Reading Music

I never really got into NIN till this past year. I’m a longtime fan of industrial music. I’ve always had an affinity for the “heavy beats”, and pure energy of KMFDM, and the creative rhythm’s and ramblings of Skinny Puppy, Stromkern, and Frontline Assembly. It wasn’t till I was playing an old 3d game called Quake I was exposed to NIN through the soundtrack which Trent Reznor produced. At that point I knew I needed more, and so began my journey through the back catalog, beginning with “The Fragile”, which is to date my favorite. When I found out NIN was touring in FL, just 5 hours away, I knew what had to be done. Prior to that, I’ve never been to a NIN concert, or a major venue concert for that matter. I arrived there 3 hours prior in the standing room only line, this put me about 10 feet, center, from the stage. From a concert standpoint Reznor really put effort into every song. His vocals were flawless in my book. He always maintained good eye contact with the crowd and spontaneously personalized the show with the audience. And my god, what an audience. I’ve never been more glad to be alive then after that show, if it wasn’t the constant move-with-crowd-or-be-tramped-to-death-random-direction-sway, moshing and surfing. Then the immense heat got you. There was visible steam rising in the arena and I left there completely drenched head to toe, grateful for the bottled water I had downed prior while in line. Despite that, my only quip is that both guitarists seem to have a weak stage presence and could very well have been mistaken for permanent fixtures! This stands in stark contrast to some of the more lively, eclectic members NIN has had over the years on tour (go watch a Woodstock 94' bootleg or even the Fragility tour to see what I mean). At the very least, Its taken me a week to recover from the shell shock excitement (not to mention hearing loss!), and I'll no doubt remember it fondly, and vividly for years to come.

This post was edited by jpf on Nov 05, 2005.