I mean with music heavyweights such as the Polymorphic Spree and the String Cheese Incident, who couldn’t smell ticket box office success? How could the visual stimulation of the Flaming Lips, or the recent smashing mainstream success of Sonic Youth bring in the masses? What is wrong with people?

All right, let’s cut the crap, and get down to business…

This year, Lollapalooza went with its most experimental lineup since the tour’s 1991 inception. With the usual one day event turned into two full days, the tour was scaled to resemble a typical European festival, that traveled around the U.S. There is nothing wrong with being experimental, but what happened this year was nothing short of stupidity on the organizers’ side.

First off, you don’t, let me repeat this, you DO NOT make people like Morrissey or String Cheese Incident headliners (yes folks, these were your headliners) unless you play a 1,500 seat venue. Lollapalooza was playing to 15,000 seat venues. Logic did win out though with ticket buyers who were tired of paying 60 bucks and up (rising ticket prices and cancelled tours will be a future AHY column, but it’s not time to tell that story yet) to see bands and stayed away from Lollapalooza like I stay away from Disney movies.

Even though the local venue, DTE Energy Theatre, claimed that sales were “average and in-line” with last year sales, yours truly can see through the lies of the corporate machine and tell you the truth. Ticket sales were absolutely horrible for the two Detroit shows for August 2 and 3. In fact, I bought a ticket on June 11, nearly one month after the show went on sale. My ticket was the center section, Row Y, seat 16. By my experience working at DTE (Pine Knob, whatever you want to call it) for four summers, I knew exactly where that seat was.

Let me tell you something, by getting a seat that close meant about 3,000 tickets had been sold. I was halfway into the pavilion and I bought my tickets a month after they went on sale. That has disaster spelled all over it. Pavilion and lawn tickets were the same exact price, so it’s a safe bet to assume NO ONE had bought lawn tickets yet. Reports of sales for the other day were about the same. So that 6,000 out of a possible 30,000 seats for the two day festival were sold. Wow! Patrick Swayze could have sang those songs from “Dirty Dancing” on a tour, and probably sold more tickets.

“Average and In-Line” with last year’s sales? Even though I paid sixty-five bucks for a Lollapalooza ticket last year, that show was packed at about 500 people short of a sellout. Last year’s lineup rocked pretty well with Audioslave, Queens of the Stone Age, and Jane’s Addiction. And if you remember, last year’s Lollapalooza was seen by the industry as “barely successful” and would probably need a big lineup to save itself from purgatory.

Ah, well, it didn’t. Hip-hop fans were dissatisfied when Ludacris’ name was mentioned as an early rumor, only to see no hip-hop groups on the bill. People thought of a name like The Cure, or something more recent to anchor the bill, but we got Morrissey and his moping instead. Even though I am not a fan, the only bands that could have fit with Lollapalooza lineups of the past were up and comers Modest Mouse and Von Bondies. And don’t say the Pixies are there either, because they were only playing the New York show.

Lollapalooza is shelved for this year, and is the latest in a weekly string of tour cancellations. Even the once mighty OzzFest is suffering lagging ticket sales, you know sales are bad when OzzFest can’t even sell out one night at DTE, but Daryl Hall and John Oates are selling well, go f-in’ figure.

Will Lollapalooza return again on day and will organizer Perry “King Drugged Out Hippie” Farrell keep his promise of the tour “coming back like the Phoenix”? Let me see, Farrell said the same thing in 2000, 2001, and 2002. My guess is Perry is coming back, but Lollapalooza has played its last encore.

Art Michalski thinks Mary-Kate Olsen’s eating disorder is related to the box office destruction of “New York Minute”; that Morrissey needed to keep his hiatus going for the sake of the world; and that his credit card will benefit from the refund for Lollapalooza, and going to Dave Chappelle instead. If you still have your Olsen twins countdown going or think that the Polymorphic Spree are the greatest thing since Tori Spelling’s acting career, send him your love at arthatesyou@detroitbuzz.com.