State of the Loud Art : The Heart and Soul of Lollapalooza Plays Out on the Satellite Stages

Lollapalooza was born with ideals, but five years later, it’s gotten over it. Lollapalooza ’96 was just another rock ‘n’ roll star trek, committed to going nowhere boldly, but to the bank, surely.

Founder Perry Farrell’s early talk of Lollapalooza as a marketplace for ideas and a common gathering ground for varied musical viewpoints has been confirmed as so much starry-eyed dreaming. Lollapalooza ‘96, with which Farrell was not associated, was just another Big Rock Show--no more, no less--and it followed the imperatives of all big shows: the biggest star bang to generate the biggest box office buck.

Heavy metal headliner Metallica upheld its end of the bargain Saturday as the tour began its concluding, two-day stop at Irvine Meadows. It filled the seats--along with Soundgarden, a strong, second-billed hard rock compatriot--and served up a performance that was state of the loud art.

Diversity? Although Lollapalooza had featured some female-led acts and rappers on earlier legs of the tour, its arrival in many-hued Southern California found the 10-hour, 18-band bill with exactly two musicians who weren’t white males--a side singer in Psychotica, the main-stage opener, and the black Scottish front man of Long Fin Killie, a rock band on the third stage.

In an era of burgeoning Rock en Espanol, strong female rockers everywhere, and hip-hop as a leading force, that’s a pathetic statement for an enterprise with Lollapalooza’s philosophical pedigree.

The satellite stages--the one enduring remnant from Lollapalooza’s idealistic infancy--afforded the most forward-looking and hopeful developments on a day when the main stage music generally was resistant to change (besides metal, the main stage featured the punk of the Ramones and Rancid and main-line alt-rock in Devo and Screaming Trees).

Set up side-by-side in a remote parking lot (divided only by a--what else?--merchandising stand) the second and third stages provided some freedom of choice, as Devo would say. The best bands there--Soul Coughing, Satchel, Varnaline and Long Fin Killie--couldn’t have been more unlike the main stage fare.

Playing to perhaps 200 fans opposite Devo and Soundgarden, New York’s Soul Coughing translated the strength of its new album, “Irresistible Bliss,” to the stage with aplomb. The whole pastiche of elements came through with clarity and immediacy: crisp funk grooves and hip-hop catch-phrasemaking of the highest order, strong alt-rock hooks and a rich array of keyboard samples that were not decorations but an integral part of the musical substance.

The ringleader was singer-guitarist M. Doughty, whose bopping, gesticulating and grainy-voiced sing-speak were full of humor, but also implied an onrush of urban craziness that his ironic detachment couldn’t entirely fend off.

Satchel has Seattle grunge connections (front man Shawn Smith also sings in the Pearl Jam offshoot, Brad) but its inspiration lays in Southern R&B.; Stocky, bearded and fedora-topped, Smith’s look called to mind Lowell George, the original Little Feat singer, and much of his band’s ballad-heavy, piano-based music brought to mind such other ‘70s rock-soul heroes as Free and Leon Russell.

Smith’s thin, fragile voice and balky falsetto couldn’t match up with the best of that earlier brigade, but the simple grace of Satchel’s melodies and the emotional directness of its idealistic lyrics were immediately winning. Some throaty, ‘90s-style guitar distortion added an up-to-date element. (So did the band’s one serious misstep--the use of a canned backing track that took all the life out of its final song.)

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Another treat was the rough but sensitive, frequently countrified rock of Varnaline, a trio from New York who played to about a dozen people. With echoes of Wilco, Neil Young and Television, the band was able to project the deep inward quality of its songs with garage-rocking impact.

Long Fin Killie was impressive, too, as Luke Sutherland’s high, airy vocals rode atop a compulsive, angular, rhythmically thrusting attack that called to mind such prog-rockers as King Crimson and Gentle Giant. The Scots were daring, intense and instrumentally sharp, albeit a bit monolithic in mood and melody.

The second stage had its noise-bringers too. The Melvins, forefathers of Seattle grunge, operated under the notion that no riff can be too heavy, no beat too pounding, no feedback onslaught too abrasive. It worked for a while, notably during the dark, ferocious “The Bloat.” Then it grew as indulgent as Iron Butterfly.

The Cows, from Minneapolis, spent most of their show horsing around with salacious theatrics. Shannon Selberg, a sailor-suited scamp, showed such unusual talents as an ability to blow noisy free-jazz blasts on two trumpets at once, or to sing just like an apoplectic Donald Duck. But one number, the deliciously brutal “The Warden,” captured the grimy glory of the band at its intensely rocking best.

Sponge, from Detroit, drew a big, moshing crowd, but all it had to offer was a facility with catchy hooks to go with its derivative mix of mainstream alternative styles and silvery-suited singer Vinnie Dombroski’s empty glam-rocker gestures. His pompous song intros revealed a man on a star trip, without the substance to back it up.

Watching Soundgarden pound through a high-impact set, one wondered why as gifted a singer as Chris Cornell hasn’t tried more to step out of the shadow of his big influence, Robert Plant. But on such peaks as “Outshined,” all that mattered was the urgency that Soundgarden brought to the deep, deep blues played on a big, big scale.

The loopy humor of bassist Ben Shepherd’s stage rambles and Kim Thayil’s occasional heraldic affirmations on guitar avoided a total dark wallow. But the live set didn’t emphasize the widening reach of Soundgarden’s latest album, “Down on the Upside.”

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Facing an audience that he couldn’t count on to be entirely on Metallica’s side, front man James Hetfield declared with amiable defiance that “we like to play heavy music.” By that point, early in a 100-minute closing set, the comment had been made superfluous by the scalp-massage applied by Lars Ulrich’s bass drums and Jason Newsted’s barrage of bass guitar.

And as if that wasn’t brain-rattling enough, Metallica offered a long, smoke-and-pyrotechnic-explosives reenactment-with-taped-effects of the battle of Verdun as a prelude to its horrific soldier’s tale, “One.” Now we know something about shell shock.

The influential band showed its true mettle down the home stretch, when it turned to more varied and melodic recent material that sets aside Metallica’s fundamental pounding wrath to make sonic space for Kirk Hammett’s spooky, surf-noir reverb guitar (“Until It Sleeps”), Hetfield’s proud delight in the freedom of the road (“Wherever I May Roam”), and the tenderness of the graceful ballad “Nothing Else Matters.”

Metallica may have been a conservative choice for a Lollapalooza headliner, but clearly it isn’t falling into the trap of creative stasis.

Celebrating Hetfield’s birthday, the band encored with a guest vocal appearance by Motorhead’s singer, Lemmy, an icon to lovers of intelligent, stripped-down metal, followed by a cream-pie assault on the birthday boy. Big doings to end a Big Rock Show.