San Jose’s Retrovisor bar and live music venue was filled with Rockers ready to relive the music of their favorite band Rage Against the Machine last Thursday night.  After playing to a capacity crowd just a month earlier the demand and need for an encore was mandatory.

I arrived early, not knowing what type of crowd to expect, which my die hard Rage fan entourage along with a local rock photographer.  Recalling the sardine like crowd from the previous show we were happy to have breathing room as we entered the main floor… an hour passed…then another… the band still wasn’t warming up and the room was half empty… at this point our hopes of a triumphant show began to diminish.  Like most parties and bars cool people are likely to show up late, so I guess the majority or Rage fans are really “cool” … the room was filled just after the guitarist struck his first chord.

Passion was exhibited by Battle of Chepe for their love of Rage’s classic music, the vocals were unreal, my ears rung through the next day and I’d bet a night at the bar that the singer’s throat was more swollen than pregnant woman’s uterus.  The guitar and bass were on point, and the drums hit hard.  The energy is what sold the show though,  the lead singer was giving double what the crowd gave him, in response the crowd would up his ante with moshing, crowd surfing, jumping around, and loads of head banging, with a sea a air guitarists along the edges of the crowd.  At one point the guitarist got so into the moment that he threw himself off stage with guitar in hand, then face planting onto the floor ( Rockstar status). 

This event made you feel as if you had seen Rage live at a venue where you could actually hear the music instead of at a 100,000 person festival where you are so dehydrated and far away from the stage that you’d rather have a bottle of water in an un-air-conditioned car listening to a cassette tape of Rage.  El Retrovisor had a great ambiance, the people where true fans and were there to have a good time, after a good mosh during Bulls on Parade people shook hands and hugged, everyone with smiles, one person even returned my hat which had fallen off my head.

Hands down great band, venue, beer (Pilsen rojo), and show!

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Filed under: Nightlife on August 28th, 2007