Rage Against The Machine "Bombtrack"

The big, winding clover-leaf exit covered more ground than the entire neighborhood block I grew up on. And with the windows of my Toyota rolled down, I sped around the slightly sloping embankment, like a racecar driver on a track.

The exit off the Florida Turnpike emptied into the town of Davie, which is just directly West of Ft. Lauderdale. This was the drive I made every morning, to my first real, professional, post-college job.

I was working for a cable company, in the production department. You know those cheap-looking, low budget commercials for some rinky-dink local eatery, that pops up during a CNN commercial break? I was a guy that made those.

Every day I was shooting close up after close up of ugly chicken sandwiches and pan shots of unphotogenic hairdressing school students and stand-ups of stiff-gesturing car dealers. And always, always, always---because it couldn't be a cable commercial without it---the client insisted that we shoot a picture of the sign above the front door.

But I was doing what I love. And (despite my awareness of production value limitations) it was an artistic and creative environment.

Unfortunately, it wasn't the social environment I'd always assumed the workplace would be.

The reality was that all my co-workers were over 30. Most were married. And many had kids.

I, on the other hand, was just out of college, where 90% of the people I interacted with, saw, spoke to, looked at, ate with, slept with and thought about, were between the ages of 18 and 28. It was truly culture-shock to suddenly be somewhere, where not a single person was in the same stage of life.

I realized, pretty quickly, that at work, I had to try to age-up, to fit in. It didn't help that at 23 years old, I still looked like I was 15. But I tried to act like an mature adult. I told everyone to call me Paul (because P.J. was a kid's name). And I maintained a professional attitude, as best as a green-rookie knew how to project one.

That ride to work was mine though.

When I had moved a few months earlier, I had driven my car from Massachusetts to Florida, not thinking about the fact that I was moving to a place where it might suck to own a car with no air conditioning. So I always drove with the windows rolled down and WKPX cranked.

WKPX was a public radio station, run out of a Broward County High School, and DJed mainly by high school students, who played Alternative Rock.

And this was the 1991/1992, which was such a watershed time in music. WKPX is the first place I heard "Smells Like Teen Spirit," and Pearl Jam and Jesus Jones and Cracker and Rage Against The Machine.

In particular, Rage was a mind-scrambler for me. Not only was "Bombtrack" amazing, it simply sounded like nothing else I'd ever heard. The mix of rap and rock and guitar-wizardry and passion and politics . . . it was opening a new world for me.

I can remember coming around that big winding exit that emptied out into the town where I worked, with "Bombtrack" blaring on the shitty car speakers, and me "raging" along.

In a few minutes, I'd be entering this world where I was Paul, and I was serious, and I was professional.

But at that moment in my car, I was me, with no conformity, no compromises and no air conditioning.


Hear the song on Youtube.