»15th July 2009

Nine Inch Nails

I went to see Nine Inch Nails for the third time last night with JK and JK's brother Liam. Last time and the time before, I seen NIN at the Apollo in Manchester, however this time it was at the Manchester Arena. This was cool because as demonstrated by Slayer, it's cool to see bands at different venues. As with Slayer in November, my phone was able to take reasonable photos of the event, far more reasonably than my shit camera can manage. Let's go!

Getting There

Wasn't an issue at all this time. I had spent the morning in the special needs dungeon and left my fake-job early at lunch. We drove there in the car and managed to find some parking near the Manchester Arena. As an added bonus, because one of the guys had to direct the parking and must have gotten distracted we ended up not paying, which was cool.
When we drive to gigs I usually make mix tapes, well previously they've been mix minidiscs but seeing as in the intervening years since the last time I made one of those we've all taken a collective step backwards from minidiscs, this time I had to make it on CD. Why am I mentioning this you ask? (Seriously, were you actually asking that?) Well, the general theme was Nine Inch Nails b-sides and rarities seeing as we'd be listening to an evening of the big songs and singles anyway. So lots of b-sides from singles, and non-album songs went on there inbetween some general music I thought would be appropriate. One of the songs was one of the remixes NIN did of David Bowie's 'I'm Afraid of Americans' (apparently I'm one of the four people in the world who like 90's Bowie.) That particular song was a source for a Holy Shit! moment later on.


That's what the Arena looks after a concert. It looks similar before a concert, only with less litter and fewer sweaty people.

There was a minor farce once we'd arrived at the Arena and had to pick up tickets. I had bought two tickets from the nin.com presale where there was a stupid two-tickets-per-person limit, so JK had to buy another ticket later in the general sale. We didn't have any trouble picking up JK's ticket from the ticket office, however, the presale tickets had their own special entrance which the woman in the normal ticket office gave very shaky directions toward. After some wandering around the Arena foyer (where I bought a tour t-shirt which later turned out to an American Large which is actually a European Medium and thus a bit smaller than I prefer) and then some wandering around Victoria Station and then finally outside the Station/Arena we finally found the presale area which was a short queue leading up to two rickety fold out tables with a sign saying 'Presale tickets available from 3pm onwards'. It was 6pm so we'd missed whatever special presale things there were. JK had his ticket so Liam and I were given special presale tickets (which had better graphics than the normal tickets.) and then filed inside to meet up with JK with his normal ticket.
'So what was the actual point of the presale?' Ah! Well if I'd read my presale email it would have told me we'd have been let in significantly earlier so as to get right to the front. And why didn't I read that email? Because it was only sent to me at 9am on the day of the concert, after I'd planned everything with JK and whilst I was at my fake-job at the school. Yeah, apparently fake-teaching-assistants can't just sit in class hitting F5 on Outlook.

Irritatingly, to add to the ticket farce was the fact that there were still tickets on sale at the ticket office. Irritating because the original plan was for Mark History to also come along but because of the two-ticket-per-person presale limit and the chaos of the general sale, this didn't happen.

Mew

Mew were a band I'd not heard of prior to the gig, I must have checked out their Myspace or something when I found out they were supporting NIN and didn't think much of them. I was therefore surprised when they weren't total shit. I think the guitarist said they were from Coventry or something, which was odd because they sounded American and the guitarist looked like Brian Adams. It finally twigged halfway through their set that they were actually more likely from Canada, which would explain why their guitarist looks like Brian Adams.


Mew's light set up was pretty straightforward making taking photos easy. They didn't move around too much, the singer was almost stationary throughout.

I had bought some noise reducing ear plugs prior to the gig since my ears were ringing for about three days after Slayer. I had them in for most of Mew so I wouldn't be entirely deaf by the time NIN came around. With the ear plugs on it became clear that Mew's kick drum was far too subwoofy and was spoiling their sound because when there wasn't a drummer, miraculously you could actually hear them really well.
One of the more surprising things Mew did was have frequent acapella sections and harmony singing. In summary, I'd describe them as A Flock of Seagulls meets?

Jane's Addiction


Jane's Addiction surprisingly were the only ones to use the projector (didn't Trent know they had one?) and they had what I presume is their classic intro video playing before they came on.

