:: GussetBLOG ::

:: Tuesday, September 18, 2007 ::

Nine Inch Nails tell fans to steal

Trent Reznor, never the most eloquent speaker, makes comment: "STEAL IT. Steal away. Steal and steal and steal some more and give it to all your friends and keep on stealin'. Because one way or another these mother****ers will get it through their head that they're ripping people off and that's not right."

Edit [by Dan]: Australian blogger, and one of my favourite frequent reads, The Null Device picks some other quotes here.
I found another great example of this when I was looking for the new PJ Harvey 7" at lunch time. Two track PJ Harvey 7" in slipcase, £4. Four track 7" EP in nice gatefold sleeve by some band I've never heard of, £2. Is Polly more bankable so they can get away with it? Can they justify it as making a loss on the new artist who is being subsidised by the established artist? Or are they just taking advantage of fans?

Labels: Copyright, NIN

:: Spokesy 18.9.07 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
...

"Do you like Manga?" asked the fresh-faced, dark-haired, glasses-wearing, probably Polish, petrol station attendant.
"Eh?" I eloquently responded, whilst thinking, 'I could be in here. I wonder if the Mrs is watching from the car?'
She pointed at my Hook Ups T-shirt with the bug eyed goth-girl in the tiny pleated tartan skirt.
"Oh, um, not really. That's a skate thing really. Not that I skate. I just liked the shirt."
"Oh." She sounded dejected.
'Damn, blown it!'

This T-shirt often leads to odd encounters. I once wore it when visiting a National Trust property and the old geezer in the shed at the entrance couldn't take his eyes of my cleavage. He just stared at the picture on my shirt with a strange, distracted intensity, as he fumbled for change (on this occasional not a euphemism), and spoke directly to by two-dimensional cartoon breasts rather than my face. I think I now know how women feel when they are being leered at.

Despite intentionally wearing this t-shirt as my best attempt at blending in at a NIN gig I was questioned by the door staff on the way in and told by a suspicious middle age woman that I didn't look like a Nine Inch Nails fan, in the nearest thing I've heard in London to a "youz ain't frum rownd yere, arr ya?"

We arrived in time to get in a round of drinks while the ladies nipped to the loos, as was there want. We then played a quick round the goth fashion observation quiz before heading for our standing room in the gods. Trent and co were just taking the stage and bashing out Mr Self Destruct, which I was very pleased to hear, as we shimmied up the stairs that I presume were Tolkien's inspiration for 'the secret stair' in The Return of the King.

Then followed approximately 90 minutes of classic Nine Inch Nails, playing almost all of Broken and The Downward Spiral with a couple of tracks from Pretty Hate Machine and The Fragile thrown in as gap fillers. Personally it was exactly what I wanted to hear, as this is the material I know best.

Musically I'm dubious about how much of it is actually performed live; the live drummer appeared to be there mostly for visual effect and playing fills as the vast majority of the percussion sounds were coming from samples, the acoustic guitar parts I'm sure were mimed, and one of the guitarists filled up all of the gaps in his parts by flailing himself and his guitar around so much it created a performance in itself. Mr Reznor mostly just sang but also played guitar and keyboard in a couple of places. The solo spot for Hurt worked well. I missed the keyboard bashing as I was at the bar but I know it upset Ref/Mrs Spokesy who pointed out disapprovingly, "that's a very expensive keyboard," and wagged her finger.

The lighting was simple but effective. Almost exclusively white, with the exception of Closer (red, obviously) and Head Like A Hole (blue, I think), and with lots of strobe. Later in the set some hanging lamps with metallic inverted-wok shades descend, one over each member of the band, a small toilet flush chain hanging from them (the lights, not the band) putting them just in reach so they could then enjoy swinging them about over the audience and into each other. I liked this effect.

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Great Photo Opportunity I Have Missed #4

The Brixton Academy has pictographic no-crowd-surfing signs to the side of the stage. Depicted traffic sign style with a stick figure being carried above a crowd of other stick figures, in a red circle with a foreboding red slash across it. It's a wonderful piece of graphic design simplicity. If you could get a shot of that over the heads of a steaming crowd just as a couple of crowd surfers are carried past it you would be capturing beauty in its purist form. Sadly, I neither had the camera or the vantage point to capture this.

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The set came to a close about 20 mins before the curfew for the venue so I expected a cynical planned encore, but the crowd was obviously just slightly too apathetic and the house lights went up almost immediately. Out we all filed, and found our selves turned away from all the local pubs. Ah, looking too much like a NIN fan now am I? You can't win.

Labels: GPOIHM, NIN, Review

:: Dan 5.4.07 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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