»10th March 2007

Nine Inch Nails

On February 28th, I went to see Nine Inch Nails at the Manchester Apollo again with JK, Eddie and JK's brother Liam. Of course it was totally awesome etc. I'm going to describe what happened, I'm going to use words like 'cool', 'awesome' and 'fantastic' a lot. One noticeable improvement you'll notice over this NIN concert blog update to the last one is that the photos this time don't suck.

The obligatory blurry, walking to the gig photo

Getting to these concerts has so often been a serious headache. People turn up late, no one knows how to get to the venue, you get lost in Manchester etc. At Slayer, I worked on the principle that I'd make a conservative estimate of how long everything would take, then I'd add an hour. So if it would take half an hour to pick people up, that would be forty five minutes, if it would take forty minutes to get from Kirklees to Manchester, I'd estimate it'd take an hour, then you add an hour for things going wrong, which they so often do. However, this time things actually went to plan, despite missing our exit and heading down the rather ominous A666 (I shit ye not, that is an actual road, which the devil actually walks upon) we managed to not get totally lost in Manchester city centre thanks to the help of a 1988 A to Z of Manchester and the combined navigational skills of the group. We even managed to get a space at the parking outside the Apollo. 'How?' you wonder, 'surely it'd be packed by the time you got there?' Well you'd be surprised to find how last time we went to NIN we finally got to the Apollo at 7:30 (half an hour late) and it still didn't look very full. Oh... yeah, and it turns out we were about an hour and twenty minutes early...

The most evil road in the UK

Of course, being so bloody early was a testament to the successful planning of this event. It was cold, sure, but we were in the queue now, which meant we'd be able to get near the front. Expecting to break even and arrive at around seven, the trip had now been pushed from the level of 'catastropic, crushing failure' into the heady realms of 'successful' and this was before we'd even gained entry to the Apollo! For those of you unfamiliar with Dr. Menzingen's research into rock concerts, I have put a copy of the scale below.

It really was quite cold, we were harassed by a variety of touts and homeless people who had put varying amounts of effort into their 'I need your money' image and 'I'm a victim of society' story. I tried to pick up as much free stuff as possible, which amounted to a flier for some goth event and a cool Beside You In Time sticker. To help the time pass we played a variety of games, from the skillful yet unhelpful 'guess the time' ("So it's half past, which means we've still got to wait another thirty minutes") to the exciting and fast-paced 'kick the polystyrene cup'. Oh what fun we had. We considered attacking or trying to somehow gain entry to one of the tour buses, because Trent would obviously still be on one of them updating the NIN website and he'd be really impressed with us and let us take a photo with him and give us a record contract. We also considered setting the bus on fire, tipping it over, or something as a kind of demonstration, which again, Trent would TOTALLY understand and respect.
Thankfully, our discussions on whether or not you really get much shelter from the wind stood behind Liam, or whether that noise from inside the Apollo was actually a sound test or cryptic clue to unravelling the meaning of Year Zero soon passed the time and after the Spiral bastards had been let in to eat all Trent's pizza and find the USB drive with all Jeordie's porn on and another new NIN song we FINALLY got into the Apollo at about 7:15 and proceeded to get good places at the front behind the Spiral bastards.

On the left, cold people and on the right, warm people

Ladytron

NIN were supported by Ladytron, who are a reasonably cool synth pop band. The band consisted of about four keyboardists, JK was pleased to hear they use the same one he has. They had a bassist who I couldn't really hear, I bet they hadn't plugged her in, or that Trent had unplugged her just to screw things up. The two singers were also refreshingly hot, but bored. I'm guessing the whole being bored and uninterested is part of their act. They had a projector set up during their set which seemed to be playing some film set in a ballet school which I'm unfamiliar with. This was pretty odd and I'm guessing Ladytron had nothing to do with it and that it was Trent messing around trying to make the band look stupid. I bet the REAL projection was some really awesome trippy visuals which really enhanced the music... Or maybe the band just have weird taste in films and stage design. Fortunately, Ladytron didn't have a complicated lighting display, so it was easy to take decent photos of them. I sought to improve from the poor quality of the last photos, so they gave me an opportunity to experiment with my camera and try and persuade it not to completely overexpose when not in direct sunlight.

Ladytron like keyboards

From what I've read of the band since, they specialise in being nonchalant on stage and moaning about how horrible their glamourous lives are. Super! But they're hot, so I don't care. Between one of their songs, someone in the crowd perfectly articulated what a significant portion of the audience were all thinking - 'show us your tits'. He was a poet amongst men. This didn't get any response, to be honest I don't think they heard him, which was a shame.

The bass player probably wasn't plugged in, though she still seemed to be enjoying herself

Ladytron's songs all sounded fairly listenable. However, to virgin ears they also sounded fairly similar. One of their songs was going on about 'when you're seventeen, they want you, but not when you're 21' I think. I'm guessing that is one of their better songs. I hadn't heard any of their stuff before, but I think I might buy one of their albums if I see it in a music shop.

