Rage Against the Machine killed the Target Center

Rage Against the Machine played their highly anticipated and sold out show last night at the Target Center. Police and riot control cops were on hand and rumors began to swirl of the intent of the fans. However, rioting was simply not the case. I was one of the 13,000 attendees last night and I laughed as I walked past the cops with their face shields and baseball bats while all the concert goers left peacefully and collectively from the concert. As a matter of fact, when I went to Tom Petty in July at the Target Center, it took me about an hour of crowd pushing to get out of the arena. Last night for Rage it took me about 5 minutes from the time left my seat to my first step outside.

The concert was not like one I had seen before, the males in the audience were high fiving and taking group shots of one another like girls at a bar on a Saturday night. Rage Against the Machine’s front man, Zach de la Rocha, did not short the crowd on his performance, I had no idea he was such a front man. Despite the fact they took an 8 year hiatus, they still have it as a live band. And I have been to a lot of concerts in my life, but I have never seen a crowd like I have on the floor last night. Target Center tickets for the general admission floor were the hardest tickets to come by this summer. People were jumping from their seats in the 100 level over the barricades just to be on the floor. From the start of the stage to the back of the floor by section 104 it was jam packed with people. It was truly unbelievable.

While there were extra cops and riot control on hand to deal the ‘unruly fans’ after the concert, Zach de la Rocha made a comment to the audience before he closed the show to ‘by no means be passive, but please leave peacefully’ – I thought that was cool of him to say and well needed considering how young and naïve some of the audience was. All in all I was glad I went for the experience and to be one of the people in 20 years to say “I’ve seen Rage Against the Machine.”

photo courtesy of MTV / Getty Images