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Expensive nailsPosted December 15th
Nine Inch Nails at Planet Hollywood Las Vegas, Saturday December 13. Final engagement of the lauded Lights in the Sky Over North America Tour 2008, which marked the departure of epic session drummer Josh Freese and (previously unannounced!) keyboard savant Alessandro Cortini from Trent’s live quintet. Cortini flipped his keyboard into the crowd as he left the stage. Also previously unannounced is the return of a “from scratch” four-piece live NIN to the U.S. in spring 2009.
These guys blew every hot rivet out of every girder behind every quaking wall of the Planet Hollywood dome. Somehow I made it to 32 years of age without ever seeing NIN live, and I was ecstatic. I spent the entire show beating drumlines into the balcony railing and bouncing up and down like I was on a trampoline. Fortunately I managed not to donate my cap (or my teeth, or the rest of me) to the headbangers in the orchestra below. It baffles me that people are capable of witnessing such vital live performance seated and motionless with a cup of eight-dollar beer sweating between their legs. I wonder if they are alive.
The Lights in the Sky are generated by two stage-spanning LED “light curtains,” one downstage, one up. Composed of segmented panels not unlike samurai armor, they fly in and out depending on the song and can appear transparent or opaque or anything in between. The rear curtain is backed by a traditional lighting rig. Flanking the stage are strobes so massive they must have been ripped off an airport runway. The result of all these GPU-intensive photonics is a towering spectacle the likes of which rock and roll has never seen. Mostly the band occupies the space between the two LED curtains. With visuals swirling both in front of and behind them, they appear suspended in an ocean of lights. Trent can interact with or remix certain visual sequences in real time, as when he punches randomly through a wall of digital sleet during Only. Videos here. Wired mag technical primer here. Setlists abound online. My highlights:
- The Frail to abridged Closer with The Only Time break. A NIN medley! I swore I heard Pretty Hate Machine in Closer and thus far the only person to call it is some bloke in Romania who doesn’t seem to have actually attended the show. Go former Eastern Bloc!
- Gave Up.
- The Great Destroyer.
- The Ghosts segment. Consists primarily of keyboards with an all-acoustic rhythm section, including marimba, xylophone, tympani and stand-up orchestra bass. Also a Ghostified rendtion of Piggy.
- Wish.
- The Big Come Down. A rare entry from The Fragile and devastating live.
- Head Like A Hole. Soul crushing. New blood rushes from the marrow. Closed out the set.
- Reptile during the encore.
**UPDATE** Thanks to chaonatic for stalking Lights Across the Sky across the earth and accumulating some of the best live HD material available on the web. The Great Destroyer and Ghosts 31 are must-watch.
On Sunday I decided to visit Hoover Dam. I was issued a fucking four hundred and twenty-five dollar speeding ticket along the way. This is ironic because, courtesy of hotel deals and reward points, the NIN show was effectively free. The “good” thing is, as this citation was issued by a federal agency on federally managed land (Lake Mead NRA, along a strip of vacant desert road clearly speed trapped for out-of-town rubes like myself), it will not appear on my driving record. The bad thing, besides the obscene fee, is if I abscond instead of paying up or opting for a court date, a federal warrant is issued for my arrest. Whereupon I’ll be whisked away on a black flight to Guantanamo and sodomized with a rifle until I reveal everything I know about that kiosk in Planet Hollywood that sells pearls still in the shell. Ow! From Hawaii! I hope they play March of the Pigs.
Rock Band band namesPosted February 20th
I’ve been refining this post more or less since November when I got the game, adding names, dropping them, trying intently to massage the funny. It’s making my copywriting bone tingle. Should you have beef with my taxonomy, please remember: genres are notoriously imprecise and these names are, after all, totally made up.
Prog Rock
The Wizard of Zo
The Jettisons
Heavy Water
The Collapse (real band)
Exeunt
Cubic Musiconia (taken: a super-band of sorts, assembled from my solo tour characters)
70s Punk
The Gendarmes
Felt Bikini
The Gimps
The Plants
The Drags (also a real band; damn you, German)
The Speci-Men
Gutter Punk
Messy Handjob
Feces Police
Toothless Old Man
Piss Whistle
Pussy Inspection
Fetus Party
Z is for Bitch
80s Thought Pop
Politics as Usual
Ready Not Ready
Binding Arbitration
Mur is Furder
Jazz
The Trio Quartet
Nu-Metal
Coat of Arms
Ventricle
Lagbolt
Numismatogram
Velociraptor
Sleepdriver
Inchwyrm
Math Rock
The Idiot’s Guide to Starting a Band
Atomic Waits
Grinding in China
The Frags
The Ridley Scotts
Neve Campbell tribute bands
The Craft
Goth
Crying Jäg
Etheria Mare Lactalis
Deck of ‘Tards
Oxycontin Twins
Emo
Chartreuse
Rainy Day Supper Club
Old Navy Turtleneck
The Four-Eyes
Indie
Pretty Weathergirl
Every Seventh Sunday
Away Message
Restless Leg Syndrome (taken: our headlining act, featuring Jeff, Daisy and myself)
Arena Rock
Outer Heaven
Katana
Slyder
Big League Chew
Scent of a Roadie
Gila Monster
Iroc
Mouthful
Freshener
Back to the desertPosted February 18th
Last week I found myself at Safari Sam’s, a club in the malt liquor-enhanced urban transitional zone between Hollywood and Silverlake, watching Daisy play keyboards for Phantom West—click the image above for a photoset. You could call them electro-gaze, but the night belonged to the goths, as nights often do, and the line-up culminated with a performance by Teutonic Depeche Mode simulators De/Vision. One gent played his Powerbook while the other sang and barked orders in German. I assume he was telling the crowd to liven the fuck up.
The goth scene has appropriated trance from a decade ago. The color’s been desaturated but the cut is the same and the beats are identical. I drew a few skeptical glances when I pointed this out at the show, but DJ Jonas reported that members of the Stormriders crew (responsible for the phenomenal Dune and Caladan desert parties of my misguided youth) described exactly the same thing.
Pod Chocolates, Rock Band, redesigned photo galleries and actual deserts are in the pipeline. More soon.
Make it beautifulPosted May 7th
is Invisibleland’s debut album. Invisibleland is Brian Kessler, Stephen Fahlsing, Matt Paladino and Lee Matsunami. Friends of mine. I shot some photos at the record release party. Click the image above for a look.