Wordsapalooza

Photo: Gallay/Getty

Lollapalooza kicks off today in Chicago's Grant Park. The festival has existed in one form or another since 1991, when it originally launched as a touring event to celebrate the final Jane's Addiction tour (they've reunited several times since, but that's beside the point). To me, the most remarkable thing about the legacy of Lollapalooza is the fact that the suffix "palooza" has become an accepted modifier in the English language. It probably happens more often than you notice. As I was leaving the house this morning to catch my flight to the Windy City, I heard an anchor on CNN say "campaign-a-palooza" in reference to the latest exchanges between Barack Obama and John McCain. Barring the fact that "campaign-a-palooza" doesn't make any sense, the comment likely went unnoticed by most of the populus. There are plenty of parodies out there (notably Al Yankovic's album Alapalooza and The Simpsons' "Alterna-palooza"), but when the mall by my house opened in 1996, it was called Mallapalooza. A Google search for the word "palooza" turns up over one million hits as broad as "Bowl-A-Palooza" (a college football site,) "Learn-A-Palooza" (a teaching festival) and "Pet Palooza" (a four legged friends-related event). "Palooza became the replacement for "Stock" in the rock and roll lexicon.

In essence, this website exists because of Farrell. Prior to Lollapalooza, the idea of a touring festival was foreign, especially to American audiences. Once the first and second tours made it big, there was a deluge of treks that all followed the same formula: a dozen plus acts spread across several stages, typically revolving around a genre or an idea and augmented with art installations and social causes. Lollapalooza spawned H.O.R.D.E., Lillith Fair and Ozzfest, among others. In the modern era, with festivals taking more of the Eurpoean approach as multi-day destination events, Lollapalooza stands as the godfather of them all. Today it seems strange that nobody thought of putting a whole bunch of bands together before Perry Ferrell did it, but outside of events like Live Aid, they didn't exist in the U.S. Along with "Ocean Song" and the cover of the Satellite Party album, Lollapalooza (along with "palooza") is Ferrell's greatest legacy. -- KYLE ANDERSON