Freedom Concert Is All the Rage

For followers of the annual Lollapalooza summer rock tours, much of Sunday’s closing half of the two-day Tibetan Freedom Concert at Golden Gate Park must have had a deja vu feel.

Yes, Sonic Youth (Lollapalooza class of ‘95) played with imagination and style, yet it was largely ignored by much of the crowd . . . Beck (also ‘95) threw us a curve again . . . the Red Hot Chili Peppers (‘92) were upstaged in the headline role . . . and Rage Against the Machine (‘93) blew everybody away.

Rage’s explosive performance sent a bolt of electricity through the crowd of nearly 50,000, which had been relatively passive to that point.

The Los Angeles rock quartet had two strong weapons in its 45-minute assault. At a benefit event sponsored to protest human rights violations in Tibet by the Chinese government, Rage was virtually the only act whose lyrics consistently reflected the anger and outrage of the oppressed.

In addition, the band’s music is delivered with a captivating force that few bands with any lyric sensibility approach in rock. Guitarist Tom Morello, bassist Tim Bob and drummer Brad Wilk, in fact, cram the arrangements with so many colliding textures that there is little room left for Zack de la Rocha’s words.

Unless you knew the songs, you had no clue Sunday that he was singing about social corruption and repression. The reason it still worked so well live is that De La Rocha sings and bounds about the stage with such passion that he becomes an extension of the fury of the songs.

For those who knew the lyrics, the Rage presentation was even more spectacular--greatly extending the scope of the concert focus from the torture and imprisonment of political dissidents in Tibet to other injustices, from corruption in this country to the plight of the Zapatista rebels in the Mexican state of Chiapas.

Part of the lure of Sunday’s lineup was seeing Rage, whose “Evil Empire” is one of the year’s best albums, and two other artists whose albums are also among the year’s prized works: Beck’s rootsy hip-hop inventions in “Odelay” and the Fugees’ boundary-breaking rap expansion in “The Score.”

But the promise of that showcase was short-circuited as Beck went on stage unplugged, and the Fugees all but unraveled.

Beck had wanted to bring his new, four-piece band, but the musicians weren’t all available. Unable to re-create with just his acoustic guitar the extraordinary rhythm structure of the new album, he had to turn to other, older material.

The Fugees seemed distracted by early technical problems on stage and never got into a groove that enabled them to convey the intelligence and heart of the new album.

That left Rage as the only act of the three able to live up to expectations in the 5 1/2-hour concert on a cold, overcast afternoon.

Other acts, however, did supply surprising and sometimes delightful moments, including Yoko Ono, who followed opening sets by Chaksam-Pa, a Tibet dance and folkloric troupe, and blues wonder Buddy Guy.

Though Ono’s yelping, avant-garde vocal style can seem jarring, it worked perfectly in forceful interaction with IMA, the band featuring her son, Sean, on guitar and keyboards.

Bjork, the former lead singer of the Sugarcubes, has a relatively gentle, techno-accented pop sound that was a bit lost in such a large outdoor gathering, but in her music and manner there is the sweet innocence of someone who seems so untouched by world weariness that she is virtually an interplanetary visitor.

De La Soul put on a stronger show than Saturday’s rap entries of A Tribe Called Quest and Biz Markie, partially because there is more accessibility in the trio’s music and it seemed more intent on reaching out to the audience. Jamaica’s veteran Skatalites, too, brought a warm, embracing edge to the day.

But it was Rage that lifted the affair from simply an afternoon in the park to a moment of rock ‘n’ roll urgency. After its set, the Chili Peppers were anticlimactic. The Los Angeles outfit worked hard to keep the crowd engaged, but its music was far too ordinary next to the missionary zeal of Rage.

The Beastie Boys--who, along with numerous other concert participants, are calling for a boycott of products made in China as a way of protesting human rights violations there--were unquestionably the heart of the weekend. The New York hip-hop and rock trio, which performed on Saturday’s segment, organized the two-day event.

It was Rage, however, that supplied the weekend’s most memorable moments by showing its ‘90s fans and rock peers the power of mixing music and social commentary.