Soundtrack of My Life

Song: Bulls on Parade

Artist: Rage Against the Machine

Album: Evil Empire (1996)

Ever had a song stuck in your head for an extended period of time?

Welcome to the song that's been stuck in my head since the middle of September.

Ever since we spent the night in Vancouver having dinner with Tim and Tania and playing Guitar Hero, this track has played over and over and over in my head. We have a video on our camera of Sarah and I trying to complete the song. Unfortunately, Sarah drops the ball, but that's neither here nor there.

That being said, Guitar Hero may have lodged this song into my memory bank as of late, but it's not responsible for my Rage love.

I actually don't know where my love of Rage came from, since I wasn't a fan of their original album when it dropped in '92 and never really spent any time listening to anything of their's extensively even after this album came out in '96. I was just so emmersed into hip hop that I couldn't identify that the mix of Tom Morello's awesomeness on guitar and Zack de la Rocha politically-tinged lyrics was an outstanding mix of the things I love about music.

Thankfully, I removed my head from my ass long enough somewhere along the way to realize that Rage really could be (and now is) one of my favourite bands. Or at least they were, before they broke up and everything.

While the lyrical content - dealing with the military-industrial complex that the band saw as prevelant during the mid 90's - is laced with terrific references, including one to a book everyone should read (Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451), the biggest reason everyone, myself included can identify and remember this song is Tom Morello's mesmerizing guitar riff.

That's also the reason it ended up on Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock and embedded in my brain for the last six weeks.

And just to prove it's awesomeness, the link in the title is of the full Tom Morello Battle / Bulls on Parade expert performance from GH3... enjoy!