NIN just announced more North America tour dates for 2008. They’ll be coming to Greenville, SC, November 1st—to the Bi-Lo Center, which Mark has always told me has great acoustics (but no one I want to see ever goes there. Till now.) I was going to go to the Deerhunter show here in Asheville that night, but…never mind!

(Hahaha. Mark just came up the stairs: “When do they play Nashville? Is that November, too?”

“Halloween.”

“What day is that?”

“Friday. They’re going from Nashville to Greenville. We could go from Nashville to Greenville, too, if we were feeling froggy….but we’ll have just driven 12 hours on the 28th (up from New Orleans). Not that that’s stopped us from getting back in a car. I should just take that whole week off.”

“I wouldn’t have any vacation left for Christmas.”

“I don’t usually take vacation then.”

“I’d be giving my Christmas vacation to NIN.”)

I’ve been so busy that I haven’t had a chance to report on the Duluth, GA, show. We had floor tickets, and even though by the time we got there and got our wristbands the regular ticketholders were being let in, we started the show just one row back from the rail in front of Justin Meldal-Johnsen. (Sorry, Mark, for being so, um, testy up till then.) We had a good time meeting and talking with people around us, and then Deerhunter came on. I enjoy Deerhunter—I’m developing an appreciation for droning bands with unintelligble vocals. (In fact, I prefer the newer album from Black Angels over their older one mainly because the lyrics on the early one are too easy to make out. Not that I want all of the music I listen to to be like that, but there are times and places when I do want that sort of thing.) I also like how Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox deals with pissy NIN fans, from the plastered on rictus grin to the “You guys are awesome, Thank you!!! Especially you in the middle flicking me off! You rule!” Mark was disappointed that Bradford wasn’t wearing the cheerleader uniform like he had the night before. This time Whitney Petty, one of the guitarists, was wearing it. A few songs in, Mark said, “Was there a girl in the band last night?” Haha—he hadn’t noticed, even though she was closest to us from where we were sitting.

They finished up and we all went back to standing around waiting for NIN. The ladies we’d met got enormous plastic cups of Coke, which I was sure I’d end up wearing. And then the lights went down.

I was expecting the crowd to surge forward and squish us all together when “999,999″ started. Or “1,000,000″ even. But nope—we had a disconcerting plentitude of personal space for most of the show. It got kinda rowdy during “March of the Pigs,” “Gave Up” and “Terrible Lie,” but the rowdiness was fleeting. I would have preferred a rougher pit.

(Mark did, though, nearly get in a fight he didn’t set out to start. He was prepared to finish it, too, but fortunately didn’t have to.)

Trent surprised us with a few songs: “The Frail” led into “The Wretched” instead of “Closer” (yay!). He threw in “Down In It,” which was all right—I’m kind of worn out on that one, but it’s still neat to have a surprise in the setlist. But then “Reptile!” “REPTILE!” 31 songs altogether, and I spent the whole thing (when I wasn’t annoyed at the two women near us who kept talking to each other and playing with their cameras/cell phones) wishing the band wouldn’t ever get around to the final song and leave. It was fantastic.

Afterward, we went to the Loafing Leprechaun, which is now going to be a tradition for any show I go to Gwinett Arena for.

Oh, and when I saw the new list of NIN tour dates this morning, I went, “Omg! They’re going to be in New Orleans October 25th! WE’RE going to be in New Orleans October 25!” It’s early and I have a headache, that’s my excuse….

I’m not gonna grow up to be a concert photographer, but since we went with reserved seats for this show, I figured I’d give it a try. Apologies in advance!

Here’s the stage.

Before the show started, they lowered a rack of lights and…

Oh look at our shitty view! A lot of us at our end of section F (for “fail”) scrambled to find places where we might actually see something besides legs. Thank god they raised the rack a couple songs in; otherwise I would have been really pissy by the end of the show. These were presale tickets! They were supposed to be great seats!

That’s what I get for getting seats, though, huh? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I looked longingly at the people on the floor…

…and decided that despite the road rash and bruises and my inappropriate footwear (canvas slip-on/slip-off sneakers that will surely get lost in the pit if I don’t wrap tape around them to hold them to my feet) I will not hang back by the soundboard tomorrow night in Duluth after all. I want to be smushed up with a bunch of sweaty, screaming, jumping, danging, singing, losing-their-minds people. With seats you just feel so…isolated. I do, at least. If I’m not smushed in with people, I am annoying cognizant of my individualness. I’m a unit. A single, detached entity.

