For a quick overview of who's who in mainstream rock in 1995, the place to be over the weekend was the Rosemont Horizon. The occasion was an eight-act, seven-hour concert played out before a packed house of mostly well-scrubbed teenagers; hundreds of feverent, stripped-to-the-waist moshers; and a handful of slightly dazed-looking chaperones accompanying the family's pre-pubescent punk rockers in waiting.
The verdict, judging by a highly subjective scream-o-meter ranking, is that silverchair and [note from sarah: ICK!!! I h8 her!] Alanis Morissette are clearly the acts of the moment. Both were virtual unknowns six months ago who have been swept into the commercial stratosphere by a variety of factors, not the least of which is the relentless backing of a new breed of powerful rock radio stations suck as WKQX-FM 101.1, the sponsor of the charity concert....
The three teenagers who make up silverchair, on school holiday from Australia, blatantly borrow riffs from their collection of Pearl Jam and Helmet CD's, sing mournfully about terrible events they see on television and top it off with the blond, blue-eyed poster-boy looks of singer Daniel Johns.
The audience sang along to anthems such as "Tomorrow", "Pure Massacre" and "Suicidal Dream", which the 16-yar-old Johns delivered in an astonishingly gruff and assured tenor that belied his youth. Already the band has a knack for threading strong melodies through dark, heavy riffs that mutated into thrashy gallops.
The trio also showed a tendency toward progressive-rock noodling, the kind of hard, fast complexity
that turned Rush into a 1970's favorite at hockey rinks all around the world. Though
hardly original, the three teens projected a shy, workmanlike demeanor, and acted as though they were earnestly
trying to please their peers rather than posturing like rock stars....