Show Notes: metadiary.wordpress.com: "I went with my friend Darby, an obsessed Smashing Pumpkins fan. I was excited to attend this outdoor music festival to see the Pumpkins, Green Day, and, to a lesser extent, The Breeders. We were dropped off on Roosevelt Island and spent a sweaty day wandering around, among the crowd of alterna-kids, hippies, with a few punks and goths thrown in for good measure. I caught one or two songs from The Breeders set and then was completely blown away by Green Day, whose catchy pop-rock songs were the highlight of the day for me (little did I know/expect they would attain such mass popularity and go on to create a Broadway musical). I missed Nick Cave's set which I didn’t mind (this was many years before I would develop even the slightest fondness for his music) and enjoyed the Beastie Boys as much as I could for not being a big fan. Then it was a seemingly endless wait for Smashing Pumpkins, my then second-favorite band, to take the stage. They proved to be merely ok. Fuzzy guitar riffs blended into each other, a pre-bald Billy Corgan had less angsty charisma than I hoped for, and I was disappointed that they didn’t perform my favorite song of theirs, 'Mayonnaise.' It wasn’t long after that I discovered Nine Inch Nails, who ended up overshadowing the Pumpkins (in every sense of the word) in my personal music history. I’ll be honest, I didn’t find Lollapalooza all that special. I appreciated the communal anything-goes vibe Perry Farrell was going for when he created the annual event, but the heat and the density of people taught me outdoor festivals are not my thing. I felt trapped on that island, out of place, and a little overwhelmed. But it did give me bragging rights and a couple of cool points (well, maybe), since Lollapalooza was a big deal back then for music junkies."

Soundcheck: Westbound Sign