A traveling countercultural village

I took Perry Farrel out for Indian food a couple of days later and wasn’t surprised to discover that he was a fairly pretentious and utterly charming fellow. What did surprise me was Perry’s insistence that Jane’s Addiction had run its course. He told me he was breaking up the band, but not until after they had headlined a summer tour that would also feature Nine Inch Nails, the Butthole Surfers, and Henry Rollins. He was going to call the tour Lollapalooza.
Lollapalooza became a fabulous financial and artistic succes. It wasn’t just a tour. Lollapalooza was a traveling countercultural village of bands, druggy art, carnival rides, and virtual-reality kiosks. Like alternative music itself, Lollapalooza was a collision of sensibilities – once there, you could watch a grunge band like Soundgarden, then a gangsta rapper like Ice Cube, then you could go get a falafel and talk to somebody who worked for Greenpeace. Unlike Woodstock, arguably both the climax and denouement of hippie culture, Lollapalooza was the first real gathering of the alternative nation. And it became a tribal temporary autonomous zone, where twenty-something kids could look around and revel in the strength of their numbers.

uit: Noise from the underground : a secret history of alternative rock - Pat Blashill

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