omgwtf!

This was a fucking awesome show.

Fucking.

Awesome.

Show.

Except he fucking shaved his head. Not bald, but far worse: it’s all fuzzy like. :( He looked like a depressed, pale Henry Rollins, except Trent is actually good looking. The wacky haircut totally killed my boner, though. That, and anxiety over whether I was going to fall down the crazy stairs on the way out. Here’s a picture of the band from Saturday afternoon, probably during sound check at the Bowl. Trent is the tiny little bald man in the middle. You can tell he’s a rock star because he’s wearing sunglasses.

Heh.

This was a fucking awesome show.

Fucking.

Awesome.

Show.

Except he fucking shaved his head. Not bald, but far worse: it’s all fuzzy like. :( He looked like a depressed, pale Henry Rollins, except Trent is actually good looking. The wacky haircut totally killed my boner, though. That, and anxiety over whether I was going to fall down the crazy stairs on the way out. Here’s a picture of the band from Saturday afternoon, probably during sound check at the Bowl. Trent is the tiny little bald man in the middle. You can tell he’s a rock star because he’s wearing sunglasses.

Heh.

Last night’s show had some of the best sound I’ve ever heard at any venue, too; it was clean and sharp and rich and full and fucking unbelievably loud and right in my head. The vocals were amazing; right out front of the music. The sound of this concert was nearly pulverizing: the music itself punished you physically and the vocals were like a buzzsaw…but in a good way. Very nearly orgasmically satisfying. It would have been, had I not been worried about those goddamn stairs.

The guy who is sort of a secondary vocalist…a little more prominent than a lead backup would be…is the guy on the extreme left in the photo. He has a superb voice for NIN stuff…so raw and brutal it bleeds…and he added a great dimension to the music. I think that might be Aaron, but I’m not sure because I dont know the new band by name yet. I just know that they fucking rock.

I have to say that I think Aaron has a pretty good sense of humour. I dont know if he really is gay, but he’s a funny guy nonetheless. Or maybe it’s just that I like jokes about dudes taking up the ass. And videos.

The drummer, Jerome Dillon, was on stage even though everyone is expecting him to go into the hospital any minute now because of a very recently discovered heart problem that he has to get tended to immediately. They didnt expect him at this show…the band, or anyone else…but he played anyway, and a backup drummer was backstage, just in case. I’m particularly impressed with Jerome, because he was an eyepoppingly talented drummer whose performance was probably the physical equivalent of running the Boston fucking Marathon. You have to have about eight arms to drum effectively for a live NIN show and this guy made that job his bitch on Saturday night. He was nothing short of astounding. Well done, Jerome. I’m glad you played my show. You’re one hell of a musician. Now go get your heart fixed, you asshole.

A major portion of the NIN show has always been lights and video FX. He has ‘em, and he has ‘em good. Last night’s visual fare was delightful to behold. He had a bunch of jagged cutout shapes on stage…reminiscent of, let’s say, rotted digital teeth, or decayed circuitry…that served as a brilliant backdrop for the light and video projection during the evening. They opened the show with Terrible Lie, always a giant favourite and a really good song to beat you up with and tenderize you for the festivities to come, and sang it from behind a massive, sheer curtain panel that covered the entire front of the bandshell stage.

I couldn’t tell for sure what color the curtain was, because by the time NIN finally came on stage (around 9:20), the sun was well down and only the house lights were on and it was hard to see if the colour was actually a very sheer black or a light gray or maybe even white, but I dont think so. Whatever the colour, though, it made for a really cool visual with the lights and the smoke and the band lurking around behind it so that their shadows were big and rock and rolly, and wee Trent there in the middle singing and bouncing around like a demented, gothic Tigger.

Trent Reznor has a pretty amusing live show habit: when he is singing, he tends to stay pretty still and lean on the mic. But the instant he moves back from the mic he begins this manic bouncing that he is almost powerless to stop. During concerts, he is imbued with the secret of perpetual (frenetic) motion. I can’t believe the guy doesn’t need two weeks’ vacation after a single show.

