Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 28, 1993 TAG: 9307280102
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By STEPHEN FOSTER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RALEIGH, N.C. LENGTH: Long
Les Claypool called Lollapalooza like it evolved: "It's just gonna get uglier . . . and uglier . . . and UGLIER. "
Except that Claypool, bassist and leader of Primus, uttered his statement during Lollapalooza's last act of bands on the fringe. It had been 10 hours earlier that the ugliness began pulsing through Walnut Creek Amphitheatre.
Ugly, one must understand, is a word of many meanings here.
At Lollapalooza, ugly often equals a state of ecstasy. It also can mean plain disgusting, twisted or perverted. It can mean drunken, sweaty or mud-covered. It can mean good, and it can mean bad.
It's a matter of definition.
Musically speaking, every one of the bands - with the exception of Arrested Development, whose positive rap message grooves with a rhythm that is anything but ugly - came off with an ugly bent.
Rage Against the Machine, Alice in Chains, Tool, Fishbone, Dinosaur Jr. and the Belgian industrial act Front 242 inspire grimaces and anger, bedlam in a box - or an amphitheatre.
"If ignorance is bliss, then somebody wipe this . . . [expletive] smile off my face!" screamed Zack de la Rocha.
Ugly means rage, as in Rage Against the Machine, which Rocha fronts. The opening act, it's a fiercely defiant band blending elements of rap, hard-core and metal.
Later, Fishbone - with gaping-eyed lead singer Angelo Moore stomping underneath a hanging prop of a goateed fish of bones - was ending its set. The sky above the crowd filled with pizza boxes, cups, shoes - and at least one unhusked corn cob. Ugly.
Alice in Chains played next to last, with singer Layne Staley - not quite as ugly since lopping off the dreadlocks he sported in the movie "Singles" - striking poses from behind rope meshing and later flip-diving into the crowd.
And lastly, Primus, the "headliner," if such a term must be tattooed on the final band, stepped forth.
Leering, self-deprecating Claypool, whose bass sounds like an rumbling stock car engine, wears bib overalls and likes to goose-step and sing of pork soda, redneck race-car drivers, burying a murdered chum before he starts to smell and tomcats in heat.
They're the culminating effort of ugly musicianship.
Then there's the scene around the stage.
The fans. After 11 hours of 90-degree heat, dancing and drinking, jumping into the constantly spinning mosh-circle of participants doing their happy best to slam and be slammed, well, you get pretty ugly.
Ugly are the sideshows: The Runties, a marionette act culminating with a rabbit performing a sexual act; the Spaceball, a vomit-inducing human gyroscope; and the multitude of tents, hawking greasy turkey legs, jewelry, top hats and backpacks made of hemp.
And unfortunately, there is the show's meaning itself. Some say Lollapalooza, three years running, is turning ugly in the more traditional sense of the word.
For a show that sprang from the bowel-like depths of "alternative" music, where it is only important to be different, mocked by members of society's status quo and relatively unknown, corporate-dom has begun treading upon Lollapalooza.
That is considered the ultimate ugly to die-hard fans.
The show is becoming institutionalized. After three years, the kids will come, and the record companies know it. All the mainstage bands have record deals.
The media drop the buzzwords "Generation X" and "Woodstock of the '90s" - cheesy cliches applied to a youthful, overwhelmingly white crowd dressed in cutoffs and black bikinis; combat boots; green hair; and pierced lobes, nipples and noses who come to hear the music.
It's ugly for the spirit behind the origination of the scene to be so simply labeled.
But then again, it's not nearly as weird as some would want it. And for many who came, the ugly integrity questions of message, music and money give way to more simplistic motivations: It's the place to be, it's an 11-hour party, and it's cool.
"It's fun and wild," said 15-year-old Grayton Martin, from Raleigh. Brushing a bobbed haircut away from his eyes, he said this was his first Lollapalooza. All his friends are into it.
"I plan to go here until the world ends," said Khedran Deleon, 21, in between kicking a footbag around a circle of hackysackers. "I like hacking, and I like pretty girls," the pony-tailed college student said, then brought the outside of his foot up to keep the hack going.
by CNB