HAPPY CAMPERS?: Lollapalooza founder Perry Farrell has...

HAPPY CAMPERS?: Lollapalooza founder Perry Farrell has always said that he likes to think of the annual tour lineup as something of a chemistry experiment--put things together and see what happens.

So far the ’95 edition has been a bang, and to the surprise of few the sparks have come from Courtney Love, who didn’t get through the trek’s first day before she got into a fistfight, and Sinead O’Connor, who announced that she was pregnant and departed the tour after just eight shows.

Love was charged last week with assault in the fourth degree in Grant County, Wash., site of the first Lollapalooza show, in connection with an incident involving Bikini Kill singer Kathleen Hanna. The charge is a gross misdemeanor, meaning that the sentence carries a maximum of a year in the county jail and a $1,000 fine. Love is to appear at an arraignment Aug. 14 in Ephrata, Wash.

Love had no official comment upon the filing of the charges, but she had plenty to say from the safety of her on-line venue.

It all started when Love found herself standing next to Hanna on the side of the stage during Sonic Youth’s set on the tour’s opening day at the Gorge Amphitheater in Washington state.

Love and Hanna have long been on the outs, and though accounts of what actually transpired differ, the end result was that, as Love put it in her America Online diary, “my fist-ahhhhh-met her rathead and it was orgasmic.” Throughout her posting, she refers to Hanna only as Ratface.

In his own AOL entries, Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore, once a close friend of Love’s, never refers to Love by name, icily calling her “the singer from Hole.” He notes that Hanna is still a friend of his and wife Kim Gordon’s, but that “for reasons I’m totally disinterested in,” Love “hates” Hanna.