Lollapalooza
A friend of mine likes to tell the story of the time he went to see Black Sabbath at the Winnebago County Fairgrounds in Pecatonica, a town just west of Rockford. It rained, and the concert was moved indoors. No one in his party cared, because they were all tripping on acid. After the show, though, buzz-kill: Their cars were stuck in the muddy lot, and each one had to be towed. The process took a miserably long time, and locals with four-wheel drives and tow trucks made a killing that night. “They had such huge rolls of money, bigger than any I had ever seen in my life,” my friend recalled. “They took whatever you had to get out of there.”
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Yes, this was the year that Lollapalooza finally slid back into the primordial ooze. Instead of the slightly ironic Jim Rose Circus Sideshow, there was an actual sideshow: For a small fee, you could view a woman without a head, a giant rat roasting in the sun, or a big, depressed snake. There were no performance poets this year, and the virtual rides were replaced by traditional carnival rides such as the Zipper and the Ferris wheel. And the gangly kids in Q101 T-shirts were joined by their redder, fatter, older Harley-straddling counterparts. The two things they seemed to have in common were that they were from the suburbs and that they had tattoos.
The other redeeming factor was the venue’s impressive battalion of portable johns, which meant that, possibly for the first time in concert history, there were no lines for the bathroom. Of course that also meant there were no mirrors or readily available drinking water.
Back on the main stage in midafternoon, special guests Cheap Trick (other cities were treated to Waylon Jennings, the Cocteau Twins, or Steve Earle, among others) pulled out their usual mix of decades-old material. Joey Ramone, looking ill at ease, stumbled onto the stage to join the band for a fast version of “Surrender” but seemed to know only part of the chorus; after standing awkwardly through a few verses, he walked back off the stage.
They plowed through a monster set, playing only three songs from their latest album, Load, a chunky, nearly solo-free attempt to cross over to the alternative market. Instead they concentrated on older, better material. Lighters were raised during the ballads, which, thankfully, were few and far between, and the crowd went crazy with air guitar and headbanging during ass-kickers like “Enter Sandman” and “Wherever I May Roam.” The audience was also treated to a pyrotechnic interlude, complete with onstage explosions, fireworks, and fire. At the end of the set, Hetfield came back out and told the crowd to “get the fuck out”–but not before reminding us of Metallica’s upcoming tour.