According to the greater knowledge of xiola.org (the ETS for JA apparently) this was Jane's Addiction's set list.

Three Days
Whores
Ain't No Right
Then She Did...
Up On The Beach
Mountain Song
Been Caught Stealing
Ocean Size
Ted, Just Admit It...
Stop!


Perry Farrel had a good rapport with the crowd and kept asking us to 'be gentle, be tender, you mean a lot to us.' I thought this was cool, idiots in the crowd thought it was 'gay'.

I'd of course heard of Jane's Addiction prior to the gig but I'm not a massive expert on them, owning a whole three songs by them, two of which were new songs from the NIN/JA tour EP (this was actually the Wave Goodbye tour, apparently. NIN/JA was North America only) and the other being an arrangement called 'Sex Is Violent' from the Natural Born Killers Soundtrack (what a surprise, Trent Reznor produced that as well, he really does try hard to turn you onto new music.) So, I was going into Jane's Addiction's set knowing nearly nothing about the band apart from: Trent thinks they're cool; they split up and Trent helped reformed them; and Dave Navarro is a good guitarist.


Perry also name-dropped Joy Division and the Hacienda which got a good reception from the crowd.

One of the more coherent things I heard from people who were standing around me in the crowd was that 'once you've heard one Jane's song, you've heard them all.' This seemed a bit unfair but they did have a strong line in bass-led songs with spaced out vocals and a big-ass guitar lead.


Perry had cool trousers and pranced around a lot in them. Again, I thought this was cool, crowd idiots thought otherwise.

Jane's Addiction were hands down the coolest bunch of motherfuckers all night: Dave Navarro between big riffs and solos didn't do much in terms of moving around, but didn't have to; Eric Avery was surprisingly animated for a bass player and did some odd stomping around in a circle at one point; Perry Farrell must have a degree in showmanship or something, his gallivanting was spot on; I just realised I can't remember what the drummer was doing at all.


Dave Navarro took centre-stage here for another great solo.

Amazingly, the one Jane's Addiction song I could actually recognise was played towards the end of the gig, it was 'Ted, Just Admit It' which must be what 'Sex Is Violent' was culled from. The vocals and bass leads here were particularly good.


I got a lot of photos of Jane's. Not sure what Eric Avery is doing here.

Nine Inch Nails


Cool photos like this are really easy to take whilst NIN have such cool lighting.

I'd vaguely heard of Nine Inch Nails before the gig but- no, I have a near-complete halo collection, half of their albums also on vinyl and a ninwiki module wired directly into my brain. Every time they've come round to Manchester since I've been into them, I've been to see them. Here's the set list.

Somewhat Damaged
Terrible Lie
Heresy
March Of The Pigs
Piggy
Metal
The Becoming
I'm Afraid Of Americans
Burn
Gave Up
La Mer
The Fragile
Gone, Still
The Way Out Is Through
Wish
Survivalism
Suck
The Day The World Went Away
The Hand That Feeds
Head Like A Hole
Hurt

First impressions from that set list? Well, Somewhat Damaged is an awesome way to open a show, it was particularly cool to hear that one though I think I preferred Mr. Self Destruct opening the show like last time.
Heresy was a welcome addition, last time it Ruiner that was the Downward Spiral song I enjoy but didn't expect to see. March of the Pigs is always awesome and Piggy naturally follows it and gave everyone in a mosh pit a break. Trent did his throwing the mic into the crowd thing during Piggy, I didn't notice if he did his uppercut/dragon punch during March because it was pretty nuts in the pit.
Metal, The Becoming and (Holy Shit!) I'm Afraid of Americans were all totally unexpected and near-orgasmic. The Becoming is a song I never thought would work live, but with the current line-up at least, it certainly did. They should play 'I'm Afraid of Americans' a LOT more often, it sounds really good.


I think this was during Piggy.

