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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.