‘Lollapalooza’: A Smashing Start : THE SCENE

Backstage at “Lollapalooza ‘94,” Nick Cave looks aggravated and hot after playing one of the most potent sets of the long afternoon.

The seminal rock artist’s mustard-yellow shirt and creased brown ’60 slacks are wilted from the 100-plus-degree heat and hang limp on his wiry frame.

Cave is characteristically unhappy with his performance, but even more so with the audience’s reaction.

“To tell you the truth, I thought it was kind of frightening,” he says from behind his mirrored shades inside his dressing room.

“I just kept looking out and thinking I saw giant question marks over everyone’s head. They looked utterly confused,” he said of the reaction to his experimental Gothic music.

Cave’s feelings underscore the contradictions many fans and musicians have expressed about “Lollapalooza” since it was launched in 1991 with the mission of presenting the best of the alternative rock world to an audience beyond the club and small hall circuit.

Filling the gap between the weird and the comfortable is a difficult task. “Lollapalooza’s” challenge is to sell tickets without selling out its integrity by booking acts that are too safe.

Balancing what’s genuinely on the edge and what sells is the crux of a continuing debate among alternative rock fans. Last summer’s lineup, headed by Alice in Chains and Primus, was especially criticized for its mainly straight-ahead male rock tone.

Reacting to that criticism, organizers have come up with a more dynamic lineup this year plus other special features.

Much of that eclecticism now continues to be centered on a second stage, but Thursday it attracted only a handful of people who stood listlessly.

Cocked heads watched the fringe bands on the stage--ranging from campy clamor of the Frogs to the dissonant assault of the Flaming Lips--in passing, as if the groups were participants in an inexplicable freak show.

Besides the second stage, “Lollapalooza ‘94” offered plenty in its Mind Field (‘Palooza-speak for everything away from the main stage).

In the “Electric Carnival,” a colorful tent full of interactive television sets and on-line computers, ‘Paloozians manipulated images and sound into surreal forms.

“At first I was skeptical,” admits Ashley Salisbury, 19. “I first thought CD-ROM was just like an advanced Sega game, or maybe something only someone trained and professional could create on. But there were those tools, right there for me, totally accessible.”

At a new third stage called the “Revival Tent,” spoken-word artists performed and onlookers were invited to join in “Oprapalooza,” an open microphone session. The small platform that served as the stage got off to a bumpy start when few people in the tent paid any attention to pontificating poets.

Grumbled one poet: “I think these people just came in here to beat the heat.”

The intense heat that drove fans into the tents and under hoses could have contributed to the crowd’s seeming disinterest in anything musically demanding.

Cave nodded at the suggestion:

“Our music is quite complicated and takes a lot of concentration. People can’t really be expected to do that in the blazing sun.”

He paused, then offered a more hopeful slant as he looked forward to the rest of the summer tour.

“I can’t imagine doing this for another 30 shows, but I do like the collaboration between the groups, and it’s open for everyone to do their thing,” he said, adding that he hoped audiences would follow suit, “ ‘cause that’s when things become quite beautiful and strange.”

Even if it wasn’t overtly apparent that ‘Paloozians were picking up on new bands or ideas, it did happen on at least a small scale.

Ryan Rogozzine, 22, who drove four hours to get here, discovered on the second stage the Verve, a British band that plays abstract, swirling pop.

“They seemed pretty good. I got my ears open to them. I also got into the Beastie Boys, and wasn’t really a fan before.”