Rage celebrate pop win

Mon 7th Jun, 2010 in International News

Rage Against The Machine has celebrated a powerful blow against the evils of Christmas, by playing a free show in London.

A Facebook campaign began to prevent X Factor winner Joe McElderry’s Miley Cyrus cover from topping the UK charts last Christmas was turned into a bizarre contest as Rage fans suddenly became concerned with the pop charts.

The band promised to play a free show in London after winning the number one position on the UK’s Christmas charts, and made good on the promise yesterday at Finsbury Park with support from Gallows, Roots Manuva and Gogol Bordello.

More than 180,000 punters applied for tickets via an online lottery, with close to 40,000 receiving tickets for the show. Several hundred ticketless fans also scaled the fence to see the show.

Rage’ s set was preceded by a cartoon parody of Simon Cowell declaring “I am the supernova!... If Rage had entered X Factor, they wouldn’t have got past boot camp.” Finally the pantomime caricature proclaimed “it gives me great displeasure to introduce the greatest rock band in the world, Rage Against The Machine.”

During a set which included a cover of The Clash’s White Riot, Rage frontman Zack de la Rocha welcomed Jon and Tracy Morter to the stage.

The Morter’s, who began the Facebook group, were hailed by the band with the ridiculous declaration “I want to introduce you to two people who had an idea, an idea that spread through the grass roots.”

Not to be outdone by de la Rocha, the band’s guitarist Tom Morello veered dangerously close to self parody by suggesting that the founders of the Rage promoting facebook group are “not only are they great political strategists, they’re humanitarians.”

Before the encore, McElderry’s song was played as the heroic story of Rage’s number one Christmas single victory was told and the thousands of punters were praised with the slogan ‘YOU Made History’.