LOLLAPALOSERS AND WINNERS: In 1993, politically charged...

LOLLAPALOSERS AND WINNERS: In 1993, politically charged L.A. band Rage Against the Machine wasn’t selling enough copies of its debut album to rank in the national Top 200 when it began its stint on the Lollapalooza tour.

Its stirring, show-stopping performances, however, were so strong that the summer trek is credited with pushing the album well past the million sales mark.

Has anyone generated that kind of sales momentum on this year’s Lollapalooza? It doesn’t look likely. The sales boosts, if any, are modest.

Of the mainstage acts on the ’95 tour, which rolled through town last week, few have put up impressive sales numbers. With the trek winding down this past week, Hole’s “Live Through This” sold a healthy 16,000 copies last week and is nearing the 1-million mark after more than a year in stores. But that’s not really a big jump from the 14,000 it sold the week before the tour started, and even band manager Peter Mensch says that it’s impossible to tell how much of the rise is attributable to other factors, including Courtney Love’s high media presence and the TV ads featuring Hole as part of a beer company promotion.

The biggest boost, surprisingly, has gone to the opening act, ska-punk revivalists the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, whose “Question the Answers” album, released last October, has doubled its weekly sales in the course of the tour, steadily rising from about 7,000 to last week’s 15,000.

The others have little or nothing to show.

The irony is that the one act that many observers feel could have made the greatest sales strides is the one who dropped out: Sinead O’Connor, who left after just eight dates, saying that she was pregnant and the strain of touring was too much.

“She really could have won people over again because she’s so amazing live,” says Megan McLaughlin, editor in chief of the alternative-rock weekly College Music Journal.