TRENT REZNOR FULFILLS MY TEENAGE DREAM
Monday, August 24th, 2009 at 1:00pm by Gary Suarez
Last night, I was among the privileged few permitted to attend the Nine Inch Nails show at Webster Hall, the second of four sold-out NYC club shows from the arena-filling industrial rock act. The setlist from the previous night at Bowery Ballroom appeared heavy with newer songs, which admittedly had me pretty skeptical walking into one of my least favorite venues in this city. That fat stinking sweaty territorial assholes had commandeered spots on the balcony railings to bootleg the show only added to my sense of dread that the show would disappoint. I found a halfway decent spot on the upper level and braced myself for the shitty sight lines and poor ventilation that defines Webster Hall concert experience.
Fortunately, Trent Reznor had something special in store for the crowd that would make up for everything: playing the entire The Downward Spiral LP from start to finish.
1994’s The Downward Spiral was one of the most influential records for this writer. As a young man, it would mark the beginning of my immersion into the murky world of industrial music, one that I would not emerge from for roughly a decade. In my mopey angsty teens, I played it hundreds of times on my Aiwa all-in-one stereo. So when NIN opened last night’s show with “Mr. Self Destruct” and immediately followed it with “Piggy”, I knew that I was about to experience one of the greatest concerts of my life. Sure enough, when the third song in the set was “Heresy”, there wasn’t a fan in the room that didn’t know what was going down.
From that point on, it was all about anticipating the next song much like one would if playing it on a CD player back in the day. “March Of The Pigs” was celebratory and fierce, while “Closer” pulsed with sex and sweat in the steamy venue. Interludes like “A Warm Place” and the title track offered some reprieve from the ferocity and bombast of “Big Man With A Gun” and “Reptile”. Naturally, closing with “Hurt” felt so natural and cathartic that the energetic audience largely settled down to let Reznor softly sing his most perfect ballad. After the applause died down, the band–which featured The Downward Spiral period guitarist Robin Finck–delivered another ten tracks from their discography, including deep cuts from Broken (”Gave Up”, “Physical”, “Suck”) and Pretty Hate Machine (”Head Like A Hole”, “Terrible Lie”) along more recent songs like “1,000,000″ and “The Hand That Feeds”.
What made this concert so special is that this is the very first time NIN has played The Downward Spiral in its entirety live. Sure, if you saw the band play back in the mid-nineties, you’d likely have heard most of that album, but probably not every song and certainly not in the original running order. The fifteen year old me would have loved this show almost as much as I did.
-GS
[Gary Suarez tried. Gary Suarez gave up. He usually manages the consistently off-topic No Yoko No. Say, why don't you follow him on Twitter?]
damn….. thats rad.
Gary, you are one lucky son of a bitch.
I saw NIN several years ago in Oakland during the Fragile tour and it was awesome, but to see them play The Downward Spiral in it’s entirety…..I hate you.
lol i got baked to that album yesterday
dammit!
i was so underwhelmed by the jones beach show, I passed on this.
my high school self just just punched me in the balls
It pretty much has been regarded as one of the best NIN shows, period. Hardcore fans who have witnessed dozens of NIN sets are heralding it as a landmark performance. Still my favourite NIN record and I echo Gary’s sentiments that it is probably the album that influenced me the most growing up
This would mark the second so-called landmark NIN performance I’ve attended. I was one of the “miserable muddy fuckheads” at Woodstock.
Holy shit. I wish I would’ve been there!!!
Damm I wish NIN will come to my country but I guess being a Third World Plantain Eater is not Worth it, Instead we have the Killers XD lol
Add me to the list of huge fans of TDS. I would probably put it in my top 5 favorite albums of all time… top 10 at the very least. To see it performed live would have been truly incredible.
Well, knowing Trent, at the very least I’m sure he’ll make the audio available to the public before too long. If we’re lucky, maybe there’ll be video too.
DAAAAAAAAAAMN!!!!! TDS is my favorite album of all time!!!!! damnit!!!!!
I used to get home from school at the age of 15, and just eat toast with my mate and listen to this on bought tape… Tapes… amazing.
Reznor needs to re-release the “closure” set on dvd, I had it on VHS and it was awesome.
He’s been trying to for years but it’s all tied up in label bureaucracy.
A copy did “mysteriously” show up on a lot of peer to peer file sharing sites a while ago. This was accompanied by a message from Trent saying
“12/21/2006 : HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
This one is a guilt-free download.
(shhhh – I didn’t say that out loud).
If you know what I’m talking about, cool.”
http://www.ninwiki.com/Closure
It had all the original videos and footage, plus a making of feature regarding the Closer video and a few other extras. It’s still out there if you look around.
I’m not much of a downloader.
I will say this for Reznor, though, he seems to be weathering the era of downloading a lot better than other artist, he gives The Slip away for free off NIN.com and supposedly leaks Closure…
Good for him, now that he is putting NIN to sleep, It will be interesting to see what he cooks up in the years to come.
He’s not putting NIN to sleep… he just doesn’t plan to tour.
At least, that’s the impression that I got.
I still have it on VHS. Too bad I have no VHS player.
I also have a copy of the infamous “Broken” video on VHS.
I wonder if the one you are talking about is the same one a saw a looong time ago which was sort of like a snuff film.
That video was awesome.
No, that’s “Broken,” Closure is more of a straight forward tour video from the Self Destruct era. I have both on my computer in pretty much the best quality to be found unless they get a re-release.
I’m really hoping that it’s just touring that Reznor’s taking a break from. I really don’t like the thought of a world without NIN.
that’s cool as shit. i dig when bands do an entire album live.
Whoa. That’s awesome.
The only thing that compares for me is seeing Slayer play ‘Reign In Blood’ in its entirety at Roseland in NYC.
Saw them with Jane’s Addiction a couple months ago. Killer set, though a little heavy on the new stuff. They did play one of the deep cuts you mentioned (Physical), but they also played my favorite instrumental/interlude track he’s ever recorded (La Mer), but I was a little underwhelmed…this show would’ve been incredilble.
P.S. On bands playing the entire album straight….I think it’s awesome if it’s a concept album, where each song is connected in some way. I saw BTBAM play straight through “Colors” last year, and it was incredible.
I saw the tour with Janes Addiction and while NIN put on an a great show, they’re set was really truncated by having JA close. I would have given my left nut to go to that Webster Hall show.
I really hope they release this footage.. if not on DVD.. online in it’s entireity at some point. Trent’s needs to do something with these last concerts for all of us douches that couldn’t go.
NIN is worth the 6 hour trip to LA.
Really, the only way my NIN teenage fantasy could be fulfilled is if Trent had some sort of time machine that turned *him* back about fifteen years, when I actually had a teen crush on the man. The ’90s may have had tons of shit wrong with it, but damn if NIN wasn’t one of the highlights then… I got into metal literally through industrial music, first. Cassette taped a lot of Nails live songs from the radio (along with many other, unfortunate songs I won’t admit to ever liking *lol*).
Wow.
I got a boner just thinking about what that had to be like.
Pretty cool. But ‘The Fragile’ would’ve blown it out of the water. I’ve always thought that was NIN’s magnum opus. But of course, all of you will vehemently disagree. Readyyyy GO
I was there. Flew there from florida for the weekend. I’ve seen NIN at many shows but this took the cake. My favorite NIN show ever and top 2 overall shows of my lifetime. =)
as one of the “fat stinking sweaty territorial assholes had commandeered spots on the balcony railings to bootleg the show” I’m quite glad I and others did tape the show as NIN wasn’t recording this legendary performance.
http://tinyurl.com/lo7b75