Live Reviews

The 40 greatest concerts in Boston history: 4

Lollapalooza 1992 | Great Woods | August 7, 1992

By PHOENIX STAFF | October 25, 2006

concerts_4

Lotta-palooza: This year’s model offers much more than music. By Robert Moses

Ministry rocks Lollapalooza

By 1992, the alternative revolution had fully set in and underground culture was mixing with the mainstream in often explosive ways. As a measure of just how quickly things were moving, Pearl Jam had been booked on the bottom end of the bill, as one of the de facto opening bands. But by the time they got to Boston, their debut album, Ten (Epic), was lodged at the top of the charts and they had singles in heavy rotation on radio and MTV. “Evenflow,” with its crowd-surfing scene, may have been “Teen Spirit Jr.,” but together those videos introduced a whole new way of expressing oneself at a concert to a mainstream audience. At what was then still Great Woods, the results were both horrifying, amazing, and beautiful; as it rained up in the grasslands surrounding the seated areas the crowd started tearing up the sod, playing toss with muddy clods of grass, and tearing down wooden fences to create massive bonfires. As the sun went down, and a menacing Ministry took the stage blasting the crowd with a triple-fisted wall of guitars, you were torn between watching Al Jorgenson on stage or turning around to stare at the grasslands, where people were dancing around bonfires as if involved in some tribal ritual. By the time Red Hot Chili Peppers began their set, the sod throwing had gotten out of hand. You knew this was going to be a bad thing for alternative music in Boston (indeed, Lollapalooza was exiled to a barren airstrip in Rhode Island for the next several years.

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