Lollapalooza Was Hot, And `Hedda' Is Cool

CONCERT REVIEW

Lollapalooza at the Gorge in George, Grant County, Saturday. Main stage acts were Rage Against the Machine, Babes in Toyland, Front 242, Arrested Development, Fishbone, Dinosaur Jr., Alice in Chains and Primus. ----------------------------------

GEORGE, Grant County - By the time Alice in Chains reached the stage, Jason Moran was flat out Lollapalooza'd.

He had driven to the Gorge at George from Spokane with two friends. He had survived the Lollapalooza-sized traffic jams caused by squeezing 25,000 people onto two two-laned roads, he had danced, swayed and sweltered in the sun through sets by six bands in as many hours, and he looked it. His sneakers were a dusty mess, his shirt was tied around his waist. Even in the fading evening light, his skin glowed bright red. As he gulped and splashed water on his face.

Moran delivered his verdict: "Awesome."

Like a tentless circus with countless rings, Lollapalooza blew into Grant County Saturday for the summer's biggest festival of rock, rap and general weirdness. There were eight bands on the main stage, a smaller stage with bands like Mercury Rev and Tool, food booths and vendors of all description and oddities like the Spaceball, a gyroscoping ride guaranteed to test any stomach.

Saturday's was the second show on the mammoth tour, the first in the U.S. The previous night, Lollapalooza had set down in Vancouver, B.C. Yesterday, the show moved on to Portland. There may have been a few fans with the fortitude to catch all three, but, for most, one day was a summer's worth of music.

In the full heat of a blazing Eastern Washington afternoon, the bands Rage Against the Machine, Babes in Toyland and Front 242 started things off on the festival's main stage. When Arrested Development, the Grammy-winning rap band, took the stage a little after 5 p.m., hundreds of fans had crammed themselves between the fence and a line of portable toilets, desperate for the meager shade.

The Forum tent, where acid-guru Timothy Leary and representatives from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals held debates, doubled as a refuge for the sun-drenched. The concert staff hosed down the over-heated on the sidelines, and bouncers at the front of the stage poured water over the heads and into the upheld cups of those who pressed forward.

Arrested Development got the crowd moving and the chaotic punk-funk band Fishbone turned the moshing up a notch. But the crowd, surfeited by sun and music, was generally content to sit on blankets in the grass or shuffle in place. A knot of hard-core moshers in the front was felt more than seen - their feet raised a cloud of dust all out of proportion to their numbers, the cloud rolling back over the audience and covering everyone in a fine layer of grit.

After Fishbone, Dinosaur Jr. delivered a set of high-volume music complete with J. Mascis' trademark wash of distorted guitar frenzies. Dinosaur Jr. kept the bouncers at the front of the stage busy with the waves of bodies now being pushed over the barricade. But for this crowd of mostly Washingtonians, the climax of the show was the performance by home-state heroes Alice in Chains.

Alice in Chains came on as night settled over the Columbia River Gorge behind the main stage. Lead singer Layne Staley crouched at the edge of the giant stage, singing in the fierce, impassioned voice that makes him one of hard rock's great singers. Other singers may have better voices, but Staley makes himself a conduit for the dark energy that lies at the core of Alice in Chains' songs.

The crowd thinned after Alice in Chains, leaving only the diehards to hear Primus. Led by the superhuman bass playing of Les Claypool, Primus maps musical territory few bands have thought to visit, a kind of 21st century funk.

Primus' unpredictable explorations were a fitting cap to a day in which fans did more than just listen to music: They came, they saw, they Lollapalooza'd.