Leave it to those rabble-rousers Rage Against Machine to ruin it for everybody. After the So Cal agit-rockers played Mansfield, Massachusetts' Tweeter Center in 1997 and refused to leave the stage until long after the 11 p.m. curfew, the city's lawmakers decided that they would make other performers pay to play if they refused to honor the curfew.

Two years later, Mansfield finally had to lower the boom on the venue because recalcitrant performers refused to leave the center stage. Nope, it wasn't perennial bad boy rockers Motley Crue, Korn or even a return visit by Rage. Fines were levied against old school peaceniks Bob Dylan and Paul Simon.

The town fined the center $5,300 because the Dylan/Simon shows ran fifteen minutes over the cut-off time. Under the dictates of the town, Tweeter is fined based on attendance and length of time a performance runs past the curfew. The Center was fined $592 for the July 22 performance, when attendance was 11,047, and a whopping $4,784 for July 23, when 19,539 fans witnessed the historic coupling.

Despite having stirred up controversy in Massachusetts, the two oldsters have extended their joint tour into September, winding the whole thing up on Sept. 18 at Dallas, Texas' Starplex Ampitheater.

JAAN UHELSZKI
(August 13, 1999)