August 5th 1992, Lollapalooza '92 at Molson Park in Barrie

 

Lollapalooza '92 was held at Molson Park in Barrie, and the shift from a seated venue where the first event was held really opened up the festival aspects of it, offering more opportunities to wander and explore the space and bringing it more in line with the European festivals that the tour was modeled after. It was a great day out and a great opportunity to see a bunch of bands, but for me it was all about Lush.

Their set was first, shortly after the gates opened up a little after noon. A hot sun beat down on a crowd that had gathered by the stage staking out spaces mostly for other bands later on in the lineup, but I was totally there for Lush and I thought that they played a perfect set of kaleidoscopic Shoegaze bliss. As great as their own set was though, it was a later guest spot with one of the other bands that really stands out for me as the highlight of the day, a single song that stands as one of my favorite concert moments ever. 

Ministry were the second headliner on the bill, and had been touring on the strength of the "Psalm 69" album, so they would have probably been at the peak of their mainstream popularity at the time with a sound that appealed to both the Goth/Industrial members of the crowd and the growing Grunge audience. They were putting on a pretty awesome show that included a lot of heavy and aggressive tracks, and around mid-way through the set they started the rolling bass rumble that opened So What and Al Jourgensen introduced Miki Berenyi and Emma Anderson from Lush, who took the stage and rocked out with the band for the rest of the song. Miki played a flying V guitar, thrashing out appropriately, and there were blazing lights, and there was fire, and the vocals weren't so much screams as they were rabid Banshee wails, and the guitar and drums formed this huge Wall of Noise, and right in the centre of all of it were Miki and Emma from Lush playing guitar and having the time of their lives making this apocalyptic noise with Ministry. 

It was sooooooo fuckin' awesome...

Miki and Emma and Ministry were locked in a pretty solid nightmare groove on that song for about ten minutes and then it was over, but those ten minutes remain among the best I've ever seen in all the concerts I've ever been to, a perfect example of where seemingly disparate musical elements blended seamlessly together to create a spectacular awesomeness that would have been previously unimaginable. 

I could tell you more about the show, I could tell you about other bands that played that day, about wandering through the Village, about the Jim Rose Circus Side Show, about lining up for pizza and bathrooms, about the rise of Grunge, and just the sheer joy of being in a field watching bands with thousands of other people, but really all of those moments pale by comparison to the sheer magnitude of Miki and Emma from Lush playing with Ministry. That is my single best memory of Lollapalooza '92, and it will stay with me forever...