CHICAGO � In the end, there was no Barack Obama. Only Kanye West. And Trent Reznor. No one really seemed to mind this.
Lollapalooza 2008 wrapped up Sunday night not with an appearance by the junior senator from the great state of Illinois (as had been rumored all weekend), but rather, with a much-hyped encounter between homecoming king Kanye and Reznor's rejuvenated Nine Inch Nails, both of whom came equipped with big-budget stage shows, stentorian soundscapes and more than a few blinding lights.
But that's where the similarities ended. Just about any way you slice it, West and NIN ar about as diametrically opposed as, articulate, Obama and John McCain, and that held true in Grant Park. West's set was a reflection of the man himself � bombastic and cocky one moment (lots of crowd-pleasing, cell-phone-in-the-air moments and big, magnanimous, large production), disarmingly earnest and emotional the following (he dedicated the set to his late mother, Donda, and made several mentions of her passim). Reznor and company chose the opposite approach, bringing out both the power tools and the ProTools, delivering a performance that veered wildly between bludgeoning guitars and jazzy bleep-bloop, and basically scrambling everything you thought process you knew about the dark prince of industrial rock.
So wHO won? Depends on whom you ask. While we're at it, what about the 40-or-so other acts of the Apostles on the bill? (Don't worry, we'll get to them in due time.)
West's fans would probably tell you it was the Louis Vuitton Don in a landslide; after all, he packed the most everything into his 90 minutes. The show was a somewhat stripped-down version of his current Glow in the Dark Tour, and piece there were no holograms or lunar landscapes on hand, thither were inactive a whole lot of seizure-inducing strobes, moody lighting and wheeling fog, not to citation a space age backing band, complete with robo-suited guitar players and 23rd century female singers in foot-high shoulder pads.
(See all of our photos from Lollapalooza 2008 right here.)
Taking the stage attended by a wall of pulsing synths and chimes, and bathed in an eerie white light, West started things off with a languorous take on "Good Morning," waving to the tens of thousands staring up at him (tens of thousands of hands waved back). At song's eats (and packed a huge crowd) while flanked by iI (fake) leaf-blower-wielding cops, world Health Organization pelted ecstatic partiers with confetti, glitter, silly string, toilet newspaper publisher and, at the end of the set, inexplicably, a full-sized river raft.
Chromeo and the Black Kids performed at adjoining stages and had pretty much everyone throwing their workforce in the air with reckless abandon. Saul Williams did his usual death-disco thing. The National were somber, reedy and solid as invariably. Mark Ronson threw everything but the proverbial kitchen sink into his evening set (including one of the dudes from Phantom Planet). And Lolla faves Gnarls Barkley � sans matching costumes this time around � slinked their way through a soulful, simmering mark, highlighted by Cee-Lo's keening take on Radiohead's "Reckoner."
And when you've got all that � plus so, so much more we didn't tied get to mention � who of necessity the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee? Kanye, Trent and Obama in a tripartite battle for fest-closing brag rights? That probably would've been overkill.
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