Nine Inch Nails

In general, NIN once again succeeded in combining the high energy, mosh out, fist pumping songs like March of the Pigs and Burn, with the melancholy ones like Hurt and The Day The World Went Away with the more atmospheric soundscape ones like Eraser. The set was a far more ballanced one than the previous time I seen them which obviously featured a lot more of the With Teeth stuff. I was particularly pleased to see some of the more uncommon live choices like Last, which they've only recently started performing despite it appearing on 1992's Broken EP. We unfortunately didn't get to hear any of the new songs from Year Zero (though I think the Spiral event before the concert had some kind of listening event - and pizza I believe). The band seemed to be in a pretty good mood throughout, we even got some speaking from Trent along the lines of 'I thought Manchester was supposed to be hardcore, that must have been in the past' and 'You've been a very polite audience, don't have too much fun or you'll get a torch shined in your face'. This was cool as last time about all we got was a 'Good evening birmi- Manchester!'. There were numerous 'thank you's after songs, so I'm guessing the crowd was pretty decent. It was certainly pretty intense at the front. Of course, the Manchester Apollo staff were once again behaving like some police state. NO FUN ALLOWED! YOU AREN'T GOING TO ENJOY THIS!

The Set List

This is reasonably straight forward so I'll get it out of the way first. I got this set list from Echoing the Sound, because I didn't bother even attempting to keep notes of the set on my phone this time round after what happened last time.

Pilgrimage (tape intro)
Mr Self-Destruct
Last
Sin
Terrible Lie
March Of The Pigs
Something I Can Never Have
Closer
Ruiner
Burn
Wish
Help Me I Am In Hell
Eraser
The Frail
La Mer
Into The Void
The Day The World Went Away
No You Don't
Only
Hurt
The Hand That Feeds
Head Like a Hole

As you can see, the set was totally awesome. I've underlined songs which were particularly totally awesome.
NIN had a really awesome stage design. There was smoke everywhere, which I imagine would be quite annoying for people further back who probably would struggle to see through the fog. But we were pretty close to the front this time so this wasn't a problem. During Help Me I Am In Hell, they had a guy with a red light walking around on stage giving dramatic uplighting to the drummer (Josh Freese) and the guitarist (Aaron North). This was a pretty cheap idea, but it looked really cool and dramatic. Well, I assume it was part of the lighting and not just some roadie walking around trying to find his walkie talkie.

"Guys, I've lost my radio. I think Aaron has stole it again. I bet he stuck it under Josh's Toms again."
"Damn, well look, they're only playing one of the interludes. Here, have a look with this red light. I'm sure no one will see you through the fog anyway."

One of the other lighting highlights was during Eraser. They could have forked out for a giant lighting arm to reach of the crowd, but hey! Why not just get some bunker lights and get the band to swing them? That'd be SO CHEAP! Yeah, well during the drum heavy build up in Eraser, the band each got to pull the pullstrings on their bunker lights and get them swinging. This would have been corny if it wasn't during Eraser and there wasn't loads of fog. However, it instead had the effect of being REALLY COOL. Pendulum's, Damocles Sword, really I'm sure you can imagine how awesome it was, it really added to the crushing and impending feel of the song. Afterwards, I became convinced that Trent got the idea when he was cleaning his teeth in the bathroom.

"Hey, guys, I got this totally sweet idea for the gigs. We just swing some lights! Look how cool the shadows make us look!"
"That's a totally awesome idea Trent! Can I have a keyboard arm?"
"No, Alessandro! We've talked about this. You can't have the arm AND climb on the keyboards! Go to your room!"

On a more high tech note. This tour saw the return of the LED strips behind the band, which weren't used half as much as they were during the With Teeth Tour last time. If I remember correctly, these strips were particularly cool during March of the Pigs and Closer.
Even better than the lights were the projections! I got super excited and started giggling like a little girl when they fired up the projections during whichever songs that was (Eraser I think and possibly Hurt). The projection was a montage starting with Amoebas and cells, working up to herd animals and some shots of lions hunting and baboons fighting each other. Then it faded to a shot panning over rows and rows of houses. This was so totally fucking awesome, it totally fit the song, and was considering it was in the middle of a big, macho, spinach eating, fist pumping fucking NIN concert, it was surprisingly poignant.

I decided this time to buy an ass load of merchandise, seeing as how expensive merchandise is at these things, all
I came back with was a cool charcoal t-shirt with the tour dates on the back. The tour dates are interesting because some of the letters are highlighted, which spells out 'I am trying to believe', which will lead you to a bunch of interesting websites, which is part of possibly the coolest advertising campaign ever. I was only slightly disappointed not to see any NIN logo hip flasks similar to the ones that Slayer had, but that was a pretty unrealistic expectation.

I think this one was taken during Hurt

Extar, over, out.

We've got a charlie foxtrot situation here