I grew up on Spanish Fork's tractor-churned streets. Back then, our small town was a grandmother's quilt of alfalfa fields and Larry's barber shop on Main. Its pulse ticked to Sunday services and harvest moons.
On September 11, 1996, our devout Mormon town awoke to an ordinary sunrise. We dreaded nightfall, expecting a demonic spark to ignite, sure to tear our sacred fabric to shreds.
Months earlier, while we unwitting townsfolk wove our simple lives, a rebellion had been inadvertently invited to storm our dusty fairgrounds.
Rage Against the Machine, with their fists-up anthems of defiance, somehow slipped in like a match struck in parched grass. The fairgrounds manager later admitted it was an honest mistake: someone called about dates; he confirmed their availability, and a contract was signed. He'd never heard of the band.
Who called the fairgrounds manager and thrust this abomination into our carefully curated world? That mystery endures, as slippery as a songbird in the Utah Valley cottonwoods.
Word spread like wildfire through Spanish Fork's pews and porches, tongues clucking in that classic small-town telegraph. Some blamed the fairgrounds manager; others, our dear Madame Mayor, a title we cherished alongside our "Pride & Progress" logo.
Not unlike the JFK yarns swapped over Larry's hot lather, the more we learned, the more questions arose, conspiracies lingering like embers under a freshly smothered campfire.
Those embers fueled weeks of unrest, the most contentious in Spanish Fork's history. Lucifer himself had been invited to preach blasphemy to our youth, urging defiance where devotion reigned. A rally was organized to raise more than $80,000 to buy out the heathen band's contract, a desperate bid to preserve our hallowed streets and shield the innocent.
An inevitable exchange unfolded between a group of ne'er-do-wells and the God-fearing rallygoers. "Let the majority rule," the rally organizer cried, but the teens slipped away, laughing, off to smoke Marlboro Reds and spin skateboard tricks past curfew.
A frightened woman told an intrepid news reporter on scene, "I got a brother coming down with some dogs, and hopefully that'll scare 'em away if they decide to do anything."
Fear and loathing peaked on the Sunday before the concert, when a warning echoed from my church's pulpit. Blinds were to be shuttered, earmuffs donned, doors barred against the unholy clamor. A shadow had fallen over our once-clear streets, heavy with the ominous sound of forbidden chords that would soon explode from a Fender Telecaster.
Even as an 11-year-old, I'd long since learned to heed the elders' edicts. From that same pulpit, I was taught that Satan created The Simpsons, that Titanic should've been rated R because of Kate Winslet's nipple, and that MTV was nothing but porn.
When concert night arrived, more than eight thousand hooligans descended on our peaceful town, instantly doubling our population. The fairgrounds weren't far from my house. I didn't see it, but some say the moon bled red the moment Rage hit the stage.
I took shelter under my bed in the room I shared with my older brother. While praying in a fetal position, with the faint sound of drums and electric guitars drifting in from the distance, I heard my brother say, "I bet there's a sick mosh pit going on right now."
I began to cry.
Exhaustion must have claimed me. I woke with tear-crusted cheeks and morning light, crawling out to check whether school attendance was required post-apocalypse. My brother was already up, cranking a Rage track on our Magnavox CD player, oblivious to the ruin.
"Some of those that work the forces are the same that burn crosses," lead singer Zack de la Rocha snarled, looping into "Killing in the Name!" My brother headbanged like it was just another Thursday, as if our Eden hadn't tasted forbidden fruit.
I paused, listening. The instrumentals appealed to the sharp musical instincts I'd honed over six months of grueling piano lessons. But the words? An endless snarl: "And now you do what they told ya... now you're under control." Then, pardon my French: "F— you, I won't do what you tell me!"
My word, I thought. I get what all the fuss is about.
In truth, the concert played out as concerts do. A smattering of underage drinking tickets, a few out-of-towners urinating on lawns, and a fair amount of reefer wafting through the air. Soon after, an ordinance was passed, slamming the fairgrounds shut to future concerts. To this day, only fairs, rodeos, and 4-H shows grace the venue.
It was then that I started eyeing grown-up intuition with a squint. We'd been promised mayhem and bloodstained streets, but all we got was a traffic jam and urine-caked lawns. It was an important night.
It was a night of rage.