In the crowd, that awareness slips away (usually to the floor, where it gets stomped on and requires a few days recovery afterward).

…um.

So anyway…like I said, after they raised the light rack, we had a good view:

And I was excited to be facing the side of the stage. I’d already seen the full effect of the show on Sunday, so tonight I got the super-cool “behind the scenes” view—just how do they pull off some of their coolest effects? It turns out it’s a three-screen thing, with a normalish screen at the far back and two curved screens (more like metal meshes) that can come down around the band. Here’s how they pull off making it look like there’s a torrential downpour coming down on the band:

Because the front two screens are meshes, wherever “video”—or whatever you’d call it—isn’t projected, you can see right through to whatever’s behind it, like the band, and more rain, and finally the backmost screen, with yet more rain. From a front-on view, it’s amazing.

This is the set for the Ghosts-mix version of “Piggy,” which is fantastic. From the front you see some very cool pulsing effects. When I saw them in Baltimore, I’d had no idea they were layered like this.

Below is a shot from “Only” —layers of white noise. The song opens with “I’m becoming less defined, as days go by, fading away, and well you could say I’m losing focus…,” and the white noise works for it very well.

Also, the screen is heat-sensing, so Trent is able to clear away white noise with his body movements. Very cool. (Earlier in the show, at the end of “The Greater Good,” a stage hand came out with a stage light and “washed” the mess on the screen off by shining it up and down the screen like it was a big paint brush. Sorry—no pics of that.)

Below is the effect for the chorus of “Only.” When you’re looking at this straight-on, you more or less just see Trent singing and static along the bottom. The band is there on the stage, but the lighting—when you’re viewing this from the front—makes the band more or less disappear into the shadows. This is while Trent is singing, “There is no you, there is only me. There is no you, there is only me.”

I tried to get a picture of Josh setting the drum sequencer at the beginning of “Echoplex,” but it was just a white blob…so you’re stuck with my crappy description (and I’m working from memory, so if I get a detail wrong…whatever. I hit my head earlier today.). There’s a screen with three rows of white-outlined boxes (with a line snaking through, but that’s not important—looks cool, but not important). When Josh puts his hand out toward a box, it turns solid red—and it adds a beat to the drum sequence, so he’s essentially programming the drum sequencer via this giant screen on stage. It’s kind of like that piano Tom Hanks played with his feet in Big (if you saw Big when it first came out, not after you could buy those pianos and no one thought you were cool if you did) only…cooler. ‘Cause it’s NIN, and not Tom Hanks.

Anyway. One more shot, from “In This Twilight”:

As this song ends, each band member, one by one, is spotlighted. He stops playing, raises a hand in farewell, and leaves the stage. It’s brilliant. Really a powerful way to end the show.

I’m stoked that the setlists this tour are so heavily focused on the latest three albums: four songs from Ghosts, six from The Slip and seven from Year Zero. Seventeen songs altogether from material released over just the last year and a half. And omg it’s fantastic! I love my NIN CDs, but they don’t compare to how they do these things live.

Tomorrow…. Georgia!

..the only day we went. :)

Gates opened at 10; Mark and I were out of our hotel at 8:00. For some reason I didn’t picture there being parking at the subways station (what? I know. Go figure.) so we walked, and it turned out to be a longer walk than it had looked like on Google Maps. Took the subway to the bus to Pimlico and waited around for the gates to open. And of course we were at the south entrance, and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club were scheduled on the north stage (at noon, but IT’S NEVER TOO EARLY TO GET TO THE BARRIER), so I power-walked across the festival with Mark…somewhere behind me.

And we got on the barrier. But we didn’t just get on the barrier—we got there in time to catch 2/3rds of BRMC soundchecking. Nice. (Robert was missing. He appeared to be a little stunned by having to be awake so early in the day.)

BRMC had a very short set with just eight songs on their setlist and a ninth squeezed in before their time was up. They played: 666 Conducer, Weapon of Choice, Berlin, Shuffle Your Feet, Ain’t No Easy Way, Salvation, Six Barrel Shotgun, Spread Your Love and Whatever Happened To My Rock ‘N Roll (Punk Song). Leia’s great on drums. No disappointment there at all. Mark was happy to get to see Salvation live.

