Thursday, July 21st 2011

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Rage Against The Machine To Stage A Rising In L.A. This Saturday

By Johnny Firecloud

Vitriolic Los Angeles rap-rock outfit Rage Against The Machine are set to crush noise ordinances with their high-aspiring July 30th music festival L.A. Rising, marking the twentieth anniversary of the band, and featuring artists with similarly vocal political leanings.

Rage lined up their own dream bill which includes Muse and Rise Against, as well as Lauryn Hill, El Gran Silencio and incendiary outspoken rapper Immortal Technique. L.A. Rising is about more than just the music – each artist participating in this historic event wants to raise awareness about the social issues plaguing the insanely overpopulated and increasingly volatile city of Los Angeles.

“The one thing that Los Angeles itself does not have is its own festival show,” guitarist Tom Morello explained. “And LA Rising is Rage Against The Machine’s show. It’s not like there’s a festival that hires Rage Against The Machine to play a show. This is our show…We wanted to establish something in our hometown, like at Ground Zero at the Coliseum. We’ve got a very special relationship with this city.”

“This is our show,” Morello continued. “It’s like ages ago when we used to play at a place called the Coconut Teaser–you pick the bands. You know, you’re the headliner and pick the bands on the bill.”

Additionally, a “Re-Education Camp” will be set up at the venue to assist the movement.

The “Re-Education Camp” will be a collection of 30+ local and international nonprofit organizations presenting issues that affect everyone in Los Angeles. Each nonprofit organization will participate at zero cost in an effort to help the organizations promote their causes and raise awareness. The four major areas of concern include issues all considered hot-button topics in politics and public discourse today: War. Immigration. Poverty. Labor.

“We are passionate about ending the wars overseas, immigrant rights, protecting working families, and combating hunger and homelessness in L.A.  We want to present our fans the opportunity to get informed and get involved while we rock them senseless,” says guitarist Tom Morello.

L.A. Rising has also launched an online video series entitled Guerrilla Video. Among the first two videos in this series, Rage Against The Machine’s Timmy C and Rise Against’s Zach & Tim explain their thoughts and excitement about the festival, the participating nonprofits and the overall causes they champion. Each participating nonprofit will be challenged to produce a video outlining their causes. All videos will be uploaded as they are made and can be found here.

L.A. Rising will provide the entire infrastructure at the event, building an efficient paperless system to collect and share information among all participating fans and nonprofits. More information on the organizations invited to attend the event is posted on the festival website.