Nine Inch Nails @ the Hollywood Palladium 2009-09-02 - part 1
Nine Inch Nails will not be touring much, if at all, in the future, as Trent Reznor has stated he wants to work on other things he's had to put on hold for years to continue as Nine Inch Nails, so I could hardly pass up seeing one of the last few concerts (and it looks like I'll be getting to see one more thanks to the awesome jentwo) even if I haven't dug much of the recent stuff.
I knew I'd be glad I went, but I didn't realise just how happy it would make me. For like a week beforehand I'd been randomly getting this nervous excitement about it and the day of I could hardly sit still. I actually don't think I'd been that excited for a concert since the last time I saw NIN. There's actually this point when I was going to a lot of NIN concerts during the With Teeth tour that I realised it had become this totally happy thing for me, even though the music is anything but.
Trent's policy regarding any sort of recording of the final shows: "do whatever you want." The amount of cameras between me and the stage actually prevented me from getting a lot of shots I wanted (and I was pretty close to the stage), but as it turns out I managed a number of ones I like. Some of these are cropped because I had to shoot between people and holding the camera above my head and, fuck it, if that's how I'm shooting, I'm fucking cropping where appropriate.
Trent and co. played The Downward Spiral in order, in its entirety, and if you don't know, it is still my favourite album by anyone ever. I guess they did this at an earlier gig or two but I didn't know. When the first, opening POW! of "Mr Self Destruct" started, everyone went nuts, and it crossed my mind that he could in fact go on to play the whole album. Once the second song (of the show and album) came in, I thought "well, OK, the songs do go together, that's not necessarily it, I've seen bands do a couple songs in a row that go together on album before" but once "Heresy" started, everyone knew what was going on.
Post-Spiral, NIN played an assortment of non-Spiral songs, completely ignoring The Fragile (which I love) and Year Zero (for which I don't care) and Ghosts. I love The Fragile but the thing is, everything was so fucking good, it didn't matter that they didn't play anything from it. The Fragile is my friend Gabe's favourite NIN album and everything was so good he didn't even care that they didn't play anything off it, which I think sums up how motherfucking awesome the show was.
Somewhere in the midst of this, Trent began talking about artists that influenced him then brought Gary Numan out. They performed Numan's "Metal" (which NIN covered on Things Falling Apart) and "Cars." On top of how great the Gary Numan-fronted NIN versions of these songs were, everyone was fucking loving it. It wasn't "oh hey it's Gary Numan that's cool," it was everyone going even crazier.
Also, as a side note, once I walked in and found a spot in the crowd, I felt like I was surrounded by my people. I don't quite know how to explain it, there's just something about the crowd at a NIN concert. Some vibe they give off, we give off. There's been so many times over the years that I've met some random person and even without previously talking about music at all been completely unsurprised to find out they were big NIN fans.
Anyfuck, pictures!
Pre-show cello in waiting.
Above isn't quite in focus and kinda awkward, but I love the intensity on Trent.
This times however many people were there was what I was working around.
I was just watching this, from 1999 and reminded of how skinny he used to be before he traded drug addiction for working out.
Again with the not-in-focus but how can anyone come away without a picture of Trent doing squadron-of-spitfires big arms?
Big hardcore motherfucker Trent Reznor with the tambourine (the "my girlfriend wants to be in the band" instrument) never ceases to make me smile.
Above is current live bassist Justin Meldal-Johnson.
Yeah, I liked the cello, though no shots of it being played. (yet!)
Bass player again. Ended up on his side without even remembering the other side is always NIN's bass player side (though not enamoured with him as I am other bassists).
Using the "trent reznor" tag on flickr makes one who is me quite giddy. Will try to post the rest tomorrow with some semblance of commentary, after the last gig. :D (Although they're all already here.)
I knew I'd be glad I went, but I didn't realise just how happy it would make me. For like a week beforehand I'd been randomly getting this nervous excitement about it and the day of I could hardly sit still. I actually don't think I'd been that excited for a concert since the last time I saw NIN. There's actually this point when I was going to a lot of NIN concerts during the With Teeth tour that I realised it had become this totally happy thing for me, even though the music is anything but.
Trent's policy regarding any sort of recording of the final shows: "do whatever you want." The amount of cameras between me and the stage actually prevented me from getting a lot of shots I wanted (and I was pretty close to the stage), but as it turns out I managed a number of ones I like. Some of these are cropped because I had to shoot between people and holding the camera above my head and, fuck it, if that's how I'm shooting, I'm fucking cropping where appropriate.
Trent and co. played The Downward Spiral in order, in its entirety, and if you don't know, it is still my favourite album by anyone ever. I guess they did this at an earlier gig or two but I didn't know. When the first, opening POW! of "Mr Self Destruct" started, everyone went nuts, and it crossed my mind that he could in fact go on to play the whole album. Once the second song (of the show and album) came in, I thought "well, OK, the songs do go together, that's not necessarily it, I've seen bands do a couple songs in a row that go together on album before" but once "Heresy" started, everyone knew what was going on.
Post-Spiral, NIN played an assortment of non-Spiral songs, completely ignoring The Fragile (which I love) and Year Zero (for which I don't care) and Ghosts. I love The Fragile but the thing is, everything was so fucking good, it didn't matter that they didn't play anything from it. The Fragile is my friend Gabe's favourite NIN album and everything was so good he didn't even care that they didn't play anything off it, which I think sums up how motherfucking awesome the show was.
Somewhere in the midst of this, Trent began talking about artists that influenced him then brought Gary Numan out. They performed Numan's "Metal" (which NIN covered on Things Falling Apart) and "Cars." On top of how great the Gary Numan-fronted NIN versions of these songs were, everyone was fucking loving it. It wasn't "oh hey it's Gary Numan that's cool," it was everyone going even crazier.
Also, as a side note, once I walked in and found a spot in the crowd, I felt like I was surrounded by my people. I don't quite know how to explain it, there's just something about the crowd at a NIN concert. Some vibe they give off, we give off. There's been so many times over the years that I've met some random person and even without previously talking about music at all been completely unsurprised to find out they were big NIN fans.
Anyfuck, pictures!
Pre-show cello in waiting.
Above isn't quite in focus and kinda awkward, but I love the intensity on Trent.
This times however many people were there was what I was working around.
I was just watching this, from 1999 and reminded of how skinny he used to be before he traded drug addiction for working out.
Again with the not-in-focus but how can anyone come away without a picture of Trent doing squadron-of-spitfires big arms?
Big hardcore motherfucker Trent Reznor with the tambourine (the "my girlfriend wants to be in the band" instrument) never ceases to make me smile.
Above is current live bassist Justin Meldal-Johnson.
Yeah, I liked the cello, though no shots of it being played. (yet!)
Bass player again. Ended up on his side without even remembering the other side is always NIN's bass player side (though not enamoured with him as I am other bassists).
Using the "trent reznor" tag on flickr makes one who is me quite giddy. Will try to post the rest tomorrow with some semblance of commentary, after the last gig. :D (Although they're all already here.)