(belated entry)
I should at least for myself, keep a record of the first and probably last time I saw my favorite band live. I saw Nine Inch Nails perform on the last American tour they are likely to ever do, at least for the next several years.
At the moment, the part of the day leading up to leaving the house is a blur, but most things after are pretty clear. The first notable incident is that while buying batteries for my camera at the convenience store a block from my house, I locked my keys in the car because I was distracted by the erratic behavior of the person in the van next to me... wondering if I was safe to step out of the car or not. I made a dash for it, and wouldn't you know; keys in the ignition. I had to wait for dad to walk down from our apartment with an extra key for me to keep in my wallet for safety.
The drive up was extremely pleasant, perfect weather, nice fast traffic, and nothing really on the radio to distract me from singing out songs by just about every artist I know other than NIN (for some reason I had "Runaway" by Del Shannon running on a loop for a while. This in spite of the fact that I can never remember the exacts of the second verse, and I don't sound right doing the "wa-wa-wa-wa-wonder" or "why-why-why-why-why" bits at all, but that's just how my brain was going that day).
I arrived way too early for my own good, and the kid directing the parking lots told me so. I explained that pre-sale ticket holders needed to come earlier, and he sent me to the box office, which I missed and ended up back on the Parkway, and then came around again and asked the kid for clarified directions (that didn't have me playing chicken with a police cruiser, which is why I turned too soon and wound up on the highway the first time). I ended up with a parking space about 100 feet from the entrance to the PNC Arts Center.
At first I was the only pre-sale holder in the area, and the rest of the crowd of maybe 60 people were proprietors of donation tickets, which are special tickets you buy for either $300, $1,000, or $1,200 which are donated to a guy named Eric who is getting a heart transplant, and gets you in to see the sound check, and hang out with the band. I felt kind of out of place at this point because not only had I gone alone (which I'm not likely to do again for almost any concert) but I was also the only cheapo there who hadn't given to save Eric's life. In fact, without my paycheck having come in yet, I hadn't even given the basic ten dollars yet.
I had brief conversations with a hand full of people, but in general was forced to wait in the crowd basically by myself, wondering why most of the crowd looked like Rush fans instead of NIN fans. It wasn't thrill a minute, but I was still just enjoying the weather at that point. I text Ellie a few times because I had no idea who else to start a conversation with. I know I sound like I felt severely out of place, but that's an exaggeration, my only real concern was avoiding eye contact with a half dozen dumpy and disheveled looking goth girls scattered in the crowd watching me. That may sound mean, but... I have nothing to follow that up with; they weren't pleasant too look at or listen to, they were following me like I was their last hope; and I didn't want to give false invitations. I'm not being conceited, that's just how they acted and it weirded me out. And I'm shallow sometimes, tough shit: you are too.
After a few millennium, they separated us into groups based on what kinds of charitable or uncharitable people we had been four months ago when we bought our tickets, and slowly gave us our stubs by class. This was directed mostly by a beautiful rather slender and tan woman who looked at me as much as the gothopotamuses had, but didn't get any closer to our crowd than 20 feet no matter how much Jay Sherman style "Eh?-Eh?" and pointing to myself I did to advertise. Clearly she was significantly less interested than they, or I.
In the third and final line, which I was toward the front of, I had brief conversations with a middle aged English man and his New Jersey wife, and the very young and rather nerdy couple (the boyfriend reminded me quite a lot of Frankie Muniz only way more awkward) from Canada who had purchased extra tickets from the first couple. We separated after getting our tickets to wait around again, until 5:30pm when the doors would open for us. I decided to wait this out in the comfort of my own Van. At this point I learned there was sunscreen in the glove compartment, and also that it was too late to use it for anything other than appealing scent; I was already tan on one side, and bacon on the other.
While sitting in the car I got to listen to Street Sweeper Social Club do a two song sound check, and then it was time to get in line to actually enter the fucking premises.
I ended up next to the same set of people again, and again we got to know one another a little better. We were all NINerds and therefore we all got along quite well. The man's wife took the only picture of me the entire evening. I wonder if I'll ever see it. Finally we were let in... to the eating-and-buying-shit play pen. If you think it's taking too long to read about the time spent before the actual concert, you should have lived it.
I decided to skip the over-priced food and drink, and went right over to the stand selling regular priced Zippos. Even though I only smoke on occasion I've wanted a Zippo for the longest time and never had a real excuse to buy one up until now. When I do have a reason to pull out a lighter, I have a strong desire for it to be a stylish hunk of metal instead of a faltering piece of plastic. I'm a tool and I know it, but I look cooler than you, so there.