Robert Levon Been, BRMC

Peter Hayes, BRMC

Leia Shapiro and Peter Hayes, BRMC

BRMC finished at 12:45, and we didn’t have another band we were super interested in seeing till 6:20. We could have camped out at our barrier spot all day long, but we have pit tickets for Stone Temple Pilots and Nine Inch Nails later this month (twice each, plus some great reserved seats for a NIN show, too), so we felt like we didn’t have to be right up front for either band today. In fact, I was looking to get a further back spot for NIN, one that’d give me a view of the whole stage.

So we wandered off, caught some other bands (but not more than a few songs from each—nothing was really grabbing us…and we practically ran from the She & Him show after a song and a half), watched the aerial sculptures and the Bindlestiff Family Circus—

(a little lesson in safe sex, courtesy of the Bindlestiffs)

—ate bad festival food, drank horrid festival drinks ($10 for a margarita that tastes like gasoline. Oh fabulous!), and we saw an Xtracycle in real life!, which was actually one of the highlights of my day—

!!!!

—and then it was time for STP. Which conflicted with Bob Dylan’s show on the south stage, so Mark headed over that way for Bob, and I held our spot at the north stage and enjoyed STP. They came on twenty minutes late, but once they showed up, they were good. I’m stoked to see them next Sunday.

Stone Temple Pilots

Before and after STP, I ran into some trouble with the porta potties because by late afternoon they had completely run out of toilet paper. Now, it wouldn’t kill me to go without toilet paper once, but. Women before me had hovered, and hoverers splatter. Did you hear me? HOVERERS SPLATTER. All over the fucking seat. So: hot, stinky portajohn with piss all over the seat and no toilet paper to clean it up with and an empty hand sanitizer dispenser. I just held it till we got back to the hotel. Yuck.

Finally it started to get dark, and NIN, who had been given the longest set of any band scheduled over the two days of this year’s Virgin Mobile Fest, came on.

OMG NIN.

And all I have is this blurry picture. Sorry!

The stage/light show was…. There are no words. It was just unbelievable. They put on a fantastic show. And the only thing going through my head through all 1 hour and 55 minutes of it was “OMG NIN.” Cannot wait to see them closer up on Tuesday.

And that was our day in Baltimore. Back on the road tomorrow.

More NIN rehearsal footage from Pitchfork:

Jubilee has their first video out, for their first single, “Rebel Hiss.”

Better yet, they say their second single, “In With the Out Crowd,” will be available in a week or two. It’ll include three B-sides that won’t be on the full-length album. Mo’ info.

Pitchfork put up rehearsal footage of NIN doing “1,000,000″ with Robin Finck and Justin Meldal-Johnsen. It’s some pretty cool shit.

RIP George. :(

We’re at the cabin we’re renting in New Hampshire. It’s sweet. Rustic and cozy, yet plenty of space & equipped with wifi. It rained all day and the power went out in the late afternoon, but when we came back from dinner it was back on. We’re all working our way through the The Walking Dead series lately—and all trying to read the same copy of volume five at once. Tomorrow: Reesa! (And Rhode Island for the boys.) And hopefully not quite so much rain.

Annnnnnnnd I didn’t get to bring my bike. It got fixed in time, but then Hertz rented us a Rav 4, which didn’t work with my bike rack. I tried to fit it in after we got our luggage in, but no go.

Then, an hour or so up the road, it hit me: my bike has quick-release wheels. I totally could have fit it in the Rav.

In New Jersey we broke down and ended up with a Sebring instead. And not the convertible kind. My bike wouldn’t have fit without the rack, and we wouldn’t have had the rack even if I had brought the bike in the Rav…so in the end it was good I forgot about the quick-release wheels.

I miss biking. Running around Manchester is going to be way less convenient on foot and bus Friday. What can you do, right?

Totally bringing TOO DEAD to an end this week. Five days? I can do it. One day to get them back to the mill with trouble hot on their heels, two days for the final showdown, one day for the resolution, and one day for the final touches on the ending and popping a bottle of wine to celebrate the end of the first draft.

What else to blog about today? I have some links sitting around in my “to blog” file, so here’s looking at those, kid:

Bookcase envy.

The coolest-sounding MMORPG ever (because I omg love the thought of a virtual world overlaid on the real one) that I’m not going to get to participate in anytime in the near future (more on that over the weekend, with photos maybe!).

