Lights In The Sky, Lights On The Stage, Nine Inch Nails Illuminates The Future of Music, Wachovia Spectrum Auditorium, August 29th.

by Jeff Boule in Concert Reviews, Editorials, Musician Reviews, Opinion Posts, Reviews

Any time Nine Inch Nails rolls into town, there is likely to be an event. Mostly because they ARE the event. The lineup sported by Trent Reznor was no exception. It was great to see Robin Finck, as well as seeing (again) Josh Freese, who was drumming for Devo at the Pier (see an earlier blog) in Philly. Alessandro Cortini is a breath of fresh air for all the musicians in the audience. Since Cortini joined the band, all the keyboard parts have been played as they should be as opposed to what other NIN keyboardists were doing, which was triggering one key to play an entire phrase.

No cheating at THIS show, it was ALL good.

Finck is perhaps the only guitarist who can cover the odd, complicated parts laid down by Adrian Belew. Josh Freese added some power to the complicated drum lines, and new bassist/guitarist Justin Johnson also was needed for backing vocals. We will explore all of these coming up!

Again, we were treated to Keystone Cops security. I am starting to see many trends after going to concert after concert. The adept security person is rare, perhaps even worth tipping.

By the time we were shuffled `round like cattle, we were late getting in to see the kick-off “999,999”, I suspect it was just the recorded intro. It wasn’t until “1,000,000” that we got the scope and spectrum of the upcoming set. The lights were nothing short of amazing. Rivaling any of Peter Gabriel extravaganzas, and he has virtual cities underneath his stage! While there were no subterraneans under Trent’s stage, the action was up top.

Columns of lights, lights mounted to wires, mounted on loosely meshed screen, projections on the screen, even drum machine pads on the light screen. It has to be experienced; I cannot possibly describe the amazing, frenetic light show.

“1,000,000” was powerful; by this time the band had already gotten themselves tight together. These tracks from The Slip have a high degree of difficulty to reproduce live. Yet this band, led by the masterful keyboard styling of Cortini, these parts were able to breath.

I marveled at the speed of Josh Freese’s hands during the chorus on “Letting You” also from The Slip. The high hat part is close to a 32nd beat and he had that going with the bass drum and snare just like the part on the album. Way fast. Also something really cool was the distortion they put on Reznor’s vocals, it almost sounded as though his voice was swirling within the room, while distorted. It is tough to review this show as the light stage is intriguing but also distracting. I think it was the Guess Who that said, “colored lights can hypnotize…”

Next on the list was “Discipline” from Slip. The version was wicked tight and quite accurate. My favorite moment was when Josh took a drink during a breakdown. Mid-song, the pause that refreshes. My least favorite moment was the blatant ignoring of the “no cameras” rules and flashing away during the performance. It was a comedy of errors watching security trying to locate the offenders in the mosh pit. It was equally funny to see them haul somebody off to Flyers jail. But I guess this is more typical at a Nine Inch show.

An old fan favorite from the breakthrough album Pretty Hate Machine, “March Of The Pigs” is up next. Such the fan favorite that the audience sang right along with the angst filled vocals. But there was a limit to the destruction, I noticed Reznor and company didn’t sling around the expensive keyboards like they used to. No smashing the instruments now that HE is footing the bill. But judging by the fullness of the arena, he made out OK.

“Head Down” another The Slip track came next and it held it’s own with a nice delay on the vocals, and great backing vocals by Johnson and Finck. But it was during this song that Reznor began slinging his keyboard around on his custom chrome stands.

Once the excitement built, everything was brought down by the solo piano version of “The Frail” from the album The Fragile. The visuals again attempted to steal the show by having a fog and single backlight to cast an eerie shadow on the crowd.

Things start to pick up again with another The Fragile tune, “The Wretched”, so much so that during the chorus break I caught a glimpse of Freese wailing on his hi-hat cymbals to the point where the bottom cymbal flexed inverted on some of the hits! He was also constantly winding up on the cymbal strikes to the point where he would bend all the way back and bring the stick down full force the entire distance and the cymbals would bend to the hits.

