Lollapalooza 2011

Lollapalooza /ˌlɒləpəˈluːzə/ is an annual music festival featuring popular alternative rock, heavy metal, punk rock and hip hop bands, dance and comedy performances, and craft booths. It has also provided a platform for non-profit and political groups.

Conceived and created in 1991 by Jane's Addiction singer Perry Farrell as a farewell tour for his band, Lollapalooza ran annually until 1997, and was revived in 2003. From its inception through 1997, and its revival in 2003, the festival toured North America. In 2004, the festival organizers decided to expand the dates to two days per city, but poor ticket sales forced the 2004 tour to be cancelled.^[1] In 2005, Farrell and the William Morris Agency partnered up with Austin, Texas-based company Capital Sports Entertainment (now C3 Presents) and retooled it into its current format as a weekend destination festival in Grant Park, Chicago, Illinois. In 2010 it was announced that Lollapalooza would debut overseas, with a branch of the festival staged in Chile's capital Santiago on April 2–3, 2011 where they partnered up with Santiago-based company Lotus. In 2011, the company Geo Events confirmed the Brazilian version of the event, which will be held at the Jockey Club in São Paulo on 7 and 8 April 2012.^[2][3]

The music festival hosts more than 160,000 people over a three day period. Lollapalooza has featured a diverse range of bands and has helped expose and popularize artists such as Atmosphere (music group), Metallica, Coldplay, Eminem, Depeche Mode, Foo Fighters, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Pearl Jam, The Cure, Primus, The Killers, Rage Against the Machine, Arcade Fire, Nine Inch Nails, Jane's Addiction, X Japan, Soundgarden, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Smashing Pumpkins, Muse, Alice in Chains, Björk, MGMT, Foster the People, Tool, Hole, Body Count, Ice-T, 30 Seconds to Mars, The Drums, The Strokes, Arctic Monkeys, Calvin Harris, Thenewno2, Fishbone and Butthole Surfers.

Etymology[link]

The word—sometimes alternatively spelled and pronounced as lollapalootza or lalapaloosa^[4]—dates from a late 19th/early 20th century American idiomatic phrase meaning "an extraordinary or unusual thing, person, or event; an exceptional example or instance."^[5][6] In time the term also came to refer to a large lollipop.^[7] Farrell, searching for a name for his festival, liked the euphonious quality of the now antiquated term upon hearing it in a Three Stooges short film.^[8] Paying homage to the term's double meaning, a character in the festival's original logo holds one of the lollipops.^[7]

History[link]

Creation[link]

Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor during the 1991 Lollapalooza festival.

Inspired by events produced by Bill Graham, Perry Farrell, along with Ted Gardener, Marc Geiger, and Don Muller, conceived of the festival in 1990 as a farewell tour for his band Jane's Addiction.^[9] Unlike previous music festivals such as Woodstock, A Gathering of the Tribes, or the US Festival, which were one-time events held in one venue, Lollapalooza was a touring festival that travelled across the United States and Canada.^[10]

The inaugural 1991 lineup was made up of artists from various genres, drawing in headliners from post-punk such as Siouxsie and the Banshees to rap such as Ice-T as well as industrial music such as Nine Inch Nails. Another key concept behind Lollapalooza was the inclusion of non-musical features.^[11] Performers like the Jim Rose Circus Side Show, an alternative freak show, and the Shaolin monks stretched the boundaries of traditional rock culture. There was a tent for display of art pieces, virtual reality games, and information tables for political and environmental non-profit groups promoting counter-culture and political awareness.^[12]

Success and decline[link]

It was at Lollapalooza where Farrell coined the term "Alternative Nation".^[13] The explosion of alternative rock in the early 1990s propelled Lollapalooza forward; the 1992 and 1993 festivals leaned heavily on grunge and alternative acts, and usually featured an additional rap artist.^[14] Punk rock standbys like mosh pits and crowd surfing became part of the canon of the concerts. These years saw great increases in the participatory nature of the event with the inclusion of booths for open-microphone readings and oratory, television-smashing pits, and tattooing and piercing parlors.^[15][16] After 1991, the festival included a second stage (and, in 1996, a third stage) for up-and-coming bands or local acts.^[17] Attendee complaints of the festival included high ticket prices as well as the high cost for food and water at the shows.^[18] When the festival played at the Alpine Valley festival in East Troy, Wisconsin on August 29, 1992, and also at Pine Knob Music Theater in Clarkston, Michigan (near Detroit) in 1992, concertgoers ripped up chunks of sod and grass and threw them at each other and at the bands, resulting in tens of thousands of dollars in damages to the venue.^[8]

