i would rather die than give you control
my brother ed is probably seven. he barrels down the hallway into the living room where my sister and i are watching television on the couch; he launches into the air and lands dramatically, sinking his plastic teenage mutant ninja turtles scimitar into a floor cushion. "TERRIBLE LIE!" he howls. it is my fault: i have given him a case of the nine inch nails by osmosis; i laugh until i cry.
• • •
i don't know how to write about music but last night i was reminded of the existence of pretty hate machine by octavekitten and unearthed the disc (seriously, what are we supposed to do now with our books of a thousand cds, unsellable, denuded of case? they are fantastic time capsules: music i liked, 1994-2004. right?). the commute was rendered hilarious as the honda filled with menacing casio and paper-thin bass, and then trent reznor's adenoidal midwestern whine stomped along the lyrics like a bad karaoke revolution contestant. and then i died.
"sanctified," in particular, features an aggressively dorky slap bass line, the likes of which have not been heard since early depeche mode, as well as atmospheric bongos and the mandatory synth "ZAP!" sound (hard to describe, but i know you know it). yes. i know. i think a great part of the allure of NIN in the early 90s was its similarity to certain video game soundtracks; i was mainly (duh) into spooky or wizardy games, and sending a 16-bit elf warrior creeping around a pixel-haunted castle was rendered more engaging by the gothy themes that repeated, on average, every forty seconds. but so whatever, tangent, sorry, what i was attempting to get at was that there was something more indelibly lonely and nerdy about the goth/industrial/D&D crap of the 90s than previous, and pretty hate machine is in some ways a paean to that. (my sister will not let go the incident in which i découpaged, using a thousand tiny bits of torn paper, the image of trent reznor onto my trash can. this from the girl who has every backstreet doll in a box under her bed. but i digress again.)
the lyrics have not aged well. songwriters have it easier than poets in that they often get away with "telling, not showing" and doing a lot of me, me, me talk and not having to adhere to any sort of meter; this lends some universality to the song wherein the listener can feel autobiographical and participatory. when i was 14, he was singing the gospel of disillusionment, isolation, nonconformity, maaaan, and i was listening avidly. at 29 i almost crashed my car laughing at the spastic brattiness of his complaints ("now i'm slipping on the tears you've made me cry!") and the ill-articulated feelingness of his feelings, which he was feeling very feelingly ("i was feeling some feelings you wouldn't believe / sometimes i don't believe them myself" OH WOW TRENT THOSE ARE SOME IMPORTANT FEELINGS DOOD). strings of clichés compound into merry garlands of super-delicious disaffectation and whining: "i'll cross my heart, i'll hope to die/but the needle's already in my eye/and all the world's weight is on my back/and i don't even know why" [emphasis mine]. WHY, MOM?! i am reminded of the time my rave dj roommate, adam, an emaciated yet large-panted detroit native, slumped over our kitchen table in despair: "i wish i were a gourd," he muffled out from under his arms, "cos if i were a gourd, i wouldn't have a final tomorrow." DUDE: TRENT KNOWS!
any goth can tell you that the album was recorded at night while reznor worked as a janitor during the day in ohio or something, and as such it's impressive from an engineering standpoint, but his craft might have been well-served via some creative writing classes at the local community college. the choruses out-emo any eyelinered poof afoot today: that's what i get, maybe i'm all messed up, you can't take that away from me--reacting to the world as though it's an extremely large and unfair parent who denies him a promised toy, along with a healthy dose of pre-emo fear and loathing for the sake of fear and loathing. the goths who preceded him were invested in the romance of decay or in a kind of proto-punk what's-the-world-coming-to contemplation; contrariwise, reznor was bratted off that everything sucked for him, all the time. the difference seems to be that 1989, it was the exception to feel that way, not the rule; NIN offered a cretinous sanctuary for the slim percentage of the population beginning to experience a foot-stompy ennui about how shit was unfair (apparently they didn't get the memo from jareth the goblin king). of course the steamroller of industrial fuck noise barreled forward and meatheads signed on and then NIN exploded in popularity the way that, say, skinny puppy never would (their lyrics were too hard), but that was later. i'd guess it's because everyone likes to think about how pissed off and maligned and mistreated he is, in simple terms, and then wear 18-hole doc martens about it.
what surprised me the most was how sturdy "something i can never have" has remained. i had pretty hate machine on cassette, a format that allowed for two album beginnings and endings (start and end of sides A or B), and though it was the last track on side A (meaning that on a cd or ipod it comes smack in the middle of the album), it always read like the closing track to me (reznor figured it out on subsequent releases and put the real leaky-wrist numbers last). the crunchy battleship-clang noises on that track sound great, as does the contemplative piano riff; it comes off more like the moonlight sonata than a cheap melodic gimmick. but the desperation and compounding intensity of feeling (see also bauhaus "crowds," another of the great teenage breakup songs)--is that something we never lose? is that frustration, rather than an adolescent indulgence that we eventually outgrow, actually one of the first tastes of adult despair? i was still moved by the song; i am in no position to judge; i am mentally 14 forever.
