SP Show Reviews


"Pumpkins smooth Lollapalooza's rough edges"
Chicago Lollapalooza show review
Southtown Economist
(Thanks to Leigh Doran typing this out)

Southtown Economist – July 16, 1994 By Southtown Economist staff writer Ted Cox

The Smashing Pumpkins did the unthinkable Friday night. They took the Lollapalooza audience at the World Music Theatre and turned it into a normal, everyday arena-rock crowd.

It wasn't that the Pumpkins were bad. In fact, the singer-guitarist Billy Corgan dressed in a natty black suit and red shirt, and with the group's new light show, complete with strobes and dry-ice fog, the Pumpkins were the picture of professionalism.

That's what made them the proper headliner for this, the smoothest and most well-organized Lollapalooza in the four years of the alternative-rock music festival. But there are tricks to this professionalism business that are best left unmastered.

The audience is a large part of the show at Lollapalooza. The crowd is not a spectator so much as an active participant. At any given time, while a band is playing, there are kids milling around in the Mindfield, with it's virtual reality games and its visual dating service, there are kids screaming and jumping in their seats and there are kids forming a mosh pit on the lawn.

But a few songs into the Pumpkins' set, the audience was entranced, either in empathy for the Pumpkins' tortured tales of teen angst or benumbed by their big, churning guitar sound. The crowd was watching the show instead of participating in it - fine, in and of itself, but a bit conventional considering what had come before.

The Beastie Boys are nowhere near the Pumpkins' equals as musicians, but with their anthemic hardcore rap they incited the crowd to its wildest antics. When they encored with their current hit single, "Sabotage," the audience went into paroxysms. A whirling dervish of kicked-up dust rose from the lawn.

George Clinton and the P-Funk All-Stars had been criticized earlier in the tour for starting slowly. The typical hour-long Lollapalooza set seemed to stifle the Clinton crew. But here Clinton opened by jumping into the crowd on the first song. Overall, the set was not very well paced, but it finished strong with "Flashlight" and "Atomic Dog," and Clinton presided over the scene with serene panache.

The Breeders were gloriously sloppy, and the rap group A Tribe Called Quest had the crowd hopping throughout its 40-minute set.

Lollapalooza returns to World Music Theatre in Tinley Park today, with the doors opening at noon and music starting at 1 p.m.

The all-woman New York hip-hop garage band Luscious Jackson created the stir of the festival, with a fetching but sophisticated performance on the second stage, a smaller venue for more obscure groups.

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