From: catcher@netcom.com (Paul W. Francisco)
Subject: Lollapalooza II (Seattle) - Review
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 92 21:08:25 GMT
Organization: The Vampyre's Lair
Distribution: na


For those who may be interested in it, here's a review of the Lollapalooza
II show in Seattle...  hit 'n' if you don't care.

There were long lines.  We got there about 10:45 and got through the gates
at 1:00.  Fortunately the show started late at 1:30.  Get there early.
Also bring binoculars.

The atmosphere was good.  It was a very grey day, kind of cool.  The food 
was overpriced but what do you expect?  Food had to be bought with food
tickets which could be bought at separate booths.  

The bands (in order of appearance):

Lush - If the idea of relatively unknown bands playing in concert is to
get people to buy their albums, then Lush is the big winner with me.  I
thought they sounded really good and will probably take a chance on one of
their albums soon.  The drawback here was that they didn't put on that
electrifying of a performance.  They simply stood up there and played their
stuff.  If you want someone jumping around, they won't be fun to watch.
But they are definitely worth a listen.

Pearl Jam - How much of the excitement was due to their being from Seattle?
Probably a lot at the beginning, but they put on a really good show.  They
were very energetic and fun, and sounded pretty good to top it all off.
Perhaps the biggest overall surprise of the day (though I am from Seattle
I haven't really followed them).  If I remember correctly this was the
band whose lead singer dove into the crowd.  

Jesus and Mary Chain - The first band to have a really interesting
backdrop and any kind of effective light show (thanks to the smoke they
used).  They sounded reasonably good.  But they were hard to watch.
Seriously.  They used *so much* smoke that half the time you couldn't
see any of them at all.  

Soundgarden - The other Seattle band.  The highlight (to me) was when they
included a bit of _Smells Like Teen Spirit_ in one of their songs.  Not
that I particularly like that song, but it was amusing.  They sounded to
me like a band that had listened to Pearl Jam and wanted to grind a little
harder, listened to Queensryche and didn't want to go that hard, and
compromised.  They had a couple of good songs, but were probably the
biggest disappointment to me.

Ministry - Wait, what about Ice Cube, you say?  Be patient and I'll get
to that.  Ministry was a bit early, but that was ok.  This was the band 
I most wanted to see.  There was a lot of energy going around when they
played.  Al seemed to be enjoying himself most of the time.  He even gave
somebody the thumbs up after getting hit on the arm by a boot.  He asked
after the song they were playing at the time if anyone wanted their shoe
back :-)  Really a lot of fun.  People were really getting into it.  Plus
they gave an encore.  Oh, yeah, the stage setup was really cool.  They had
various skeletons of unidentifiable animals hanging on the equipment (was
that an antlered person I saw?), and as the show went on Al took some of
them apart and threw bones to people in the pit.

Ice Cube - He must have irritated the Canadians somehow.  The previous
day's show was in Vancouver, and he got held up by customs at the border.
So he arrived way late.  When he made it out on stage he said that the
Peppers had told him he could only play for 20 minutes.  I didn't think
that was a big deal, since this didn't seem to be at all a rap crowd.
I now understand why rap groups are popular.  They can take a crowd that
isn't into rap and really get them going.  He had people shouting things
back to him when he wanted, making noise and being quiet when he wanted,
etc.  The crowd was completely in the palm of his hand.  At the end of
his 20 minutes he said there was no way he was going out like that, that
we had paid our money to see the whole show, and went on for another 5
minutes.  I'm sure that wasn't the rest of his show, but it was still fun.
And when he told the crowd to yell if they enjoyed his portion, the place
got loud.

Red Hot Chili Peppers - If you could hook these guys up to the power grids,
you could power a city for months.  They were also fortunate in that they 
were the only ones who played at night and therefore could really make use
of the lights.  If you like these guys they will be the highlight of the
show.  If you don't they will still be fun to watch.  And the guitarist
proved that once you are popular you can say anything and people will love
it, no matter how stupid it is.  But I'll admit, I enjoyed his little
rants as much as the next person.  They also did an encore.

Here's a quick ranking of the bands (IMHO) on how much I liked the music
and how much fun I thought the performance was:

Music                            Performance
-----                            -----------
Ministry                         Red Hot Chili Peppers
Lush                             Pearl Jam
Pearl Jam                        Ice Cube
Jesus and Mary Chain             Ministry
Soundgarden                      Jesus and Mary Chain
Red Hot Chili Peppers            Soundgarden
Ice Cube                         Lush

The music list reflects my opinion of rap (I think RHCP sounds a lot like
rap most of the time) so you can take that for what it's worth.

As for the pit, there were a lot of folks crowd surfing, and many items
of clothing went flying.  Mostly shoes and hats, but at least a couple  
pairs of pants, and a thought I saw a jockstrap once, but I may have been
mistaken.  People that I overheard who had been there said they enjoyed it
but it got very hot and tiring.  Nothing unusual for a pit, I guess.

Well, that's about all I can think of as perhaps being of much interest.
I didn't ever get in to see the Jim Rose side show, though I heard it was
fun, albeit a little strange (ok, a lot strange).  I wish I had gotten
around to that, maybe some other time.


-- 
From the Vampyre's Lair, 	    The thirst from a vampire bite
Paul W. Francisco        	    fills the emptiness inside...
catcher@netcom.com                      - Siouxsie and the Banshees