Nine Inch Nails and Jane’s Addiction: Thunderous rock at Starlight
By TIMOTHY FINN
The Kansas City STar
It was billed as a reunion show and a farewell tour.
Nine Inch Nails is reportedly calling it quits after 20-plus years (at least that’s what Trent Reznor says), and Jane’s Addiction is saying hello again after a hiatus of almost five years. The bands famously toured together on the first Lollapalooza in 1991. So there was some nostalgia in the air.
This was also one of those co-headlining shows, which meant someone had to go first. On Wednesday night at Starlight Theatre, that was Nine Inch Nails, who took the stage well before the light of a cool gray day had disappeared. As expected, they proved to be a tough act to follow.
Those who attended the NIN show in Columbia in November had to adjust their expectations. That tour included some of the most spectacular video and visual displays ever shown at a rock show. For this show, Reznor and the band brought nothing but some strobe lights and their instruments. The stripped-down approach turned the focus more heavily on the band, which was fierce, and Reznor’s songs, which can be a fantastic mix of the hard and heavy along with some melody and industrial groove.
They opened with something vintage, “Terrible Lie” from “Pretty Hate Machine,” then spent the next 75 minutes or so revisiting the diverse NIN catalog. The highlights: the band itself, especially Reznor, who played guitar and keys all night and reasserted himself as one of the more dynamic frontmen in rock.
He didn’t say much — he declared it wouldn’t rain (and it didn’t, for the most part) and issued a few genuine and humble thank-yous to the crowd. And he said goodbye as if he meant it.
Otherwise, he let his band (Robin Finck, Justin Meldal-Johnsen and Ilan Rubin), his own playing and his songs do the talking. Some spoke louder than others, such as “The Wretched,” “Survivalism,” “The Hand That Feeds You” and “Head Like a Hole.” He finished with “Hurt,” which prompted an outbreak of raised cell phones, turning Starlight into a bowl of bobbing lights.
After a relatively brief stage makeover, Jane’s Addiction entered with some fanfare: A screen in front of the stage showed some film footage, including a scene from the movie “The River Wild,” in which Kevin Bacon talks about his Lollapalooza hat.
From there, the band segued into “Three Days,” launching a set that lasted about 85 minutes and included pretty much everything most fans came to hear, which ended up being the brightest highlights: “Summertime Rolls, ” “Mountain Song, ” “Been Caught Stealing” and “Jane Says.” The crowd also went batty after “Ted, Just Admit It….” The difference in music style and presentation was jarring at first: JA is much more psychotropic than NIN and much jammy-er (the first track lasted about 10 minutes and included a brief drum solo); and Perry Farrell is much more theatrical than Reznor. (OK, he’s a male diva.) JA also brought more visual (and vocal) effects.
But the band, especially drummer Stephen Perkins, is just as fierce. Dave Navarro was in chest-bared rock-star pose most of the night and drawing plenty of attention from the fawning mob up front, tossing off solos like he was throwing change at the homeless.
Farrell wore a glossy gold suit and danced/pranced and hopped around the stage. He also made it clear he knew where he was, addressing the crowd as “Missouri” and invoking the “Show Me” nickname several times.
While dismounting the stage late in the show, he slipped and fell on his rear. He recovered during that song. But before the encore, he pretended he was a P.A. announcer and told the crowd he’d been paralyzed during the fall and the show was over. He re-emerged, confessing: “I’m not gonna lie. That hurt ….”
They ended with an unplugged/acoustic version of “Jane Says,” in which Navarro and bassist Eric Avery took seats and strummed acoustic guitars while Perkins provided some light percussion. For a night that included so much thunder, it turned out to be a relatively mellow but satisfying ending.
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SETLISTS
NIN: Terrible Lie, Discipline, March of the Pigs, The Wretched, Piggy (Nothing Can Stop Me Now), The Becoming, Burn, Gave Up, Echoplex, The Fragile, The Way Out Is Through, Wish, Survivalism, Physical (You’re So), The Hand That Feeds, Head Like a Hole, Hurt.
Jane’s Addiction: Three Days, Whores, Ain’t No Right, Pigs in Zen, Then She Did, Mountain Song, Had a Dad, Been Caught Stealing, Ted, Just Admit It …, Ocean Size, Summertime Rolls, Stop!, Jane Says.