Lollapalooza didn't begin as the only annual rock festival that mattered. It was to be nothing more than Jane's Addiction's farewell tour, with, at Perry Farrell's behest, the added novelty of several genre-spanning guests, booths with political activists of all stripes, and burritos. It was only after that first tour bucked all logic to become an actual financial success that Lollapalooza became a brand. In came Pearl Jam, the freak shows, The Smashing Pumpkins, Courtney Love, a highly unpopular Ferris Wheel, Sonic Youth, and eventually, people like Metallica and Korn.
The alternative scene feels like the great forgotten era in rock history. Although it was the most potent period in my own "coming of age"--the only rock movement I fully embraced as it was happening (although I lived through the new wave era, I didn't fully appreciate it until the eighties were a fart in the breeze), there are scant references to it today. There are no jukebox musicals that feature the songs of Pavement, no Belly biopic. They won't even put the goddamn Pixies into the idiotic Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, even though nineties rock would have been nowhere without their influence.
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