Grunge band Nirvana was scheduled to headline at the festival in 1994, but the band officially dropped out of the festival on April 7, 1994.^[8] Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain's body was discovered in Seattle, Washington the next day. Cobain's widow, Courtney Love, made guest appearances at several shows, including the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania show at FDR Park (usually taking time given to her by The Smashing Pumpkins vocalist/guitarist Billy Corgan), speaking to the crowds about the loss, then singing a minimum of two songs.^[8] Farrell worked with rock poster artist Jim Evans (T.A.Z.) to create a series of posters and the complete graphic decoration for the 1994 event, including two 70 ft. tall Buddha statues that flanked the main stage. In 1996, Farrell, who had been the soul of the festival, decided to focus his energy to produce his new festival project, ENIT, and did not participate in producing Lollapalooza.^[8] Many fans saw the addition of Metallica in 1996 as going against the practice of featuring "non-mainstream" artists.^[8] Moreover, festival cofounder Farrell felt that the group's macho image violated his peaceful vision for the festival,^[19] for alternative culture of the early 1990s was generally against macho behavior.^[20] Farrell quit the tour in protest.^[21] Efforts were made to keep the festival relevant, including more eclectic acts such as country superstar Waylon Jennings and emphasizing more heavily electronica groups like The Prodigy.^[8] By 1997, however, the Lollapalooza concept had run out of steam, and in 1998 failed efforts to find a suitable headliner resulted in the festival's cancellation.^[22] The cancellation served as a signifier of alternative rock's declining popularity. In light of the festival's troubles that year, Spin said, "Lollapalooza is as comatose as alternative rock right now."^[23]

Revival and rebirth[link]

In 2003, Farrell reconvened Jane's Addiction and scheduled a new Lollapalooza tour. The festival schedule included venues in 30 cities through July and August. The 2003 tour achieved only marginal success with many fans staying away, presumably because of high ticket prices.^[8] Another tour scheduled for 2004 was to consist of a two-day festival taking place in each city. It was cancelled in June due to weak ticket sales across the country.^[1]

Lollapalooza 2006 in Grant Park, Chicago.

Farrell partnered with Capital Sports & Entertainment (now C3 Presents), which co-owns and produces the Austin City Limits Music Festival, to produce Lollapalooza.^[24] CSE, Farrell and the William Morris Agency—along with Charles Attal Presents—resurrected Lollapalooza as a two-day destination festival in 2005 in Grant Park, Chicago, Illinois, with an even greater variety of performers (70 acts on five stages) than that of the touring festival.^[8] The festival was generally successful, attracting over 65,000 attendees, despite a 104 degree Fahrenheit Sunday (40 degrees Celsius) heat wave (two people were hospitalized for heat related illness).^[25][26] It returned to Chicago on August 4–6, 2006. On October 25, 2006, the Chicago Park District and Capital Sports & Entertainment agreed to a five-year, $5 million deal, keeping Lollapalooza at Grant Park in Chicago until 2011.^[27] Lollapalooza ran August 3–5 in 2007, August 1–3 in 2008, August 7–9 in 2009, and August 6–8 in 2010.^[28] The dates for 2011 are set for August 5–7.^[28] After a successful 2008 festival, another deal was signed to keep Lollapalooza in Chicago through 2018, guaranteeing the city $13 million.^[29]

International expansion[link]

In 2010, it was announced that Lollapalooza would debut in South America, with a branch of the festival staged in Chile's capital Santiago on April 2–3, 2011. The line up included Kanye West, Jane's Addiction, 30 Seconds to Mars, The National, Manny and Gil The Latin, The Drums, The Killers, Ana Tijoux, Javiera Mena, Fatboy Slim, Deftones, Los Plumabits, Cypress Hill, 311, The Flaming Lips and many others.^[30] A Brazilian version of the event was confirmed in 2011^[31][32], which will be held at the Jockey Club in São Paulo on 7 and 8 April 2012 and will compete with Rock in Rio, the largest festival in the world, which also takes place in Brazil.

Criticism[link]

Recording engineer, guitarist, and journalist Steve Albini has criticized Lollapalooza for its corporatization of popularized "alternative" music. In a 1993 interview, Albini commented:

Lollapalooza is the worst example of corporate encroachment into what is supposed to be the underground. It is just a large scale marketing of bands that pretend to be alternative but are in reality just another facet of the mass cultural exploitation scheme. I have no appreciation or affection for those bands and I have no interest in that whole circle. If Lollapalooza had Jesus Lizard and the Melvins and Fugazi and Slint then you could make a case that it was actually people on the vanguard of music. What it really is is the most popular bands on MTV that are not heavy metal.^[33]

Lollapalooza lineups by year[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Lollapalooza

• Lollapalooza's official website
• Lollapalooza 2010 iPhone app

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