Pitchfork

Behold an era of Tibetan chanting, freakshows, and "This is not a Fugazi t-shirt" t-shirts. Porno for Pyros made great schleps, Rage Against the Machine killed fascists, and Soundgarden licked the big one. Behold the 1990s. Behold Lollapalooza. On Monday, DJ Peretz took a break from his busy bar mitzvah schedule to gather the first four bands he heard on KROQ for a press conference at Amoeba Records in Los Angeles, California. Members of Jane's Addiction, Queens of the Stone Age, Incubus, and Audioslave announced that they will tour their crap around the country this summer to audiences of goateed boys, ages 21 to 35.

Lollapalooza 2003 will be the eighth festival since 1991 and the first since Metallica was last called "alterna-"anything in 1997. The rock groups will also be joined by second-tier revival hip-hoppers Jurassic 5 and representatives from A&R; slave guitarist Tom Morello's advocacy group Axis of Justice. Morello commented that "in today's music climate, which I think is really hurting, it's important for Lollapalooza to reemerge and establish itself. When Lollapalooza first emerged, it completely changed the face of popular music. It took a lot of cutting-edge bands and forged them into a community that changed music in America." Apparently, that community consists of no one from outside of California and no women, which is, interestingly, also the audience demographic of TV's Blind Date.

Festival organizer Perry Farrell has indicated that Lollapalooza's second-stage acts will be named during the coming weeks, along with a firm tour schedule that will include Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Hartford, Holmdel, Houston, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Miami, Milwaukee, New York, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Raleigh, St. Louis, San Diego, San Francisco, Toronto, Virginia Beach, and Washington, DC. How great would it be if these guys actually booked the tour alphabetically by city name?

This, of course, all comes just in time for the release of Jane's Addiction's new album, Hypersonic, which was produced by Pink Floyd/Kiss/Aerosmith knob-twiddler Bob Ezrin, and is due out late this Spring on Warner.