The stand was being sort of run by a group of seemingly related men, but was really fronted by their three teenage daughters while they just bullshitted in the background.While I was searching for the right lighter, one of the girls, a beautiful redhead with flashy gray-blue eyes and freckles kept trying to make jokes and conversation with me about the concert, the lighters, flavors, and anything in her giggly little head. She continued while her uncles tried to figure out how to fix the register after I picked my lighter. I was happy about the attention, (being more appreciated than the attention from the scenesters, and more substantial than from the girl working the lines) but at the same time she was clearly under-aged, and this was actually confirmed for me by a conversation she had with her uncle about selling lighters when you're too young to smoke. I was getting impatient for the register to work so I could get out of there, especially after I realized that I was distracted enough by the redhead that I had not even noticed that the other two girls were identical twins. Once I dragged myself away, I realized I'd also been distracted enough to let myself be given the chrome Zippo instead of the brushed steel Zippo I'd asked for. The difference was slight enough that I decided it was not worth going back, chrome being the classic Zippo anyway. Today clearly wasn't meant for picking any girls up.
After wandering around and discovering that there was nothing else to do but pay eight dollars for one beer, five dollars for one Pepsi, or take out a sub-prime mortgage for a hot dog, I decided to skip it, save the cash in my pocket and reacquaint myself with the people I'd met in line. We spent the next hour talking about shows, rock stars, albums, comic books, and listening to NIN's four song sound check, (Home, I'm Afraid Of Americans, Lights In The Sky [I think], and In This Twilight) and Jane's Addiction's two song sound check. Then, FINALLY we were let into the actual arena. I was separated from my new found friends from then on, but at least finally I had my seats.
I was right behind the sound mixers
It was still pretty bright out when Street Sweeper Social Club hit the stage, which I think took away some theatrical element of their performance versus everyone else's. The music was good, but basically sounded like Rage Against The Machine with an actual black guy rapping instead of Zach De La Rocha. They were uniformed, and the lead singer kept doing the same kind of silly basic hip hop dance through every song, but somehow it really worked. The first highlight was when their second song was a cover of M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes". The second highlight was when Tom Morello (former guitarist of Rage Against The Machine, and the main reason for the similarity in sound and constant political bullshit) showed off by playing the guitar solo to their last song with his tongue.
Just before their set, a guy came up and found he was seated between me and the girl to my right, first he asked if we were together to avoid awkwardness, and then proceeded to talk at inconvenient intervals throughout the SSSC setlist. After they went off stage, one of his friends pulled him down to better seats, and I was glad to see him go. Had he talked through NIN, I'd have killed him. I still wonder if someone else did.
After the sun started to fade, The crowd was slowly alerted to the presence of something big happening by a sound that started off small but kept growing louder. It was "Pinion", a simple growing guitar growl that let everyone know Nine Inch Nails was about to appear on the stage. Pinion is the Classic NIN entrance.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHyyhYdDf0s Instead of doing the classic thing and going right into "Wish" which is the order on "Broken" and often live, they skipped to the next track, my favorite off of Broken, the often neglected "Last".
The audience livened up for Trent and the gang about five times what they did for Street Sweeper, and NIN fired off one after another a block of some of their hardest hitters to start the show.
Discipline
Reptile
March Of The pigs
Survivalism
The Good Soldier
That may not be the completely accurate order, but it was close to that.
Afterwards they did Gave Up, with Robin ending by exaggerating the slowness of the final guitar chords compared to the album, in the way that's been done since the early nineties with Richard Patrick.
Trent Reznor and Robin Fink MOTHERFUCKERS
The rest of the setlist I can't remember in order, but it was roughly
La Mer
1,000,000
Meet Your Master
Non-Entity
The Way Out Is Through
Mr. Selfdestruct
Echoplex
The Hand That Feeds
Head Like A Hole
Hurt
"La Mer" was a bit of a happy surprise, even though it's been done live plenty of times before. The real treat was "The Way Out Is Through" which builds tension for several minutes, and then explodes into a a simple three note climax that I can never get enough of.
Justin Meldal- Johnson, Ilan Rubin, Trent Reznor, Robin Fink.
