At Merriweather Post, The Clown and the Mope

Perry Farrell is fun. Fronting the reunited Jane's Addiction at Merriweather Post Pavilion on Tuesday, Farrell filled the big space with laughs and worked the stage with poses borrowed from Jim Morrison and Jerry Lewis.

"Let's kill some pain!" Farrell told the crowd early in the set, chugging from a wine bottle and dressed in black sequins with frills and boots, an ensemble that seemed borrowed from a really fabulous cowboy's wardrobe.

Even when he's being profane, as during the many penile entendres during his intro to "Ocean Size," Farrell had everybody laughing before he got to rockin'. He couldn't even shut off his humorous urges during the shock-rocker "Ted, Just Admit It," making comical pelvic thrusts amid all the references to violent sex. He settled down briefly to give a moody reading of "Then She Did," an ambitious and downright Doorsesque number.

Farrell still suffers from the same sort of attention-deficit disorder that caused him to disband Jane's Addiction so many times over the years and take on big new projects, such as launching the Lollapalooza franchise in the early 1990s, or start new bands. While introducing "One Percent," he interrupted his own rant, which had something to do with trusting Farrell but not the government, to scream "I'm 50!" He really is that old, but showed remarkable agility for a guy that age or any other. The song -- with Farrell yelling "The gang! The government! No difference!" -- delivered the message more successfully.

Guitarist Dave Navarro, who like Farrell has less body fat than a jockey, pulled off a rare feat for a guitar hero: He took a shredding, string-bending solo on pretty much every tune -- the longest and wah-wah-est run coming during an Everest-size version of "Mountain Song" -- but never changed guitars or took any obvious tuning break.

The encore included an unplugged and lighthearted version of "Jane Says," a song that every radio programmer loves, no matter the station's format. Farrell sang the familiar lyrics in a cadence just different enough from the ubiquitous recorded version to prevent the crowd from singing along with their hero, as so many fans had obviously been waiting to do.

Trent Reznor, the anti-Farrell, was less successful working the room during Nine Inch Nails' opening set. Reznor is incredibly influential: The industrial beats and creepy aura of his recorded products are widely copied. But in the live setting, Reznor's downbeatness was mostly lost in a blitz of synths, strobes and smoke. At climactic moments of dark tunes such as "Echoplex" and "The Becoming," he'd get lost in a huge cloud of smoke. (If there's ever a shortage of fake smoke, NIN's gonna have to give up touring for good.)

But when thousands of folks scream in unison -- and this holds even with the bitterest lyrics -- beauty happens. So it was with "Head Like a Hole," a rare NIN radio hit, as Reznor had the whole crowd shrieking unsweet nothings such as "I'd rather die than give you control!"

Reznor's music works best when it overwhelms, like a car stereo with the windows up and the subwoofers set to levels that could cause internal bleeding. Such consuming volumes aren't possible at massive sheds like Merriweather, however. So the gloom Reznor tries to exude with every tune only came through on the ballads. His glacially paced rendering of "Hurt," the Reznor dirge that Johnny Cash put in the mainstream shortly before dying, was positively downlifting. Just as Reznor desired.