Power!

From full force we go full effect. The midi accompaniment helped keep this Downward Spiral version of “Closer” even closer to the original (I had to). The inventive way they segued from the keyboard outro directly into the EP Broken’s “Gave Up” and the best part of this was Reznor finally picking up a guitar. Not that Finck’s playing lacked anything, it’s just nice to hear Reznor play guitar every once in a while. But despite this, the version turned out ugly. Not even the 3D effect (red lights then blue lights) could save this addled version. So much so it brought down the curtain. Not your usual curtain, as always at a NIN show, the curtain beheld a video screen. As the video played, unusual instruments were brought out, a huge vibraphone, an upright bass, what is this? The Nine Inch Symphony?

The second set started with the “economy” version of Year Zero’s “Me I’m Not”. Where everyone had a unique chrome stand, while the stage was fitted with the above-mentioned unique instruments behind the curtain, they kept the show going in front of the curtain. The stands were illuminated green with neat effects. On Finck’s stand, there was mounted a lap steel guitar, which came in handy for Year Zero’s “Great Destroyer”. As the curtain was lit up with video lighting effects, the band cranked out “…Destroyer” and as the break with the harmonies hit they were right there, in all their tonal glory. All members did back up vocals except Freese. I guess he no longer needs to seek out Todd Rundgren to arrange his vocals.

At this point the video curtain goes up to reveal the mini-symphony, and they do a couple of the tracks from Ghosts. The first of this trio of Ghost tunes was “Ghosts 5”. This was awe-inspiring as the Ghosts album contains several intricate pieces, featuring the wonder-guitar of Adrian Belew, and Finck covering Belew’s playing during the “Ghosts” trio was well worth the price of admission alone. Not to mention that during the next Ghosts song, “Ghosts 17”, Reznor played the vibraphone, and a massive one at that! After the last Ghosts track, “Ghosts 19”, the curtain came down to show a rain-like image.

This introduced “Piggy Ghost” done in hillbilly swing! Finck played mandolin in the beginning, picking up an electric for sustain notes towards the end. At the end Freese walks off. ?!?!?!

The song “Greater Good” from Year Zero was done completely behind the curtain, so it may have been entirely on tape or midi with a live vocal. That vocal was filmed by a crew member to be mixed in with an image of a jumping blue background. But only of Reznor’s mouth.

Next time you do something like this Trent, take a shave will ya?

Kicking off the 3rd set, was “Pinion” also from Broken. The jumping blue bacteria had to be cleared away before the show could continue, so a man with a Fresnel light came out and as he wiped the light across the screen, it would clear away the backdrop. During the power-through of the song, Freese lost a tip and kept on going. By this time the band is up to beyond its usual juggernaught status.

Which does not explain why the next tune was totally listless. Maybe it has been played too often. “Wish” was just plain old un-noticeable. This comes from the Broken EP as well as other versions, other track lists.

Nine Inch live standard “Terrible Lie” was faithful to the studio version. Close to the Pretty Hate Machine version as well. A delay was added to the vocal to give it some depth with the staccato vocal.

A newer track from Year Zero, “Survivalism” played with video accompanying a bottom heavy version, but the performance was dead-on! The variance was Reznor lead a chant of “hey” during the break.

Over the band’s heads was a bank of videos on the curtain, and while some were live shots of the audience, some were shots that were staged. For example, the most provocative screen showed a young girl on a toilet cleaning herself. This HAD to be staged or it is a blatant, illegal invasion of privacy.

Not to mention distracting.

“The Big Come Down” was an unusual choice from The Fragile, but it was performed with aplomb. That performance included a fierce wah solo by Finck, but it was also bottom heavy. I fear my positioning under the giant arc of PA speakers may have caused some of my aversion to low end.

Another “Ghosts”, perhaps 31 (as was suggested by one of our fellow goers) was the only “Ghost” that was performed with electric instruments. It turned out to be bottom heavy as well. The amplification for just the stage monitoring system was impressive in itself. I enjoyed all the “Ghosts” live as that is one of my personal fave albums.

