cause Waits had nothing on paper. So ultimately, we spent four or five days in a rehearsal studio going over this stuff. And that was drudgery. But when we did actually get it all prepared and go and record, that was the fastest two days of recording I’ve ever spent in my life. It was so fun. Some of the tunes were not what you’d call jazz tunes, but for the most part that was like a jazz record. This was a jazz band. Bill Goodwin was a drummer who was associated with Phil Woods for years. Pete Christlieb is one of the best jazz tenor players who ever lived. And my old friend, Mike Melvoin, played piano. There’s a good reason why it was accepted as a jazz record.”

Here’s a makeshift video of  tracks 5 and 6, “Intro to Eggs and Sausage”, and “Eggs and Sausage, (in a cadillac with Susan Michelson)”…

The Real Music Forum loves Nighthawks At The Diner,  We hope you do too.

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Tags: asylum records, Bill Goodwin, Bones Howe, Edward Hopper, eggs and sausage, Herb Cohen, jazz, Jim Hughart, live, Mike Melvoin, nighthawks at the diner, Pete Christlieb, Studios, tom waits
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