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A million and one cool, weird, interesting things are happening on the Lollapalooza tour this summer, but you'd hardly know it with Courthey Love on the bill. "I'm going to abuse you, 'cause you f---ing deserve it. you sh--s!" she said by way of a greeting, taking the stage at the Sandstone Amphitheater in Bonner Springs, Kans. She gave a little flip of her dress, giving the audience a peek at her black-bikinied behind. For the next hour or so, Love demonstrated why she is the tour's undeniable main attraction. She insulted the audience, insulted musician peers like Henry Rollins and Nine Inch Nails, used a racial slur, referred repeatedly to her yeast infection, threw bottles at the audience, threw her guitar at the audience, shoved a doll in her crotch and threw that at the audience--oh, year, and played some songs with her band, Hole. The music had a raw, sloppy beauty, but the crowd was more interested in whatever shocking thing Courthey would say next. "Melissa, I bet if you showed them your tits they'd get really excited," Love goaded her bassist, Melissa Auf der Maur, as if one bad girl in the group weren't enough. How on earth can the rest of the line-up-including Sincad O'Conner, Sonic Youth and Cypress Hill--compete with that?
Lollapalooza '95, which began July 4 and ends Aug. 18, is struggling not to become The Courtney Show. But there's simply too much other good stuff going on to ignore. The other bands on the main stage are no slouches when it comes to punk fury and organized chaos. At Bonner Springs, David Yow of the gnarled-metal band Jesus Lizard must have been feeling the day's 90-plus-degree heat: first he unbuttoned his shirt, then he took off his shirt, then he unzipped his pants, then he let his pants dangle X-ratedly from his hips. Sincad O'Conner set a severely un-summertime tone with her gorgeous dirges about Irish potato famine and child abuse. Pro-pot rappers Cypress Hill bounded about in front of a giant gold inflatable Buddha. Languid rockers Pavement played slippery, psychedelic pop songs about disenchantment.
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But even offstage, Courtney seems to be casting a pall. On opening day in George, Wash., headliners Sonic Youth had invited feminist rocker and riot grrrl Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill to watch their set from the wings. Courtney marched up to Hanna, flicked a cigarette at her and punched her in the face. Hanna has filed an assault complaint; Love's spokesperson did not return calls. Steve Shelley, Sonic Youth's drummer, says it's like being on tour with Axl Rose. "It's a soap opera," he says. "There's a new drama every day. We try and play our shows and not get too caught up in it."
Inward rage: If any band can overcome the situation, it's Sonic Youth. Following Hole on-stage in Bonner Springs, Sonic Youth put on almost the exact opposite kind of show. Where Love hounded and chided her fans, Sonic Youth simply thanked theirs; where Love hurled most of her rage outward, Sonic Youth funneled theirs back into long, improvised jams and ecstatic reveries of noise. By the time they got to their one true anthem, a song from 1988 called "Teen Age Riot," more than half the crowd had left. But that was OK. The ones who stayed got great music, and they deserved that a lot more than abuse.
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