So yeah the lights and video this time around were not disappointing; quite the contrary, they were even better than the Fragility tour. I love a good, rich, bright, well done light show, and he had not only awesome color but really well done projected video that wasn’t grainy or washed out. As well, they had some shape filters on the lights that made them into twirly bits and starry bits and just added a lot of class to the whole thing.

One real highlight to the evening was during one part of the video show that I’d heard about previously but forgotten; apparently it has caused some controversy for Trent and he’s been questioned on it during interviews. On the newest NIN CD, With Teeth, there’s a song called Right Where It Belongs. During this song, the sheer curtain was down over the stage again, and the video portion of the show was going on. The visual backdrop of this song was some extremely graphic footage of victims of war, interspersed with people dressed in formal evening attire dancing in a ballroom. Trent Reznor was lit with a single, bright amber spot and was visible through the screen, singing this song against the backdrop. It was pretty powerful imagery.

As some of the more intense images flashed on the screen, I saw people averting their eyes and gasping. Some of the women around me made audible sounds of horror and disgust, and I myself had to look away at a few scenes. It was kind of like seeing a chainsaw murder at a birthday party: the contrast was jarring and immensely effective, especially set against the quiet of the song. Trent Reznor does really quiet songs better than anyone, because he’s the only guy I know who is able to put across that private madness in such a way that it strikes everyone who hears it silent.

Toward the end of the song, people were pretty quiet, just getting into the whole experience. Suddenly, the video switched back to the ballroom scene, and one couple was focused in the center of the screen, with the man’s back presented to the audience. I knew who it was instantly and I leapt to my feet; every aspect of this man’s despised form is acid-etched into my brain. However, most of the rest of the crowd…though not all…took a few seconds until the couple twirled in slow motion so that the woman’s face was gradually revealed: a smiling Laura Bush, dancing with her husband.

The booing, scattered around the audience, started the instant they flashed onto the screen (I began booing insanely when I jumped up), and grew louder and louder until finally as they spun around and George Bush’s grinning, foolish face came into view, almost…most, but not all…everyone in the arena was booing madly at the stage. Then the scene changed and the booing died down and some folks laughed uncomfortably, as though they had all just been caught by their mothers masturbating in the bathroom.

The Bushes weren’t displayed with horns and pitchforks; it was simply a few second long segment of them ballroom dancing at some White House function. There were no personal negative connotations against the Bushes themselves. The image simply fit within the context of the song. The audience booed them all on their own.

It was fucking brilliant.

The only problem I had with the light show this time around was that they had one bright spot at the back of the stage, dead center, low down so it was behind Trent, and of course since he rarely ever stands still, that light beamed me directly in the eyeball so that whenever it was on, I couldn’t watch the show directly. The Bowl has four giant video monitors set up, flanking the stage two on either side, so I didnt miss much, but the cameras focus on the band members so whenever that spotlight was on I missed the stage show.

However, that was cool; for the most part it wasn’t much of a hindrance. The light show was a real treat, and other bands would do well to watch a guy who knows how it’s done and learn some lessons. I’ve seen NIN live twice now, and it remains one of the best live shows ever. Totally worth the $60 ticket.

NIN has a hard time accepting any negative opinions on their opening acts; they say that anyone who says the bands that open their tours suck is insulting NIN’s taste in music, because they only play with bands they really like.

They had two opening bands last night. The first one was Autolux (no fucking clue, don’t give a shit) and…frog help me…Queens Of The Stone Age.

Now, there were plenty of folks in the audience who seemed to appreciate this band, but I can’t say that I will ever be one of them. This band sucked so hard I can’t even believe they ever got a record contract in the first place. The lead singer also made a joke about liking cock, though, so even though he looked like some kind of corporate consultant, that earned him some points in my book. Again, I dont know if he’s gay or not, but it doesnt matter. I appreciate dudes who are comfortable enough with their sexuality to announce publicly that they would like nothing more than a little stiff dicking. It’s the pervert in me. I’m weak and helpless against it.

