I'm standing near the back of New York's Webster Hall, by the radical bookstore's table, when Morello appears onstage with his acoustic guitar. Most of the dozen young people I've met so far have come to hear Morello, so I expect mostly praise from the crowd of sources who surround me. Instead, Mike Levin -- a sideburned graduate student at New York University -- tells me that he's not pleased. "I feel alienated by it," he says. Morello's speech -- including the reference to Iraqis wanting Americans to leave, and a tale of being tear-gassed at the Miami FTAA protests -- seemed "kind of preachy," says Levin, 28. "Kind of clichéd." His cousin Kate, 22, a politically active intern at the Nation magazine, agrees: "It seemed like he was trying to make the music fit the politics."

Four of six fans I speak to offer a similar critique -- Morello and the other artists seem a retread of '60s counterculture that's not quite able to fuse politics and music into a persuasive whole. Some critics simply see holes in the content; Jason Lyons, a tall 24-year-old in baggy jeans, says that he doubts that all Iraqis, or even most, actually want U.S. troops to leave immediately, as Morello claims. Similarly, in Boston, Sheldon found the rhetoric fast and loose. "It wasn't driven by factual evidence," she says. "It was driven by their opinion."

Said Lindsay Sullivan, a fan I met in the Webster Hall stairway: "There's a great message and I agree with it, but there isn't anything new." Her friend Anna Hurley agreed: "There's not much inspiring going on."

According to Danny Goldberg, CEO of Artemis Records and the author of "Dispatches From the Culture Wars: How the Left Lost Teen Spirit," stars tend to alienate their fans "if they become preachy, didactic, too predictable." Despite the artists' best efforts, this seems to be what happened, at least at times, during Tell Us the Truth.

This also points to a key generational split. To those who were alive during Watergate and Vietnam -- including Morello and Garofalo, who are both pushing 40 -- government can't be trusted, and angry emotional pleas are the best way to rally opposition. "That go-get-'em tough stuff really gets us going," says Daniel M. Shea, a political science professor at Allegheny College and the author of "Mass Politics: The Politics of Popular Culture." But, he warns: "It's not like that for young people. Hardcore partisan attacks just don't resonate with these folks."

In fact, research shows that 18- to 30-year-olds have more faith in government than they did in 2000, and they are increasingly registered as independents. The angry negativity that spurs older liberals to action only turns young people off, says Feldman. "Kids don't want to be preached to, period," he says, citing a comprehensive Declare Yourself survey on young people's voting patterns. "They want to arrive at conclusions themselves." Which is why Declare Yourself stresses its "nonpartisan, nonprofit" credentials, and its spoken word/concert series next year is expected to be high on entertainment and voter registration information -- and low on political agitprop. Drew Barrymore attended the group's launch in November as spokeswoman, but kept any fiery rhetoric to herself.

That's not to suggest that no rhetoric works. Many Tell Us the Truth attendees interviewed appreciated the subtler, comic approach of Jill Sobule. "I fell in love with her," says Stephanie Ferrara, a student at Montclair State College in New Jersey. "She was, by far, the most entertaining performer." Other concert-goers agreed. The model should be "The Daily Show": "Comedy good, overt bashing bad," Hurley says.

Fans I spoke to also said that they didn't mind pure political speech, as long as the message was focused and informative. "I think the message has to be represented uniformly to be strong enough to inspire people," says Hurley, a contributor to MoveOn.org's anti-Bush ad contest. Stars speaking out should go deep, fans argue, rather than wide. Build an argument with information and multimedia sources, says Kate Levin, the Nation intern. Tell Us the Truth, for example, could have suggested alternative media Web sites and "done some cool A/V stuff, too -- like a 'Bowling for Columbine'-esque series of clips of all of the administration's lies about the link between Saddam and 9/11," Levin says. "It would have made it a little more interesting and added more substance to the tour's theme."

Finally, the young fans I interviewed -- most of whom were already registered to vote -- say that they also wanted more direction. Sure, Billy Bragg ended his sets with mention of petitions people could sign on their way out, and suggested that people write letters to Congress about radio consolidation. But the artists "could have said more about how to get active locally," says Julia Kowal, 27, publisher of activist media materials in Connecticut. "People have to feel that there's something to join up with." In other words, signature drives alone are not enough. Discuss local action groups or meet-ups run by the sponsor, Common Cause; point people to organizations seeking volunteers. "There are already a lot of young people who go to rallies," says Kowal, at the end of the Boston concert. "You have to get grass-roots stuff going."

Toomey stresses that the tour did more than concert-goers might have noticed. Artists didn't just play music and speak from the stage; they also marched with union workers in Miami, met with a co-op in North Carolina and regularly held press conferences that focused on politics in depth. "People are criticizing the effectiveness, but we had almost sold-out shows with very little coverage," she says. "In Chicago, we didn't have one preview in the three arts weeklies. And yet, people found these shows. There wasn't a single night when there wasn't an encore. So how are we not effective?"

Garofalo struck an even more defensive note. Critics, she says, are simply trying to avoid responsibility. "It's a way to let yourself off the hook," she says. "It's easier to be cynical and walk out of here and say I didn't get it because then you can emotionally disengage and pretend that you're a liberal."

And yet, even if the fans I spoke to are not representative of the whole -- with less than half praising elements of the show and half condemning it -- it's clear that the tour didn't exactly mobilize its audience. The anti-FTAA referendum that Bragg mentioned from the New York stage, for example, collected only 94 signatures from a crowd of close to 1,000. This is about 14 more than organizers, using four volunteers, usually gather outside a Whole Foods supermarket on a Saturday afternoon. Common Cause, which says it was happy with the tour and would sponsor another, also failed to gather its goal of 400 signatures per concert. About 300 people per show signed the group's petition, which called for tougher laws on media concentration.

Next time, Bragg says, the musicians from Tell Us the Truth will do a better job. "I would say more -- from the beginning -- about what people can do to get involved," he says. Toomey also admits that she learned a thing or two from the tour, including the fact that if you list a concert under a title (like Tell Us the Truth), Ticketmaster doesn't necessarily publish the names of the artists involved. But for Boots Riley, a more substantive change might be in order. "If you want to get new people involved, you can't have us all together," he says. "Have one of us, maybe, but we need artists who aren't so similar in their views."

At this point, fans seem to agree.

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