Fresh Fish Served Daily

The illustrious Gray had an extra free ticket to the Nine Inch Nails concert last night and generously invited me along. The talking car got us there quickly, but Bauhaus was already playing by the time we arrived. Apparently large venues like the ampitheater formerly known as Lakewood are very prompt…if the ticket says 7pm, that means the first band starts at 7pm. I’m used to smaller venues where you’re lucky if the opener starts an hour after the printed ticket time. We were disappointed to miss TV on the Radio and part of Bauhaus, but what we did see was great. I am a casual Bauhaus listener with only one album so I didn’t recognize most of the set, but they finished up with Bela Lugosi’s Dead while Peter Murphy ran around the stage wearing a cape.

NIN started around 9:30. They played a good mix of old and new songs, with a couple of my lesser-known favorites: Burn from the Natural Born Killers soundtrack, their cover of Queen’s Get Down Make Love from the Sin single, and Suck which hides as track 99 on Broken. The most impressive thing was the mechanical cage wired with fiber optic or some similar material. They had some neat visuals throughout the show, and the NIN logo displayed as they walked off stage at the end.

Other impressions: Trent has apparently been working out and now resembles Henry Rollins. The current guitarist (bassist?) was a total nut and did a lot of running around, finally smashing his guitar at the end of the show. The trend of the redneck goth is spreading like a plague and must be stopped. The majority of current NIN fans are exactly the kind of people that I despise. And I still really hate emo kids.