And this video of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club doing “Spread Your Love” at a club—sound’s not great, but the video is the closest I’ve seen to the actual experience of being at a show. (My favorite bit happens around 2:30—that’s what I’m talking about!) Seventy-five days till I see them next (at a festival—so not the same as a small club, but I’ll take it. Plus I get to see NIN the same day. Dream come true y/y?).

Plus: 21 days till the new season of Weeds.

Anyone have any idea when we’re getting a new season of Big Love?

(Apologies in advance to my friends and Metallica fans who will read this. Metallica can be/do whatever they want, and if you still love them, great. This is only about how they don’t work for me anymore.)

So, I used to be a pretty big Metallica fan. A third or more of the t-shirts in my closet say Metallica. The front plate on my car still says Metallica (’cause I are too lazy to take it off). They were my number one band from 1991 to 2005 or so.

In recent years, though, they’ve been changing…and I’ve been changing, and the music industry has been changing…

Maybe mostly I’ve been changing. Blame it on the bands I’ve been getting into (or in the case of NIN and Marilyn Manson, back into). They’re a whole different experience from the Metallica machine, something that was never more evident to me than when I watched the trailer for Metallica’s new “Mission Metallica” website recently.

“One of the best selling bands of all time. 100 million albums sold. Gold or platinum in over 40 countries. 7 grammys. Since 2000, Metallica album catalog sales are second only to one band…. The Beatles. (And that’s not a bad band to follow!) Their songs are the MOST REQUESTED…for both Guitar Here and Rockband. Since 1990 Metallica are one of the top 5 touring acts in the world. Metallica have played sold out shows in all 50 states and in over 50 countries to more than 30 million people. They’re the #1 artist at rock radio by far. 5% of ALL airplay consists of Metallica songs!” (Mission Metallica trailer)

Maybe that sort of thing fires up some fans, but there’s nothing in all of that that makes me feel happy in my pants. DON’T BREAK YOUR ARMS PATTING YOURSELVES ON THE BACK, GUYS!

I’ve got Janet Jackson in my head, and she’s singing “What have you done for me lately?” Because that’s how I feel. “Yadda yadda yadda who cares, where’s the new music and shit?”

So the trailer didn’t do much for me, but I hit the website anyway, where I discovered that you can get access to some of the goodies coming to Mission Metallica for free. OR you can get more and better access, with other bennies, if you pay them money. I’m guessing this is separate from the money you pay to be in MetClub (which, as far as fan clubs go, is actually a pretty decent one).

This just looks like “squeeze more money out of our faithful fans” bullshit, and call me spoiled by Trent Reznor, but I’m just not cool with it.

How about this for a good “squeeze money out of our fans” plan: PUT OUT FUCKING MUSIC.

I’ve been keeping this sort of silly scorecard in my head for over a year now—Trent Reznor vs. James Hetfield. It works for me because they both checked into rehab in July 2001, so what happened after that?

¹ Including dates scheduled for later this year.

If St. Anger had been some amazing, HOLY SHIT! album, then at least I could say, “Quality, not quantity!” but any of NIN’s releases was equal to—and often better than—that effort, which as of next month is five years old. Damn, Metallica!

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, just to add another comparison in here, who have also had a band member in rehab and, like Metallica, found themselves at a point where they weren’t sure there was even going to be a band anymore, will have done 616 performances between September 2001 and September 2008, and possibly more than that—there are some August ‘08 dates I think might still be added. They’ve also put out four full-length albums and four EPs in that time. They keep getting dropped by record labels, but still manage to pull this shit off.

Message to Metallica: get the lead out. This ain’t your daddy’s music business anymore, yo.

My friend Reesa, who grew up in the same neck of the U.S. I did (but whom I didn’t meet until long after I’d moved outta there) and whom I recently turned on to Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, and who has been listening to me go on about how amazing they are live just called to ask if I wanted to go to Baltimore in August…and I said, “I’ve already got tickets!”…and she said “No way!” and I said “I bought them as soon as they went onsale—are you gonna go?” and she said “Yeah!” SO REESA’S COMING TO VIRGIN MOBILE FEST!!! This is awesome. Not only will she get to finally see BRMC, but Nine Inch Nails, too!

“as a thank you to our fans for your continued support, we are giving away the new nine inch nails album one hundred percent free, exclusively via nin.com.

“the music is available in a variety of formats including high-quality MP3, FLAC or M4A lossless at CD quality and even higher-than-CD quality 24/96 WAVE. your link will include all options - all free. all downloads include a PDF with artwork and credits.

