Lollapalooza is one of the biggest music festivals and it attracts big names of the music indrusty to perform.
Do you know everything about it? If no, so let’s dive into some facts about this music event!
- Lollapalooza is an annual 4-day music festival based in Chicago, Illinois at Grant Park
- Performances include but are not limited to alternative rock, heavy metal, punk rock, hip hop, and electronic music
- Lollapalooza has also provided a platform for non-profit and political groups and various visual artists
- The music festival hosts more than 160,000 people each year
- Conceived and created in 1991 by Jane’s Addiction singer Perry Farrell as a farewell tour for his band
- Lollapalooza ran annually until 1997
- It was revived in 2003
- From its inception through 1997 and its revival in 2003, the festival toured North America
- In 2004, the festival organizers decided to expand the dates to two days per city
- But poor ticket sales forced the 2004 tour to be cancelled
- In 2005, Farrell and the William Morris Agency partnered with Austin, Texas based company Capital Sports Entertainment
- They retooled it into its current format as a weekend destination festival in Chicago at Grant Park
- In 2014, Live Nation Entertainment bought a controlling interest in C3 Presents
- In 2010 it was announced that Lollapalooza would debut outside the United States
- With a branch of the festival staged in Chile’s capital Santiago on April 2- 3, 2011
- Where they partnered up with Santiago-based company Lotus
- In 2011, the company Geo Events confirmed the Brazilian version of the event
- Which was held at the Jockey Club in São Paulo on 7 and 8 April 2012
- In September 2013, Buenos Aires was selected as the third Lollapalooza in South America, starting on April 2014
- And in November 2014, the first European Lollapalooza was announced
- Which was held at the former Tempelhof Airport in Berlin
- The word or “lallapaloosa” dates from a late 19th-/early 20th-century American idiomatic phrase
- Its meaning is “an extraordinary or unusual thing, person, or event; an exceptional example or instance.”
- It sometimes alternatively spelled and pronounced as lollapalootza or lalapaloosa
- Its earliest known use was in 1896
- In time the term also came to refer to a large lollipop
- Farrell, searching for a name for his festival, liked the euphonious quality of the by-then-antiquated term upon hearing it in a Three Stooges short film
- Paying homage to the term’s double meaning, a character in the festival’s original logo holds one of the lollipops
- The word has also caused a slang suffix to appear in event-planning circles
- As well as in news and opinion shows that is used synonymously with other suffixes like “a-go-go”, “o-rama”, etc
- The suffix “(a)palooza” is often used to imply that an entire event or crowd was made over that term
- Inspired by events such as Britain’s Reading Festival, Farrell, Ted Gardner, Don Muller, and Marc Geiger conceived the festival in 1990
- As a farewell for Farrell’s band Jane’s Addiction
- Previous festivals such as Woodstock, A Gathering of the Tribes and the US Festival, which were one-time events held at single venues
- Lollapalooza toured across the United States and Canada from mid-July until late August 1991
- The inaugural lineup was made up of artists from alternative rock, industrial music and rap
- Another key concept was the inclusion of nonmusical features
- Performers such as the Jim Rose Circus Side Show, an alternative freak show
- And the Shaolin monks stretched the boundaries of rock culture
- There was a tent for display of art pieces, virtual reality games, and information tables for political and environmental non-profit groups, promoting counter-culture and political awareness
