Show Notes: Incomplete setlist

"Lollapalooza is an alternative rock roadshow that mutates as it travels. On Saturday at the very pungent Downing Stadium on Randalls Island (there's a sewage treatment plant nearby), 6 of the 12 bands that performed at the tour's opening concert in Las Vegas, NV, a month ago had been replaced. On the main stage, Green Day took the Japanese band the Boredoms' slot opening for the Lollapalooza stalwarts the Smashing Pumpkins, the Beastie Boys, George Clinton, A Tribe Called Quest, Nick Cave and L7. On the second stage, all five bands were new additions, and the music ranged from rap to jazz to country to rock. 'This looks like arena rock,' the Green Day singer Billie Joe complained during the band's midday set. The young California trio, which is leading a commercial renaissance of punk rock, spent much of its show sending up classic-rock cliches by asking the audience to do the wave, raise its lighters and pretend it was at Woodstock. Though three other main-stage bands made similar references, Green Day expressed the contradictions of successful alternative rock best when it brought members of the audience on stage and instructed them to sing hackneyed 80's anthems like 'Eye of the Tiger' and 'We're Not Gonna Take It'. When the Boredoms opened Lollapalooza, they prepared the audience for the festival's mind-opening atmosphere with incorrigible noise. Green Day, however, played accessible pop-punk songs that prepared the audience for fun. Its lyrics about being bored, unemployed, apathetic and disillusioned embraced the stereotypes that plague the Lollapalooza generation."