The Battle of Alpine Valley

August 24, 2007. An unforgettable date for me.

The first part of my day was spent driving from Minneapolis to Milwaukee, which concluded a 6,500-mile road trip that started in Wisconsin two weeks earlier. The entire trip looped me from Milwaukee to Denver, then to Las Vegas, onward to Pasadena, and up the coast all the way to Seattle by way of San Francisco and Corvallis. After taking in Pike's Place Market in Seattle and visiting with old friends Leigh Ann and Bjorn Myhre in Tacoma, good friend Josh and I made the three-day trek back to Wisconsin. This portion of the trip earned Montana the nickname "The Forever State," because it did in fact take us forever to traverse the 900-mile long stage.

Awaiting us back home in Wisconsin? A random, one-off show by political music giants Rage Against the Machine at a concert-goers Mecca, Alpine Valley. It seemed like a fitting end to an epic road trip. Earlier that summer, other good friend Adam (previously mentioned in this blog as Dirt D-O-double-G) had miraculously hooked up tickets for us through Ticketmaster. We jumped around our upper flat like kids on Christmas morning when Adam exclaimed, "Uh, we're in the FRONT PIT!" We had never even seen or heard of anything like a "front pit" area at Alpine Valley, but figured they'd allowed it for this show since fans would have otherwise ripped the seats out of the ground by the screws.

Now, I've been to a lot of concerts. By my rough estimation, I've been to between 250 and 300 "concerts." It's tough to gauge a realistic number since a few of those are festival shows. Do you count each band seen as one concert, or the whole day as one? At any rate, I've been to a very healthy handful of concerts and live music performances at all types of venues in all types of cities, ranging from dive bars in Stevens Point, Wisconsin to New Year's at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City. I think Rage Against the Machine's Battle of Alpine Valley 2007 killed them all.

It's always tough to qualify concerts -- sometimes the musical aspect of the show can totally suck, but standing in the right area with the right people can leave you with a favorable perception of the show. Likewise, sometimes you're just not feeling the atmosphere, the venue, or the crowd, although the music truly shines. This night at Alpine Valley, everything fired on all cylinders.

We arrived to Alpine Valley in the late afternoon and took shelter in Adam's Subaru Outback as the skies opened and offered a torrential downpour for 20 minutes. We noted that the lines to get in were already long for the lawn-boys...luckily we had no rush to get in since we were guaranteed standing room spots directly at the stage's front. We waited out the storm and entered the amphitheater to an already-packed lawn, most of which had since turned to mud. Everyone was muddy already. Mudslides a la Jewel of the Nile ensued; everyone was simply coated. The Battle of Alpine Valley was already raging and not a single note of music had been played. You think I'm joking? Check this video, captured before openers Queen of the Stone Age even took the stage.

We masqueraded around the mud pits as efficiently as possible and made our way down...down...all the way down to the stage. Just to make a point, I walked all the way up to the front gate and touched it when we got there. I've never been closer to the stage than at this show. You'd have to be ON stage to be closer. Queens of the Stone Age did their thing as Josh, Dirty, and I nervously took in the pit. We were flanked everywhere by dudes who were 6'6" and taller, 250 pounds and heavier, full of testosterone, and apparently both pissed off about life and amped for the show.

Knowing that we'd get our asses handed to us in the mosh pits during the show, I entered the show with only my wallet in my pocket. No phone, no glasses, not even chapstick. It proved to be a wise decision. Cameras were everywhere, and rumors that the band was taping this performance for a DVD release were flying like the mud cakes from the upper part of Alpine Valley. By this point, so many clumps of mud had been thrown around the place, we were starting to get muddy down in the front pit.

Rage Against the Machine took the stage after an absolutely ridiculously awesome introduction from guitarist Tom Morello's mom. The band immediately tore into "Testify;" the audience in the pit reacted by jumping, pushing, and clawing at anyone around them. It was brutal; it was a survival of the fittest; it was the Battle of Alpine Valley; and it was freaking incredible. You see that throng of jumping bodies 15 feet in front of Zach de la Rocha?  That was us.

The crowd became more raucous and rabid with each song, and they played 'em all. Bombtrack, Killing in the Name, Bulls on Parade, People of the Sun, Revolver, Guerrilla Radio, Calm Like a Bomb...energetic Rage classic after classic. And for a loud (and the sound was quite loud) metal/rap band playing a single show, they were tight. Rage didn't miss a single note, de la Rocha jumped around the stage like a pinball, and the band fired on all cylinders. de la Rocha even offered a rant on the hypocrisy behind George W. Bush's entire political career and motives, launching the already amped crowd into more of a pissed-off frenzy.

The moshing continued. There were parts of the show where I had to resort to the extreme side of the stage for a breather, making me realize not only how out-of-shape I was, but how strong a throng of people can be. People generally tried to stop and pick up people who had fallen in the mosh pit, but it was so large, uncontrollable, and chaotic that you couldn't help but step on people during songs. At times it was safer in the middle of the mosh pits, as standing on the perimeter of it just meant you were the brick wall that stopped the flying people in the middle of it. There were no safe places; the entire general admission front pit was generalized chaos.

Tired, sweating, bruised, beaten, and completely muddy, we left right after the encore. I'm pretty sure either Adam or Josh had to leave their shoes in the parking lot because they had somehow turned from regular shoes to a clump of gritty mud, sweat, and sludge. We rehashed war stories on the way home like we just left Vietnam, started feeling sore spots and emerging bruises, and all vowed that we'd do it again in a heartbeat.

I still get chills watching those videos. Rage Against the Machine, I'm pretty sure you put on the greatest concert spectacle -- musically and experiential -- I've ever witnessed.