Next up were concert staples, Burn and Gave Up. At this point, the crowd went nuts again. When a big pit opened for Burn I was able to make my way across it and got about fifteen feet closer to the stage which was good.
After a two song mosh-out, there was a merciful four-song slow/quiet section which was a relief. This section was the single most exciting thing since Metal/The Becoming/I'm Afraid of Americans and was totally what I wanted to hear that night, i.e. an And All That Could Have Been/Fragile-era live set. These four songs were just as excellent as the And All That Could Have Been DVD suggests. It's really great seeing NIN when they're in that big, intro/outro mode. The only thing that could have made this section better would be if they'd played The Great Below.
It was starting to get very sweaty, I was trying to push myself away from this awful t-shirtless guy who reminded me of Ralph Wiggum who was doing this irritating hippy dance all the time.


Earlier on in the set, most likely before Burn. I kept trying to get photos whilst the strobes were going since you can get some interesting effects.

Things went nuts again for Wish and I endeavoured to get away from Ralph with a modicum of success. At another point I ended up in the stifling company of couples who don't seem to get it that the mosh pit in the middle of Burn is not where you're supposed to make out. Seriously, you can relax your vice-like bear-hug on your girlfriend, she is not going to float away.


More strobing. The strobes were used liberally during the fast/loud songs.

Irritating crowd people aside, Wish and Survivalism (the first and only Year Zero song of the night) swiftly followed and saw the crowd once again go nuts, I had found a pretty decent central position by this point and had to work quite hard to stay there. Survivalism was a lot better live than I thought it was going to be but I was getting pretty tired by this point and was hoping for another lull in the crowd.
Third cover of the night was Suck and was most welcome to give me a bit of relaxation. Suck is quite a slow, bassy song, it does get quite loud and guitary in the chorus but it is not a moshing song, it just looks ridiculous. The Day The World Went Away followed which I always enjoy live, still, the crowd didn't get that you can't circle pit to The Day... either.


Robin Finck had his electro-accoustic out for a few songs. This might be Metal.

The final salvo saw the night's one and only With Teeth song, The Hand That Feeds which I'm usually quite lukewarm to but which works really well live for some reason. The crowd was showing signs of fatigue now as well and the furious moshing of March had given way to disorganised jostling during this final section. Head Like A Hole simply had to be played and was entirely what you'd expect from it. To close we got Hurt which was particularly excellent with this incarnation of the live band. At the end of Hurt we even got a little wave from Trent (well it IS the Wave Goodbye tour after all.) There's usually about five minutes of feedback after the band have left the stage after Hurt but the lights seem to come on pretty quickly and everyone began neatly filing out.


Cool photos like this are really easy to take whilst NIN have such cool lighting.

What I've not mentioned so far is how fucking awesome it is to see Robin Finck back in Nine Inch Nails. It was like it was the Fragility Tour again, the things he was doing during Piggy and Hurt were spot on. I can't really remember the new bassist Justin Meldel-Johnsen doing anything particularly awesome though he seemd more in the zone on the instrumental and more avant garde songs. I think I miss Josh Freese somewhat, he seemed to be more noticeable on stage and did a lot of cool things with gigantic floor toms. Ilan Rubin seemed a lot more frenetic which I think would suit Robin Finck more.
With no Alessandro Cortini on permanent keyboard duty, Trent did a lot more things on keyboard, which was very cool indeed. Songs like Metal and Suck had long, glitchy outros and seemingly lots of improvisation which is really cool to see happening. Even Ilan got a turn on piano for one of the songs, possibly Gone, Still. We got a few piano improvisations from Trent as well which was cool.
Strangely, there was a double bass or a cello as well as a marimba (not a fucking xylophone! you crowd idiots!) wheeled on which suggested we were going to get a Ghosts played. They were never used though which was perhaps fortunate seeing as I'd struggle to accurately recognise any of the Ghosts tracks seeing as they're all untitled instrumentals. From footage of seeing of Ghosts performed live anyway, it could have looked every so slightly ridiculous.



Cool photos like this are really easy to take whilst NIN have such cool lighting.

There were some strange absences on the set list. For a start, there was nothing played from The Slip, which was a bit of a shame because I'd like to hear Head Down, Lights In The Sky or Corona Radiata played live. And secondably, there were some staples that you'd have expected to see there, like Closer as a starter for ten or Sin or Something I Can Never Have or Reptile. I've heard Sin and Closer in plenty of live forms but I really do enjoy Something I Can Never Have when it has big ass drums attached onto it and Reptile.

So, I need to pull some conclusions out of my arse. Let's try bullet points.