Is Boston Calling cursed? This year’s iteration was originally scheduled to take place in 2020, with Foo Fighters, Rage Against the Machine and Red Hot Chili Peppers headlining. Then the pandemic struck, and the original intention of keeping the same bill two years later slowly fell apart until only Foo Fighters were left. When their drummer Taylor Hawkins died two months ago, Nine Inch Nails stepped in and a whole new slate was in place.

Then, just on Friday, new Saturday headliners Strokes dropped out due to a COVID infection. (“If you had told us at any point that we were the reliable band that you could rely on in a crisis . . .,” said Trent Reznor about Nine Inch Nails filling in for them as well.) Then a thunderstorm blew in midway through Saturday’s event, requiring a full evacuation of the Harvard Athletic Complex. By the time the all-clear was given, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, who were scheduled to close out the Blue Stage, were out: COVID again. If things never reached Fyre Festival levels of calamity (as of press time on Sunday, at least), clearly some sort of chaos imp had been angered.

Kickoff artist Julie Rhodes didn’t seem to get the memo. In some respects, she was the best-situated performer of the whole day, with zero competition from any of the other three stages or storm after-effects. Singing heavy, bluesy soul with a throaty growl, she specialized in slow burns but hot ones.

Boston native Charlotte Sands performed metallic emo-pop under a logo that replaced the A’s in her name with an anarchy symbol and a broken heart, which summed her up well. With full command of the stage, if not her feelings, she was like a more operatic Tate McCrae, while local band Dutch Tulips sounded like someone broke Death Cab For Cutie. Celisse kept things at a low simmer with light-touch swoon jazz until the wind picked up and the crowd was herded to Harvard Square or into Harvard Stadium to ride out the storm.

Kicking things off again 2 1/2 hours later, KennyHoopla was so eager to get into his pent-up punk-pop that he started before the sound was turned on. And alt-country mystery man Orville Peck flitered his hearty, clear growl and smooth, heavy vibrato through a fringed mask.

The Black Pumas’ soulfully psychedelic songs had room to breathe and flow, but songs like “Colors” dug grooves that never quite deepened. At the same time, the mass of rappers bouncing off one another onstage for Van Buren Records fueled the Brockton hip-hop crew’s energy.

For about an hour, hip-hop ran both active stages. When the audience demanded that the volume get bumped, Run the Jewels leapt on it and used it as fuel to go harder. El-P offered a more conversational counterpoint to Killer Mike’s barked verses, and they were genial and funny between songs. Over on the Blue Stage, Earthgang offered that bounce and playfulness during the songs themselves.

Unlike on Friday, Nine Inch Nails came blasting out of the gate with the mayhem of “Mr. Self Destruct,” and they made sure that attendees who came both nights got completely different shows. Despite that song, the streamlined, tightly-bound chaos of “Wish” and a faithful (if whompingly hard) cover of David Bowie’s “Fashion,” Saturday’s focus was on a slow grinding. The guitars sounded like machinery revving up in “The Wretched” and strangled and acidic in “The Day the World Went Away,” and the keyboards of the crawling “This Isn’t the Place” began as howling wind and transformed incrementally into a swarm of bees. “It’s probably a good time to mention that we are not the Strokes,” Reznor announced 40 minutes in, as if there were any mistaking the two bands.

At the Harvard Athletic Complex, Allston, Saturday

Marc Hirsh can be reached at officialmarc@gmail.com or on Twitter @spacecitymarc

Work at Boston Globe Media