critical pedogogy

The teacher stands in front of the class, but the lesson plan he can't recall. The student's eyes don't perceive the lies bouncing off every fucking wall. His composure is well kept, I guess he fears playing the fool. The complacent students sit and listen to some of that bullshit that he learned in school. -Zack de la Rocha, Take the Power Back

Over the course of the past decade I have been attempting to attend and see in the flesh many musical acts and artists that I have long admired and generally worshiped throughout my teens and twenties. I have been mildly successful in seeing many of these artists perform live and unfortunately some of them I will never get to see thanks to drug overdoses and murdering spouses. Others have just escaped my grasp due to geographic distance or the fact that I was born after their death. For whatever reason I always make an attempt to see artists that I enjoyed now, but for some reason I feel even more compelled to see artists from my earlier years, back when music was the answer to everything, when riding in the '84 Corolla rocking the power chord champions Silverchair was about as much fun as anything else on the planet.

One band that is still alive, but escaped me throughout the years has been Rage Against the Machine. Although they were touring in my youth, living in Montana is not conducive to attending major national acts such as Rage Against the Machine. Also for some reason my parents didn't think it would be a good idea for two 15 year olds, that had just got their drivers license a couple months previous to hop in the car and drive two states away and attend such an event. What the hell parents know anyway? Regardless I've never been able to see RATM. I have been able to see Audioslave, you know the RATM band with Chris "you make my loins hot" Cornell as the front man, hell they even covered a couple of Rage tunes but it really didn't satisfy my desire to see the powerhouse of a band that was Rage. So why am I ranting about this all of a sudden?

Yesterday I got an email about presale tickets for the Cochella music festival in Indio, CA and guess who is headlining the third day? You guess it, Rage Against the Machine. Yep Zach, Tom, Brad, and Tim playing it live. No word if there is other tour dates in the works but if this is a one time show, it might be a once in a lifetime for me. Last year I made the pilgrimage to Cochella to worship the closest thing to a deity for me, Tool. Eve being the good sport that she is came along and only heckled me on rare occasion about my ridiculous Tool fanboy status. So I'm considering going back to Cochella and anyone else that is interested, let me know and we can make the trek from AZ to CA, eat carnival style gyros, drink watered down beer, and rock it like its 1996. God I'm old