neurological dryer lint

tonight's nine inch nails show lived up to the hype. an hour and 45 minutes straight. dave, doug and i were about fifteen feet from the stage. the place wasn't as packed as i expected. after the opening band (a yawn-fest called moving units) they lowered an opaque net cage thing around the stage... looked like they were filling it up with smoke, hot-boxing the whole area. either that, or trent was protecting himself from being faced by another bottle.

so they fired up at about 9:15 with love is not enough, followed by you know who you are and an insanely good terrible lie, probably the highlight of the show for me.

they ended up blowing through most of the new album, skipping only all the love in the world (unfortunately), the collector, and sunspots. they did right where it belongs almost totally acoustically; getting smaller and the hand that feeds were absolutely brilliant, perfect for a live show.

off the downward spiral they did the typical march of the pigs, closer, and hurt... i'd heard they were going to pull out mr. self destruct, but no love. they did do eraser which was monkey-riffic - they pulled down the opaque-net-thing and projected some crazy national-geographic imagery, including a monkey beating up and eating another monkey, and a monkey chasing down and eating a flamingo... and some dudes in planet-of-the-apes-style monkey masks.

yeah, so, monkeys. other surprises about the show:

- nothing from the fragile. which bummed me out a lot - you always wish you could write the setlist for a show like this, and so i would have loved to hear into the void and the big come down or at least the wretched, a staple of their live shows.

- something i can never have - wow, this was beautiful, trent and a keyboard, just poured this one out. just wonderful.

- two soundtrack cuts - a great mix of burn and the cover of Joy Division's dead souls. solid!

i put the phonecam pics i took up on a flickr set. doesn't do the experience justice, obviously. it was incredibly worth it to shell out the extra bucks for the floor seats... what a show. easily in my top three shows. despite a lack of stuff from the fragile, the new, sober trent did not disappoint.