All the same, though, I will never buy a Queens Of The Stone Age record, because this band was unequivocally awful. It was like listening to a calliope fall apart. Like a collision of a horse drawn cart and a one man band. Like a clockwork explosion, only less tuneful. And their light show was pathetic. Maybe the guy who was operating the switches was on Quaaludes or maybe he thought he was in Bermuda or something. If it was a computer programmed lighting sequence then they need to fire that fucking engineer. I couldn’t wait for these motherfuckers to get the hell off the stage. They were so bad I nearly booed them. They played for 45 or 50 interminable minutes.

So I have to say to the guys in Nine Inch Nails that I’m very sorry if you take this personally, but if your idea of a great band is Queens Of The Stone Age, then you have some shitty ass taste in music. They fucking suck. I would have walked out…maybe even bought one of those criminally costly beers…if I weren’t so intimidated by the stairs.

I was totally not in the mood to see this show, you know. I had seriously considered not going, except, man, Nine Inch Nails! I had to go. This frequently happens whenever I have tickets or plans to attend an event of some kind. Part of it is sheer laziness, but part of it is just a dislike of being around people. I’ll get to that in a second.

The whole evening was sort of surreal because I was in a new, unfamiliar venue (first time at the Hollywood Bowl for me), I had been feeling quite phenomenally unwell all week right up to that afternoon about two hours before I left for the show, the directions I printed out to get to the zoo, where the shuttle closest to me is located, turned out to have left off some critical street names and I had to rush back to the house to check the information, and I had a couple of concerns about my legs making it through all the walking and climbing that had to be done…I’m alarmingly weak in the legs since all the medical crap, and have done nothing in earnest to address any sort of rehab exercise, so my legs give out at completely unexpected moments if I’m not really careful.

Now, add the people. I am weirded out by California crowds. These are some fucking strange people out here. I’ve been in large crowds of Californiains a number of times now and I have to say that theyre just odd enough to be almost a different species. I know, youre saying “well, how are they odd?” I wish I could tell you. I just dont know how to explain it, except to say that I don’t like being around them. It’s not that theyre necessarily dangerous or unpleasant in a bad sort of way, it’s just that theyre so…they’re so odd. Not Addams Family odd, cause that would be like OMIGAWD I’M LIVING HERE FOREVER. Sort of…corporate white folks odd, no matter what flavour they happen to be. Brady Bunch movie without the humour odd. I dont know how to explain it.

So that added a truly surreal quality to the event right there, and it was difficult to get past that. I never liked being in large crowds anyway except at some rock and roll shows…I’ve always felt very much at home and comfortable in KISS and AC/DC crowds, for example…but I’ve never felt so alien in any crowd of people as I do in California crowds, like I’m the only person who knows everyone else on board the Enterprise is hallucinating or something.

That being said, it was also the most varied crowd I’ve ever seen at any concert, ever. There were white haired old black ladies and middle aged Mexican couples, there were groups of dudes in their fifties with bellies and gold watches. There were the freaks and the bimbos and the regular guys and their girlfriends, and there were yuppies and dirtbags and middle aged professional mothers of 18 year old twins who, when they were four or five years old, used to complain about their sibling looking out “their” car window until finally she told them they’re MY windows and shut the hell up and sit still for gawd’s sake. I sat next to her on the bus, and she was just about as empty-headed as a peahen. I can only assume that by “professional” she meant that she didnt work at Taco Bell for free. She called me brave for going to the concert alone. (?!)

It was the most bizarre gathering of people ever, and to know that they were all assembled to see Nine Inch Nails, of all bands, nearly gave me a brain sprain. I couldn’t get my mind around it. It was hilarious. I have no complaints about any of the people at the show; there wasn’t a single problem, I wasn’t actually annoyed or irritated by anyone at all during any portion of the evening (except for the routine undercurrent of annoyance I feel when I’m around other people: what I call my “stupidity radar”).