“Only” was brought out with a very deceptive intro. It was a fairly close to faithful version with some new twists. The screen held and image of static that Reznor would “wave” around (as he gestured left, the static moved left, etc.). The band was flamin’ by this time and the version shone through! Just like it did on With Teeth.

Trent spoke a bit, calling Pretty Hate Machine’s “Down In It” some old stuff. But if I may quote Chris Arduser from the Bears live DVD, “it didn’t sound dated, damn it!” Finck filled in on the background vocal, the kid’s song “rain rain, go away, come again some other day”. With some midi help this song was a crowd pleaser, so much so that a lucky crowd surfer jumped up on stage and just wanted to stage dive into the crowd, Keystone Cop security ganged up on him, and one choke-held him off stage.

And the band played on.

Next we are treated to one of those Nine Inch necessity songs, “Head Like A Hole” also from Pretty Hate Machine. For the die-hard NIN fans, this song can be a thorn in the side. Many feel it is from a naive period in Reznor’s songwriting career. Whatever your position, this was a thermonuclear version, slowly losing containment. A problem for me was the long lasting high-powered strobe light, which heralded the end of the show.

Fear not, encores are due!

The first encore was from The Slip, “Echoplex” and it was a total treat as it was the song started with the screen containing a number of squares. Every once in a while, a line would pass over the dots. Freese would then take the stage and press on either 32 upper pads or 32 lower pads. As he would press, a snare or bass note would sound until he built the drum machine line. He would then go over and join the band on the kit, then as the song decomposed, he would return to the curtain and press away the beats, until there were no more. Another notable point in a perfect, well-rehearsed live version, Reznor’s vocal and guitar part run through the same flanger at the end, simply a nice touch live. I bet this show would make a killer DVD or live CD, with a good mix.

Then, we were treated to a treatise by Trent. Actually, he uncharacteristically bantered to the crowd about how when he first started out there were more Goth males than females in the audience overall, as opposed to now when there are many more women in the crowd. Ironically at that point, someone had thrown a lace bra at the feet of Finck! He then waxed about how long it took him to get out of PA and now here he is again, among other disparaging remarks about the Keystone state.

The crowd somehow understood.

The only song capable of shutting Reznor up is “Reptile” from The Downward Spiral. I have a very memorable version to compare this to. Half of 1995’s Nine Inch Nails lineup and half David Bowie’s 1995 touring band played this together as NIN slowly handed the stage off to Bowie’s band. In fact, the vocal introduced Bowie to the crowd. So this version had to really be good.

It sure was. Actually, this would be a textbook study of how to conduct dynamic in music. It slithered to life and the dynamic fired up during the “…beautiful liar” chorus. So much so that it almost got out of control at the end.

As long as the dynamic was through the roof, why not throw out “God Given” from Year Zero. This was a pumping version bass heavy still, but killer in spite of it. Truthfully, the bass was so loud it was vibrating my notebook!

Another token from the catalog, the big hit “Hurt” from Downward Spiral, was done acoustically, or as acoustically as NIN can be. This was the only part of the show that didn’t distort, at least until the bass and drums came in.

To end the night, we were given “In This Twilight” from Year Zero, and a dreamy live version as this glowing, ethereal tune ended slowly as it was an intent version. The band splintered off with Finck going first to raucous applause, hoots and hollers, whistles and etc. Always a crowd favorite. Then Freese left to more thunderous applause, followed by Johnson, then Cortini, who also got a rousing round of applause, leaving Reznor to play the piano by himself until he stopped, raised his hand in recognition, and walked away.

As I mentioned before, this was a well-rehearsed, technically inventive, musically enthralling show that would make either an entertaining DVD or CD. But as far as promotion, if you were a newbie Nine Inch fan, this show covered the influx of new albums with a nod to the past. If your ticket price is high, this is one of those tours that, if you don’t have the means to get to one, get the means!