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Rage Against The Machine: Roseland Ballroom, New York NY

Evelyn McDonnell, Rolling Stone, 3 October 1996

AT ABOUT the same time Bob Dole was accepting the GOP's presidential nomination some 3,000 miles away, Rage Against the Machine drop-kicked 'People of the Sun', a song about the original California natives, whom some Republicans would like to contain in Mexico behind a Berlin Wall. Singer Zack de la Rocha, himself a Mexican-American, sang the chorus's promise that his people's time is "coming back around again" with a conviction about the future that made Dole's nostalgic vision seem euthanasia-bound. With the packed audience — Rage sold out five nights at the 3,200- capacity venue — thrashing to the band's unmistakably, unapologetically leftist anthems, it was clear that at least some of the youth vote cast a dissenting ballot that night.

Total word count of piece: 339

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