All the lost souls of Lollapalooza Nation gathered for one more blowout Saturday at Tweeter Center, a revival of the alternative-rock festival that transformed pop culture in the ’90s.
The brainchild of Jane’s Addiction singer Perry Farrell, Lollapalooza put a motley array of rock and hip-hop outcasts on the road, built a freak-circus atmosphere around the music, and demonstrated there was plenty of money to be made from “alternative” entertainment. Faster than you can say “Nevermind,” the scene was commodified, and by 1997 it had burned out.
Over the weekend, the corporate brands were back in greater force than ever, and so were some of the names that made the initial Lollapalooza so memorable: ex-members of Soundgarden and Rage Against the Machine united in a new band, Audioslave; former Screaming Trees singer Mark Lanegan, now putting his graveside baritone in service of Queens of the Stone Age; and Farrell himself, leading three-fourths of the original lineup in a new incarnation of Jane’s.
But playing to a half-empty house on a gorgeous summer day, Lollapalooza ’03 opened the question of whether the ’90s rock festival boom had run its course. Farrell’s vision spawned numerous imitators: Ozzfest, H.O.R.D.E., Smokin’ Grooves, Lilith Fair, Area 1 and 2, Warped. Now all are either extinct or running on fumes, part of a general downturn of the concert economy.
Farrell didn’t so much try to reinvent Lollapalooza as update it, with more than passing nods to cellular culture (interactive text-messaging games) and political activism (informational kiosks galore, including a multimedia center for Axis of Justice, the pet project of Audioslave guitarist and Libertyville native Tom Morello), amid a midway of shops that offered karaoke, hemp skateboards and glow panties. But the $10 burritos, the $7.50 beers and the $59.50 pavilion seats made this an expensive outing for even the most committed Jane’s addicts.
The music itself smacked of early ’90s alt-rock values (earnest music for music’s sake, devoid of fancy staging and rock-star posing) — not necessarily a bad thing. But it was mostly an opportunity unrealized, with the strong main stage acts doing little to distinguish their sets from a typical tour.
There was no interaction among the headliners, save for a cameo appearance by Incubus guitarist Mike Einziger during Jane’s set on the monumental “Mountain Song.”
One of the best aspects of the early Lollapalooza was the way it blended the seemingly un-blendable: Farrell and Ice-T taking on Sly Stone; Soundgarden covering Body Count’s “Cop Killer”; Arrested Development, Front 242 and Alice in Chains sharing an audience.
But the headline acts this year — Jane’s, Audioslave, Incubus and Queens of the Stone Age — aren’t really that much different in artistic temperament. They’re all worthy hard-rock bands, streaked by celebrations of outright hedonism (Jane’s, Queens) and a heady optimism (Incubus) that played well in the amphitheater. Even the terminally bummed out Chris Cornell turned Audioslave’s set into an uplifting affair, raising goose bumps with a blues-inflected rasp that suggested he’d tunneled out of the psychic hole he was mired in when the band last played Chicago a few months ago. The quartet also pulled off the evening’s biggest surprise, taking a game stab at the White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army.”
The Jurassic 5 affirmed why they’re one of hip-hop’s finest live acts, a quartet of emcees riffing with the precision of Duke Ellington’s horn section while two deejays cut it up on everything from drums and turntables to toy samplers.
The token shot of estrogen, the Donnas, delivered one-trick party rock in the mold of mid-’70s icons such as Kiss, whose “Strutter” was covered without apparent irony.
Unfortunately, the second stage acts were not up to the par of earlier Lollapalooza incarnations, and there was a glaring dearth of hip-hop and electronic music to balance the male-centric guitar rock on the main stage. Ultimately, the festival wasn’t able to establish a new identity outside of providing a forum for Jane’s Addiction’s comeback, on the eve of its first studio album since 1990
Farrell shimmied in a black vinyl body suit, his voice bugling sexual restlessness while guitarist Dave Navarro romped in an ankle-length red boa, black nail polish and nipple rings. The set was flamboyantly entertaining, riding the syncopated beats of drummer Stephen Perkins.
But only two new songs were performed, as Jane’s focused on its classic past, demonstrating that the likes of “Summertime Rolls” and “Three Days” still pack potency but failing to establish that the band — or Lollapalooza — is something more than a nostalgia act.