“for those of you interested in physical products, fear not. we plan to make a version of this release available on CD and vinyl in july. details coming soon.”

Go here to get the slip, free.

The Man Man show tonight (er…last night I mean) was SO MUCH FUN. I’d had no idea what they’d be like live; I’d just hoped that they wouldn’t use too many backing tracks and worried that the material wouldn’t hold up to the albums, but omg—they are fantastic live (and no backing tracks—nice). And I got to hear every song I’d hoped to, save one: “Young Einstein on the Beach,” which is just a short little thing anyway. Maybe they’ll do it next time I see them (for there WILL be a next time!)

And I love the way they had the stage set up. Up at the front of the stage, there was a low electric piano with a bench and a mic for the lead singer, and this was set up pointing right. There was also a drum kit, set up pointing left—thus the drummer and the singer were facing each other, and really, they were right up at the front of the stage. Just behind them were the other three guys, with all their various instruments (and there were quite a few—three sets of keyboards, more drums, a pole with all sorts of percussion things, wooden xylophone, saxophone, melodica, little plastic horns, a flute–I can’t remember what else. Tons of stuff. It was such a great show!!!

I was in the center, down in the front, and there was some moshing, which was fine—I don’t mind it—but there was also this giant dickhead who, by virtue of being A GIANT DICKHEAD, managed to breed a lot of camaraderie between everyone who wasn’t the dickhead as we shoved and blocked and yelled at him. (He got punched in the face a time or two as well, and at one point the guy I’d shoved myself up against to help block the dickhead grabbed him with an arm around his neck and tried to move him the fuck out of the area. NEXT TIME, MR. DOUCHE, DRINK MOAR BEFORE THE SHOW…enough to pass the fuck out before the headliner even comes out. Tx.)

And I really should be asleep right now—I got three hours last night, and I had to drive four hours tonight to get to the show (and at one point my eyes were so tired I pulled into a gas station for a 10-minute nap. Geesh). BUT I CAN’T GO TO SLEEP. In 38 minutes, something will be revealed on NIN.com.

I wouldn’t be able to sleep if I tried.

Continue reading

I don’t know where this came from yet, but I’m listening to it–and you can, too! Download the MP3. As with “Discipline,” the comments in the track info says “Go to www.nin.com May 5.” 

I’ll update when I found out where this came from. Got it! It’s from a Facebook App. Being a NIN fan is just one of the most rewarding fan experiences ever.

(P.S. On an initial listen, I like it better than “Discipline.”)

MOAR UPDATES: People have started receiving their $300 limited edition version of Ghosts I-IV, which includes multitracks of all 38…hey! 38?! WUT? :D The limited edition comes with multitrack files for two songs that weren’t included on the other versions—the only thing is you have to put them together yourself. Or wait till someone does it for you (links go to Sendspace). Have I mentioned how awesome it is to be a NIN fan these days?

Trent posted U.S. summer tour dates to nin.com, and there are three I can add to my schedule. Now to fret and chew my fingernails off waiting to hear more details on the “reformed band.”

What a great start to the day.

When I first read that NIN’s new album, Ghosts I - IV, was a 36-track instrumental, my immediate thoughts were, in no particular order:

• “WHAT? NO LYRICS? NO VOCALS? HOW WILL I SING ALONG?”
• “36 tracks written and recorded since leaving Interscope?¹ That’s, like, five months.² Wow this could be crap.”
• “Oh man, if he does a concert of nothing but instrumentals, that’s going to be so boring.”
• “Woohoo! Music to write to!”

I couldn’t get my FLAC files downloaded last night (or today for that matter—the NIN site is more functional than it was last night, but still troublesome), so I went to Amazon and dropped $5 for a fast download of lesser quality files. I wanted to listen while I was going to sleep, see. So I did.

The verdict?

OMG fantastic.

Fantastic.

I didn’t slip off to sleep until several minutes after the last track ended; I was too interested in hearing what would come next, and next, and next. It’s beautiful. And! And And And! I’d go to a show even if Trent played only stuff from this album. Srsly. I’d dance to it. I might even cry to it. It would be phenomenal.

¹Assumption based on Trent’s saying that he couldn’t start writing new stuff until he was out of the contract.
²Five months? It wasn’t even that long: “This music arrived unexpectedly as the result of an experiment. The rules were as follows: 10 weeks, no clear agenda, no overthinking, everything driven by impulse.”