merly famous bands performing on two stages (a
feature present since 1992), including: Devo, Snoop
Doggy Dogg, Porno for Pyros, Julian and Damian
Marley, and Beck.
Impact Lollapalooza marked the first time an
American music festival was run as a concert tour.
With roughly a dozen acts representing the most
cutting-edge performers of the time, Lollapalooza
arguably picked up where MTV stopped.
Further Reading
Kendall, Gavin. “Pop Music: Authenticity, Creativity
and Technology.”Social Alternatives 18 (April,
1999): 25-28. Explores the relationship between a
time period’s existing technologies and the re-
sulting pop music creativity.
Van Zandt, Steven. “Garage Rock.”Billboard 119
(June, 2007): 24. Details the methods by which
the music industry and musicians support pro-
grams that benefit the environment.
White, Timothy.Music to My Ears: The Billboard Essays,
Profiles of Popular Music in the ’90’s. New York:
Henry Holt, 1996. Provides detailed reviews of es-
sential popular music artists of the 1990’s.
Dodie Marie Miller
See also Alternative rock; Culture wars; Electronic
music; Grunge fashion; Grunge music; Hip-hop and
rap music; Love, Courtney; Marilyn Manson; Music;
Nine Inch Nails; Nirvana; Tibetan Freedom Con-
certs; Woodstock concerts.
Long Island Lolita case
The Event Seventeen-year-old Amy Fisher shoots
and severely wounds Mary Jo Buttafuoco, the
wife of her alleged lover Joey, at the Buttafuoco
home
Date May 19, 1992
Place Massapequa, Long Island, New York
The Long Island Lolita case raised the issues of the sexual
exploitation of teenagers and the sexism of the mass media.
On a May morning, Amy Fisher rang the doorbell of
the Buttafuoco home in Long Island and spoke to
Mary Jo Buttafuoco, a thirty-seven-year-old mother
of two young children and the wife of auto body
shop owner Joey Buttafuoco. Fisher claimed that Joey
was having an affair with her younger sister. When a
skeptical Mary Jo turned to go back into her home,
Fisher shot her in the head with a .25-caliber pistol.
Fisher claimed that the shooting was accidental
and that she had meant only to strike Buttafuoco for
refusing to take her seriously. Buttafuoco survived,
with a bullet lodged in her head, deaf in one ear, and
half of her face paralyzed. She described her assail-
ant as a young woman with long, violet hair, and Joey
Buttafuoco named Fisher for the Nassau County
police investigating the case. Fisher was arrested and
jailed on attempted murder charges, while Joey
faced statutory rape charges. Fisher claimed that he
had served as her pimp and had asked her to kill his
wife. He initially confessed to the affair but subse-
quently denied it.
As soon as the story broke, the case grabbed head-
lines in the press. Fisher also became the butt of late-
night comedians’ jokes and a recurring feature on
tabloid television shows. Part of the shock over the
case seemed to result from Fisher’s background. The
term “Long Island” stood as a metaphor for white,
suburban, and middle class. As a white, middle-class
girl, Fisher did not fit the stereotypical image of a
bad girl, yet she became a prostitute and would-be
murderer. Meanwhile, Joey Buttafuoco’s protesta-
tions of innocence strained the credulity of many
Americans, while Mary Jo’s willingness to believe her
husband proved just as stunning.
In 1999, Fisher left prison after spending seven
years in Albion Correctional Facility. She apologized
to Mary Jo Buttafuoco and declared that she would
not let the media affect her life. Joey Buttafuoco
served four months for statutory rape and remained
in the public eye as a minor celebrity. The Butta-
fuocos divorced in 2000.
Impact The Long Island Lolita case grabbed the at-
tention of the public to the degree that between 100
and 125 million people, about half of the U.S. popu-
lation, watched at least one of the three made-for-
television movies about the shooting that aired dur-
ing the week of December 28, 1992:The Amy Fisher
Stor y, starring Drew Barrymore;Casualties of Love:
The Long Island Lolita Stor y, starring Alyssa Milano;
andAmy Fisher: My Story, starring Noelle Parker.
Further Reading
Eftimiades, Maria.Lethal Lolita: A True Stor y of Sex,
Scandal, and Deadly Obsession. New York: St. Mar-
tin’s Press, 1992.The Nineties in America Long Island Lolita case 527