Last year I saw Rage Against the Machine at the Coachella and Rock the Bells music festivals. While it was really exciting to finally see Rage (never saw them as a kid), in retrospect the whole experience was such a farce.

Everybody knows that Rage's lyrics are unequivocally leftist. The band is often asked how they square their leftist orientation with the fact that their music is distributed by Sony Records. The response was generally something along the lines of, "We need to work within a capitalist system in order to spread the message and overthrow it."

That sounds credible on its face, but I have a hard time buying it after seeing them this past year. Take a look at all the expenses I incurred in order to see them live:

• Cross-country airplane ticket, much of which went straight to oil companies for the fuel
• Concert tickets
• Countless bottles of Gatorade to survive the heat
• Several meals
• Fuel for get to the concertSunscreen, sunglasses, etc.
• Rage concert shirt
• Etc...

Now, take my expenses and multiply them by 120,000 for the total number of people at both shows. That's quite a boon to American Airlines, petrol companies, record companies, restaurants, Hanes, and other companies.

It seems really clear, on balance, that Rage is doing much more to sustain capitalism than weaken it. On the one hand, they infused tens of millions of dollars into the economy. On the other, they said some subversive lyrics to people that already knew the songs.

I'm not saying I agree with things that Rage sings about, but if they are going to present themselves as a revolutionary leftist band, their whole routine shouldn't be laden with hypocrisy.

It also makes me wonder about what Zac de la Rocha does with the millions of dollars he's earned with Rage. Whatever the answer, I bet he's got a really soft bed in a big house -- a far cry from being the "Ghost of Tom Joad."

But whatever, it's still great music for the gym.