Classic 1990s band Rage Against the Machine's hard-rocking protest songs have long been go-to anthems in the fight against injustice.
So when a Canadian radio station was hit with a wave of layoffs in the midst of switching formats, the remaining DJs went for the perfect musical protest: a Rage Against the Machine marathon.
But this wasn't just some programmed marathon tribute to the band playing a block of Rage Against the Machine hits. Rather, it was a single song—the anti-authority, anti-racist, anti-police brutality anthem "Killing In The Name," over and over, for 30 hours.
That's certainly one way to send a message!
As journalist Tracey Lindeman reported in a tweet, seen above, Vancouver’s KISS-FM 104.9 not only played the song over and over and over again, but they denied listeners' called-in requests for other songs and simply played "Killing In the Name" yet again.
As Lindeman detailed in follow-up tweets, some even got in on the joke, calling in to request "Killing In the Name," whereupon the DJs would pretend not to have the song on hand and then play it anyway.The protest grabbed so much attention that even iconic Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello noticed.
Morello, who uses Twitter almost exclusively to "fight the power," as his Twitter bio instructs his followers to do, lent his support by retweeting a fan's post about the stunt.
After a whopping 30 hours of playing the song, one of the station's new DJs confirmed that the Rage tribute was indeed partly a way of announcing the station's change to an alt-rock format.
But DJ Angela Valiant also explained that the song was chosen specifically because of its roots as a protest song, "because right now, there are a lot of reasons to protest."
Valiant went on to list everything from the U.S. Supreme Court's overturn of Roe v. Wade to current Canadian environmental and social issues, along with the perennial struggle with police brutality that inspired Rage Against the Machine's song in the first place.
Whatever its motivation, many on Twitter absolutely loved the station's stunt.
Almost certainly because of the furor the stunt generated, a Rage Against the Machine fan Twitter account announced that a video of the band performing "Killing In the Name" had racked up more than one million views.
It seems that lyrics like "Fu*k you, I won't do what you tell me" are definitely resonating at the moment.
@thekalenallen/Threads
U.S. Mint
