Red Hot Chili Peppers, you are dead to me.

Whoa, I'm sorry, that was harsh. I'm saying things I really don't mean. But Messrs, Kiedis, Frusciante, Smith and, um, Flea — you burned me pretty bad Sunday night. And that was harsh, too, because the sun had already done a bang-up job at that.

For those who don't know, the Red Hot Chili Peppers were the final act of Lollapalooza 2006, held Aug. 4-6 in Chicago's Grant Park. It truly was, as its Web site promised, one big, beautiful show — three days of the best bands left-of-center pop music has to offer (and Umphrey's McGee). The Chili Peppers were scheduled as the weekend's final act, the band that was to cap off the whole event and blast the crowds back into the real world.

This distinction was stolen — for me at least — by Lollapalooza's penultimate act, Toronto's indie-rock collective Broken Social Scene. Given its constant presence on my iPod and status as one of the three acts — along with The Flaming Lips and The Shins — that persuaded me to drop the big bucks on Lolla, I really should have seen this coming.

Packing 13 musicians on stage at its peak, the band delivered what could only be described as the most incredible emotional musical release I've ever had the privilege to witness. I realize most write-ups on bands like Broken Social Scene are prone to hyperbole, but you have to believe me on this.

There was a time when bands with more than two guitarists were one of my biggest musical pet peeves. The multi-tracked axes of My Bloody Valentine's "Loveless" and the polyrhythms of Talking Heads' "Remain in Light" may have made me realize this was an ill-informed bias, but the glorious waves of noise that Broken Social Scene created at Lollapalooza make me recant the statement completely. Add to this "guitarmada" a cadre of horns, a couple drum kits, a little keyboards here, some violin there, with voices hushed, shouted, male and female, and you've got a sonic sea in which I gladly took a 45-minute swim.

But that 45 minutes is where my grievance against The Chili Peppers began. On Friday and Saturday nights, the last acts on the festival's big stages kicked off at 8:30 p.m. However, in addition to an indefinite set time, The Chili Peppers were also given an 8:15 p.m. start.

An 8:15 p.m. start that ate 15 minutes of Broken Social Scene's stage time.

Jared Leto's vanity space-rock band got an hour on the same stage. So did unabashed Joy-Division by way of Interpol rip-off duo She Wants Revenge. Yet in spite of the fact that they were the only non-headlining act I saw all weekend whose crowd demanded an encore — a demand which went unsupplied — Broken Social Scene had a quarter of an hour lopped off its set.

We in the crowd stood our ground, refusing to leave without some sort of official sign from the band. As we chanted "one more song" and various epithets against The Chili Peppers, the giant screen at the side of the stage flashed images of the band members back stage, looking confounded and flattered by our devotion. Man of many guitars Brendan Canning appeared to be the Broken Social Scene member most willing to play, carrying his bass with him even as he took to the front of the stage with the rest of the band for a Broadway-esque curtain call.

And how did Red Hot Chili Peppers follow this up? With a tepid set drawn mostly from their last two albums and an encore of "Give It Away" followed by a fairly lame instrumental jam. They didn't even take advantage of their supposed indefinite set time, ending just before the clock struck 10 p.m.

More power to them for not leaning on their hit-heavy catalog, but how they could leave the stage without playing "Under the Bridge" is one of the greatest mysteries of my life. That "Under the bridge downtown" outro is the only way they could have risen to the heights set by Broken Social Scene's "Ibi Dreams of Pavement (A Better Day)."

So let it be known that on Aug. 6, 2006, a not-so-little band from Canada toppled one of the biggest bands in rock 'n' roll history, all the while serving up the true end to a truly great festival.

Erik Adams can be reached at adamser9@msu.edu.