If rock music, as the voice of a discontented yet thoroughly enfranchised populous, is headed anywhere, then it can only be out. Ignore anyone who says it's getting worse or even that it's never been better. On the vertical trajectory, "Y-axis," all pop music is utterly stationary. It began as cathartic barbarism and thus it will remain. But in the hands of unrelenting geniuses like Trent Reznor or Radiohead it has the ability to expand forever along the horizontal, "X", and become larger, with ever greater implications for all of artistic expression.

The last day of Lollapalooza began with me pacing nervously in my hotel room, "Would you bastards Puhleeeazze get moving!" my room-mates were the ones with the car and the car was how we got to the metro station and the metro was how I was going to get to the fest in time to see The Weakerthans. I was assured by them that I would be there in time and, thinking back, I was overreacting. But The Weakerthans tour rarely and then little outside Canada.

I needn't have been so worried, turns out the band had canceled due to a broken down bus and were stuck in Cleveland. I made the best of this by stealing into the very front for large voiced dream-pop cutie Nicole Atkins' set. Her onstage presence and immensely catchy songs temporarily eased the sting of my Weakerthans near-miss but I'm still wincing at how close I came.

Iron and Wine, down front, sometime in the late afternoon; Sam Beam's soft-souled hallucinogenic Americana may seem an odd shot for mid-day on the main stage but I was there and he did great and the crowd loved it. I've now seen him three times and each time his arrangements become more complex, the instrumental passages longer and his accompanists a greater and greater number. Right about now his songs resemble a kind sonic basket weaving, fragile and complex.

Leaving immediately from the end of Iron and Wine, one stage over through the solid crowd of lawnies; sitting, walking, sleeping, drinking, I made it over to Flogging Molly's nearby stage by the middle of their first song. By the beginning of their second I could see the heaving pit down front, calling me. I played the part of shovey little bastard, making my way forward until finally a crowd surge came at me and I followed it back in where it came from, finding myself front and center just in time for Drunken Lullabies!

Following Flogging Molly it was necessary to recover in time for NIN. I had two hours to re-hydrate and then get my spot over at the Bud Light Stage. That's the mundanity and mechanics of it: disappointment, consolation, ecstasy then wait, all in the heat and always remembering that it's only rock and roll.

Trent Reznor built his career out of middle class society's insecurity over its success. He's the voice of virulent malaise and self loathing at having to spend what you didn't really earn. Our culture is dead inside and that's what NIN has always tapped into to make its cacophonously banal music.

But something else is brewing these days. No longer the rail thin mud-soaked whiner, Reznor is becoming a meta-human architect, a workaholic constructing an idea and persona of gradual evolution. On his most recent album The Slip you find lyrics like, "I need your discipline," and references to tearing away an old skin to reveal, not a void or cancerous growth (as would have been the case on previous albums) but a new creature, perhaps capable of more.

And then there's his stage show… the elaborate and narratively relevant set pieces that Reznor integrates with his music and band members turns the arc of his career into a full emersion artistic experience.

Plus it just sounds brilliant.

Radiohead was my favorite, but Nails was the best of Lollapalooza '08.

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