‘Blew my Mind’ and other early Lollapalooza memories
(Above, Perry Farrell tells you how you can win tickets to this year’s Lollapalooza by becoming a KCRW member.) All that got us thinking… Oh, to be a festival goer…
By Caitlin Shamberg • • 1 min read(Above, Perry Farrell tells you how you can win tickets to this year’s Lollapalooza by becoming a KCRW member.)
All that got us thinking… Oh, to be a festival goer in the ’90s! You saved up your $25 to buy a Lollapalooza ticket and paged all your friends to tell them to go too. You shopped at thrift stores, and saw “NIN in a stage of fog.” Or maybe you were a sophomore in high school and there was “no effing way” your parents would let you cut class.
It’s been 25 years since Perry Farrell thought up Lollapalooza – a Woodstock for the 90s. Of course things have changed, so we asked you for some early festival memories and stories. And you delivered!
On Facebook,Paulina Raspe remembered going to Lollapalooza in 1992: “RHCP headlined, it was one day, it was affordable (ticket, drinks & food), not pretentious, people loved the music and the artist not just the ‘scene.'”
Liz Tucker Bloomberg was a freshman in high school the first year of Lollapalooza: “All the older kids were talking about how awesome it was and I was intrigued. That year I started going to several shows and sophomore year I went to my first Lollapalooza, followed by a few more the years to come. Including Chicago 5 years ago with Jane’s Addiction.”
Becca Connelly remembers: “That circus thing where guys hung weights from their sensitive bits… A very young, very gorgeous Chris Cornell…”
Garth Hanson saw NIN in “a stage of fog as one of the early bands at the Irvine Amp. Blew my mind.”
Lisa French said she desperately wanted to go to Lollapalooza in 1991, but “I was a sophomore in high school and the shows were on Thursday and Friday of our first week of classes, so no effing way were my parents gonna let me go. I was insanely jealous of all the empty desks on those days. I wanted to see Jane’s Addiction, Siouxsie, Violent Femmes so bad I could taste it.
“Then, 1994 rolled around and I done with high school, had my own car and a job, so I got to go to Lollapalooza finally! Nineteen-year-old me was STOKED. I went alone but ran into people I knew; they took me to the side stage to see Flaming Lips and it was awesome. I wish I could remember more of the experience, I just know that I was beaming with joy the whole time.”
Do You Remember Lollapalooza of the ‘90s? Tell us about it. https://t.co/4edf6eyj6npic.twitter.com/lIf7V8AGGv
— KCRW (@kcrw) April 5, 2016