It was a well mannered crowd, they drank the shockingly overpriced beer and rocked and cheered and clapped and sang and enjoyed the show. It’s just that about half of the audience was made up of people I would have never in a hojilliion years put at a NIN concert. I’ve never even seen a crowd like that at a KISS show, and before last night, a KISS audience was the most happily varied crowd I’d ever been amongst. So I dont know if it’s NIN or if it’s California that produced that crowd, but I do have to say well done. It was a pleasure meeting you…in that sense, anyway. I wouldn’t necessarily invite any of you to dinner. Nothing personal.

Now, the Hollywood Bowl.

Right off the bat, I have to say that I was really impressed with this venue. The major problem with the Hollywood Bowl is getting there; the parking was like $40 per car because it’s so limited there; however, they have set up a good number of options for folks to get to the show, such as park and ride locations and the Bowl Shuttle service, which is what I took advantage of.

In my case, I parked for free at the Los Angeles Zoo (C for Camel lot!) and for a paltry $3.00 round trip ticket, was delivered in luxurious, traffic-anxiety free comfort to the very doorstep of the Hollywood Bowl, which is in the foothills of the mountains that make up Griffith Park. The observatory is also located nearby, and it’s a really beautiful, massive park right smack in the middle of Los Angeles. Kind of like Central Park, only mountains instead. Very cool. A plus for this venture was that I discovered how easy it is to get to the LA Zoo from my house. Awesome.

Because of the stupid information-free driving directions I had printed out and had to go back to correct, I got to the zoo lot a lot later than I wanted to, but still in plenty of time to catch the shuttle. The bus was very nice; it even had a sort of plush velour on the seats, there were no insane hobos, and nothing smelled like piss, which is a welcome change from my Nassau Coliseum days. All this disease-free convenience for only three measly bucks!

It took about 20 minutes to get to the Bowl, and they have it all set up there so that the buses, when they arrive to drop people off, get to drive along a traffic-free sort of middle lane set up specifically for the purpose of cutting through traffic for vehicles like buses and, I would imagine, emergency vehicles. No cop car or ambulance could get through the cluster-fuck on the roads outside the Hollywood Bowl on any event night without such a benefit. Very intelligent on the part of the planners. The bus dropped us off right at the foot of the Odin Path, which is the main road on the grounds that leads up to the amphitheater seating.

When I stepped off the bus I was assailed by the surprising smell of a lot of cooking food: there were all kinds of food places and stuff open there, which I didnt expect. I’m used to going to concerts where if you can get a fucking beer, you’re lucky. So this was pretty posh. I wanted to look around and see what was there, but a massive crowd was assembled and I decided that it would be too risky. I thought NIN was going to go on at 8:00 and it was already 7:10. The crowd was so large I couldn’t see as I would have any time to make my seat before then, so I got in there and waited. They were searching people on the way in; a lot of folks were asking what the hold up was and it seemed to me to be pretty obvious but eh, what the hell.

I was shocked to find myself at the security gates in about 10 or 15 minutes, a very short time considering the size of the crowd waiting behind them. A very pleasant security guard patted me down. She was separating the men and the women into two lines so that the women got patted down by the female guards, and it seemed to be too much for any of the men in line to understand. This woman must have repeated herself about five hundred and sixty three times and still there were dudes in the line who insisted on squeezing in and giving you dirty looks if you tried to get past them. I had to tell one guy that was in front of me dude, the woman is saying that the men’s line is right there, you can’t get in on this line. He said “oh!” and obligingly switched lines, but what the hell, dude, this broad is screaming in your ear for 10 minutes now!

It was no big deal, though, and she took a peek into my bag, felt me up a little, and insisted that I throw away the cap on my water bottle. (?) I obliged, said thanks, and she said, “enjoy the show.” All the security people and house crew were extremely pleasant and friendly and it was really awesome.

