Rage Against the Machine : The Battle of Alpine Valley 2007

We drove through some heavy, heavy rain to get to Alpine Valley, so we weren’t quite sure what to expect. I figured it would be a muddy mess, but I wasn’t quite prepared for what was in store. We got there around 7:00, so we were parked farther back, which we were happy about so we could get out a little quicker.

We start walking toward will-call to get our tickets, and there was just craziness going on. The typical pre-concert tailgating…..but with mud. Before people in got into the concert they were wrestling in the mud, throwing mud….being one with the mud.

Once we got inside, we right to our seats. We were in section BB, dead center, which were incredible seats….thanks Chris and Bob! We got there about 20 minutes before Queens of the Stone Age started. Queens put on a good show, but they were REALLY loud for not being the headliner, and the sound was muffled….but it could have been muffled because it was so loud that my ear drums were failing me. My only complaint about their show is the singer’s guitar tone was terrible.

Rage Against the Machine was awesome! Actually, they were better than awesome. I’ve seen a lot of concerts, and I have to say, that was by far the best show I’ve EVER seen. They didn’t have any pyrotechnics or special effects….just ROCK! After Queens of the Stone Age, I was actually surprised to see them rolling out their amps. The bass player had two SVT 8×10 cabinets that looked terrible, like they had been through a house fire and then dragged behind a vehicle from New York to Los Angeles. Tom Morello had one Marshall half-stack, and that’s all he needed. The band kept it simple and used the energy of their songs to fuel the set, and the crowd loved it.

The crowd was insane. They same almost every lyric to every song, and were going crazy the entire set. There was almost an electricity in the air. It was incredible.

A RATM show just would be the same without some politics. Zach talked about how his comments at Coachella…

Maybe the craziest part of the evening was trying to get out of that place. Normally, after a show at Alpine Valley, people start heading up the grass hill, but that wasn’t possible because of the mud. People were trying, but they kept sliding back down the hill. Once we got the parking lot, we hauled ass to our car, only to be stuck in it without being able to move for a couple of hours. Once we did start moving we got stuck in the mud multiple times.

Everyone was getting stuck, it was insanity. We originally got to our car at 11:30, and we didn’t get out of the parking lot until about 2-2:30am. At that point I was pretty irritated and getting in a couple of arguments with some people on the way out. I apologize to the girls in the VW Bug, although they called me a “dick”, and we exchanged some words, she did offer to spank me for being a bad boy, and then we all just kind of laughed it off.