Rage Amidst the Video Machines

In Rage Against the Machine’s transformation of Bruce Springsteen’s “The Ghost of Tom Joad” from a pensive, disillusioned lament for the dispossessed into a piece of heavy-artillery monster-rock, you can almost see the ghosts of Steinbeck and Guthrie passing through Springsteen and emerging in singer Zack De La Rocha’s echoing rap-rant.

This audacious reinvention summarizes the way the Los Angeles band has returned uncompromising radical politics as a whole to the center of rock, harnessing its leftist creed to a searing metal-funk-rap hybrid. “Ghost,” in a performance shot at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre in September, opens this collection of concert action and four “uncensored” video clips (the CD single of the song is available only with the package).

The live footage that forms the bulk of the 78-minute tape demonstrates the scale and zeal of Rage’s following, and captures the group’s intensity, dynamism and sonic adventurousness. But the band hasn’t spent a lot of its energy and inspiration on inventive visuals or breakthrough video concepts.

Instead, it takes a simple, straightforward, unyielding approach that risks monotony in order to keep the focus on the messages, which include pleas for Leonard Peltier and the Zapatistas, and, more broadly, support of the underclass and resistance to complacency and conformity. “Your anger is a gift,” the charismatic de la Rocha repeatedly reminds the masses. And putting that sentiment on the table is Rage Against the Machine’s gift to ‘90s rock.

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