The grounds were clean for having a crowd of several thousand people trampling round the place. I checked out the merch booths (no programs for this tour, goddamn it), and had a minor stroke when I saw the signs on the beer stands asking for $7.50 for a 16 ounce Heinekin ($7.00 for regular old non-imported horsepiss). I would have had a beer, but fuck $7.50, man. It’s beer.

They had actual escalators to take you up the suicidally steep hill; I would have liked to walk up to see the place better but A) I was worried about my endurance and B) I was afraid of missing the start of the show, which is always really good. So, I took the escalators, which had security stationed at the top and bottom of each flight…there was security and house crew everywhere, and not one of them was an asshole…and I asked around until I found out how to get to my section. I hung around outside the seating area until the band that was on stage finished playing, and then when the house lights came up I went on in and had to ask a number of people to point me in the right direction, all of whom were very pleasant and helpful.

I got to my seat in a few minutes (after nearly toppling backwards down the stairs, which was why I was giving them dirty, apprehensive looks the rest of the evening), and settled myself to have a good look around.

My seat was dead center stage, straight back into the second…maybe third, I’m not sure…mezzanine. I couldn’t have gotten any more center stage if I’d placed a chair there myself. So it turns out that the seat picker on the Hollywood Bowl website is fantastic and really reliable. I watched folks moving around the arena, which was nestled into the hills and surrounded by lush green growth. The air smelled good and it was nice and cool and the sunset was pretty.

The stage crew broke down the set and I saw a backdrop of some trees against a black background that should have clued me in right away that NIN was not up next; for some reason, though, I was so out of it yesterday that it never registered in my head. I thought it was weird, but you never know with NIN, and I just wasn’t thinking right.

As I sat there gazing around and feeling all strange and out of body, the single unpleasant feature of the Hollywood Bowl made itself intimately known to me: the seating is brutally uncomfortable. Theyre plain wooden benches designed by the Marquis de Sade, and now I understand why on the website it says you’re welcome to bring cushions. I shall never again attend a Hollywood Bowl performance bereft of cushions, and if you treasure your bottom, neither should you. You have been warned. It was pretty bad, but that is really the only complaint I have about the Hollywood Bowl. Overall, it’s a great arena with awesome sound and wonderful atmosphere. I would recommend it to anyone and I can’t wait to see another show there, especially since I’ll know my way around next time.

Getting home was just as easy as getting to the Bowl, though I had been concerned about it because I didnt know where the return shuttle stop was located. Turns out it was a very short walk from the bottom of the hill, and I only had a hard time getting directions from the security guard I asked because he was busy trying to convince me to give him my phone number. I told him no, shook his hand, his buddy gave me the directions (through the tunnel, first right up the stairs) and bang, there was the bus with a big ZOO sign tucked between the dash and the windshield.

I got on; the bus driver seemed wholly uninterested in inspecting my ticket. A few minutes later, the doors closed and we rolled. I was home in a half hour. Well, a little more, since I stopped at the grocery store on the way back. There was a girl there with a t-shirt that said “I fucked your boyfriend.” I complimented her on it. It more than made up for the troglydite two rows in front of me at the concert who was wearing a shirt that said “Sports. Beer. Women.” I wanted to slap his girlfriend.

All in all, I had a most excellent time Saturday night. I’m glad that I took the chance and went. I felt fine the whole evening, didnt fall down, didnt get lost, and it was a fucking brilliant show that complimented a fucking brilliant album.

If I hadnt had that odd surreal feeling going on, I would have had a truly magnificent time. As it was, though, I thoroughly enjoyed myself, and am now a big fan of the Hollywood Bowl. And another arena under my belt. :) Next time, I’ll go early and drink some beer and hang out and look around. It’ll be fun!

How’s your weekend going so far?

nine inch nails – updates from trent

[10_02_2005]
Whew…
We played the Hollywood Bowl last night and it felt really good onstage. I’d like to personally thank Jerome for giving it his all, and Josh Freese for working his ass off to play if he was needed. We will fill you in on our plans in that department soon.

1:02pm_PST