• • •
claudia: Terrible lie!
brother: aahahahahaha
claudia: i'm dying
brother: wait, you are?
claudia: no i mean i'm laughing really hard, i don't have cancer or anything
brother: oh
claudia: although when i do get cancer i'll be sure to inform you by texting you NIN lyrics
• • •
i don't know how to write about music but last night i was reminded of the existence of pretty hate machine by octavekitten and unearthed the disc (seriously, what are we supposed to do now with our books of a thousand cds, unsellable, denuded of case? they are fantastic time capsules: music i liked, 1994-2004. right?). the commute was rendered hilarious as the honda filled with menacing casio and paper-thin bass, and then trent reznor's adenoidal midwestern whine stomped along the lyrics like a bad karaoke revolution contestant. and then i died.
"sanctified," in particular, features an aggressively dorky slap bass line, the likes of which have not been heard since early depeche mode, as well as atmospheric bongos and the mandatory synth "ZAP!" sound (hard to describe, but i know you know it). yes. i know. i think a great part of the allure of NIN in the early 90s was its similarity to certain video game soundtracks; i was mainly (duh) into spooky or wizardy games, and sending a 16-bit elf warrior creeping around a pixel-haunted castle was rendered more engaging by the gothy themes that repeated, on average, every forty seconds. but so whatever, tangent, sorry, what i was attempting to get at was that there was something more indelibly lonely and nerdy about the goth/industrial/D&D crap of the 90s than previous, and pretty hate machine is in some ways a paean to that. (my sister will not let go the incident in which i découpaged, using a thousand tiny bits of torn paper, the image of trent reznor onto my trash can. this from the girl who has every backstreet doll in a box under her bed. but i digress again.)
the lyrics have not aged well. songwriters have it easier than poets in that they often get away with "telling, not showing" and doing a lot of me, me, me talk and not having to adhere to any sort of meter; this lends some universality to the song wherein the listener can feel autobiographical and participatory. when i was 14, he was singing the gospel of disillusionment, isolation, nonconformity, maaaan, and i was listening avidly. at 29 i almost crashed my car laughing at the spastic brattiness of his complaints ("now i'm slipping on the tears you've made me cry!") and the ill-articulated feelingness of his feelings, which he was feeling very feelingly ("i was feeling some feelings you wouldn't believe / sometimes i don't believe them myself" OH WOW TRENT THOSE ARE SOME IMPORTANT FEELINGS DOOD). strings of clichés compound into merry garlands of super-delicious disaffectation and whining: "i'll cross my heart, i'll hope to die/but the needle's already in my eye/and all the world's weight is on my back/and i don't even know why" [emphasis mine]. WHY, MOM?! i am reminded of the time my rave dj roommate, adam, an emaciated yet large-panted detroit native, slumped over our kitchen table in despair: "i wish i were a gourd," he muffled out from under his arms, "cos if i were a gourd, i wouldn't have a final tomorrow." DUDE: TRENT KNOWS!
any goth can tell you that the album was recorded at night while reznor worked as a janitor during the day in ohio or something, and as such it's impressive from an engineering standpoint, but his craft might have been well-served via some creative writing classes at the local community college. the choruses out-emo any eyelinered poof afoot today: that's what i get, maybe i'm all messed up, you can't take that away from me--reacting to the world as though it's an extremely large and unfair parent who denies him a promised toy, along with a healthy dose of pre-emo fear and loathing for the sake of fear and loathing. the goths who preceded him were invested in the romance of decay or in a kind of proto-punk what's-the-world-coming-to contemplation; contrariwise, reznor was bratted off that everything sucked for him, all the time. the difference seems to be that 1989, it was the exception to feel that way, not the rule; NIN offered a cretinous sanctuary for the slim percentage of the population beginning to experience a foot-stompy ennui about how shit was unfair (apparently they didn't get the memo from jareth the goblin king). of course the steamroller of industrial fuck noise barreled forward and meatheads signed on and then NIN exploded in popularity the way that, say, skinny puppy never would (their lyrics were too hard), but that was later. i'd guess it's because everyone likes to think about how pissed off and maligned and mistreated he is, in simple terms, and then wear 18-hole doc martens about it.
what surprised me the most was how sturdy "something i can never have" has remained. i had pretty hate machine on cassette, a format that allowed for two album beginnings and endings (start and end of sides A or B), and though it was the last track on side A (meaning that on a cd or ipod it comes smack in the middle of the album), it always read like the closing track to me (reznor figured it out on subsequent releases and put the real leaky-wrist numbers last). the crunchy battleship-clang noises on that track sound great, as does the contemplative piano riff; it comes off more like the moonlight sonata than a cheap melodic gimmick. but the desperation and compounding intensity of feeling (see also bauhaus "crowds," another of the great teenage breakup songs)--is that something we never lose? is that frustration, rather than an adolescent indulgence that we eventually outgrow, actually one of the first tastes of adult despair? i was still moved by the song; i am in no position to judge; i am mentally 14 forever.
• • •
claudia: Terrible lie!
brother: aahahahahaha
claudia: i'm dying
brother: wait, you are?
claudia: no i mean i'm laughing really hard, i don't have cancer or anything
brother: oh
claudia: although when i do get cancer i'll be sure to inform you by texting you NIN lyrics