I feel like mentioning this even though it's not relevant, but it amused me. The girl next to me was an extremely exotic and seductive Hispanic woman, who had brought her child with her, a six year old boy with long hair dressed like a rock star. The whole scene, including the kid, and how she was dancing reminded me of something I couldn't quite put my finger on. It wasn't until I got home and turned on my computer that I realized it. My screen saver came on, and one of the movie screen captures was of The Keifer Southerland in The Lost Boys, and it hit me: it was EXACTLY like the concert scene in Lost Boys with Star and the little long haired boy. That kind of made me laugh. I was next to a vampire looking for victims.
Of course the band ended with "Head Like A Hole" with "Hurt" as the encore, that's pretty much standard procedure, but like my new found friend had said earlier in the day about it; "When Head Like A Hole starts, that's how you know it's time to go home."
Unfortunately, at this point my Camera batteries ran out which denied me taking any pictures of Jane's Addiction which was a damn shame.
In between the acts I had to stand in an insane line for the bathroom next to a guy who I inferred from what his friend was saying, had made himself sick by insisting on borrowing some of his friend's drugs after already having too much to drink. "And of course now you're freaking out." I made sure to stay out of vomiting range, pissed, and then rushed back to my seat.
The show opened with a screen lowering on which a movie was projected of a small child lamenting to a man about never having seen Jane's Addiction before they broke up. I'm about 90% sure that it was a scene from a Kevin Bacon movie re-dubbed but I can't say for certain. As the music started playing, black and white footage of a topless chair dancing quintet from the early sixties played. It was strange watching these giant beautiful women walk in slow motion around chairs with their gloomy eyes and ludicrous beehive hairdo-s while guitars and drums began to build and scream. And then the screen opened up to the wailing of brilliant Jane's Addiction.
I was surprised by how much of the music they played that I recognized but had completely forgotten. I was also surprised by how their performance even outclassed NIN's, and how much louder they were. After NIN left the stage, my hearing felt normal, after Jane's left, my ears felt extremely stuffy.
Dave Navarro's guitar work was amazing and it felt like every song was just one giant guitar solo. Perry Farrel wailed above every other noise with insane intensity, but almost complete lack of effort. As he said himself later n "Not bad for a motherfucker who's just skin and bones, huh?" Eric Avery was Eric Avery, the only reason this ruinion counts and the others don't is because he's finally not too angry at Farrel to play bass. Stephen Perkins drummed it up. I'm not sure how else to put it, a lot of talent hitting those bass pedals.
The whole performance was incredible and even the level of showmanship was increased from the other two bands. Perry ran around the stage doing his patented gay elf dances and then talked in between songs in his psychotic high toned voice about his pants falling down, stealing, being gay with the drummer from Street Sweeper, whistling and wine. Navarro and Farrel were also the only musicians that night who spent a significant amount of time down-stage, in physical contact with their audience. It paid off, the crowd, which was way more populated with NIN fans than Jane's addicts, had a much larger reaction to Jane's than anything else.
The lights eventually dimmed, and the band set down their instruments and left the stage, but no one wanted to leave yet. The curtain began to lower, but only got halfway before the projector sprang on again showing a montage of sexually charged imagery and scenes from the film Natural Born Killers, when the bass line that I had spent all night hoping but not really expecting to hear began to waver up from the Eric Avery, hiding behind the stage. The band ran back into the spotlight and to my extreme happiness began their encore with an amazing rendition of "Sex Is Violent". You could feel the whole audience move as the music whined out slowly and Perry quietly asked us to "show me everybody, naked and disfigured; nothing shocking..." and then proceeded to tell us our collective sisters are not virgins anymore.
They played two more heavy songs after that, and then tricked us into thinking they were finished again by playing "Jane Says". But afterward Farrel asked us if we were really ready to stop, which we weren't, and neither was he, and they played one last intense psychedelic mash of metal and alternative, and finally thanked us for making the night like a party for them, and left for real.
... There's not much to report about the rest of the night except I made my way up a giant grassy hill in hard darkness except from some post lights, and then drove home, taking only two detours, one to turn around in Red Bank to redirect myself Northward, and one to get Dunkin' Donuts for the family.
Not a bad night all in all.
My ticket
I was right behind the sound mixers
Skylight
NINSPLOSION
Trent Reznor and Robin Fink MOTHERFUCKERS
Justin Meldal-Johnson
Justin Meldal- Johnson, Ilan Rubin, Trent Reznor, Robin Fink.
Robin
The Hand That Feeds
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