The only early Lolla lineup that has really aged poorly is 1993, the Alice In Chains/Primus/Arrested Development year, and even that had Rage Against The Machine and Tool opening the show.) In a fascinating oral history a few years ago, The Washington Post called Lollapalooza ’95 “Alternative Nation’s last stand.” But even with all the past and future underground icons on display, the band that seized the imaginations of me and my friends when we went to that show - the band we couldn’t stop talking about on the long ride home - was the main-stage opening band, the one that wore plaid suits and had a horn section and a guy whose entire job was to dance. (That 1994 lineup also seems improbably cool in retrospect, but that’s ’90s alt-rock culture for you. The whole show was conceived as a rebuke to the previous year - the Smashing Pumpkins/Beastie Boys/Breeders year, the year that Nirvana were slated to headline until Kurt Cobain killed himself - because people thought that things were getting too pop. As headliners, it had old underground gods Sonic Youth, opening their set, the night I saw them, with “Teenage Riot,” only seven years old at that point but already a classic. It had Cypress Hill, performing in front of a gigantic inflatable Buddha with a pot leaf on its belly and, at the climactic moment of their set, wheeling out a 10-foot bowl with a smoke machine inside it. It had Superchunk and Helium and Redman and Built To Spill, all playing over on the side stage. It had Mellow Gold/”Loser”-era Beck, gawky and unsure and not yet ready for stages that size, though he’d get there soon enough. It had Hole, performing under silvery stars and openly feuding with other bands on the bill. It had Pavement, so sloppy and aloof the day I saw them that the West Virginia crowd pelted them with chunks of mud. His speaking voice on the other hand is very pleasant to listen to (although he’s still quite loud and brash, being from Boston).The 1995 edition of Lollapalooza had a lineup that, in retrospect, seems almost inconceivably cool. Vocal Dissonance: Dicky Barrett’s singing (especially on early Bosstones albums) is EXTREMELY guttural, angry and loud, although he sings much cleaner vocals these days.Trope Codifier: The Ska-Core, the Devil and More EP is probably the codifier for for the sound of ska-core.Step Up to the Microphone: The B-Side "Chocolate Pudding", sung by Tim "Johnny Vegas" Burton, is the only Bosstones song to have anyone other than Dicky Barrett sing lead."Her Man" is a catchy tune about domestic violence and how a woman couldn’t bear to leave her abuser and paid for it with her life."Royal Oil" sounds like a celebratory party song - it's an Ode to Sobriety warning the listener about how deadly heroin is."The Magic of Youth" is also upbeat, while it talks about two young lovers who grew apart and became a stripper and a drug addict.
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