If You Are A Nine Inch Nails Fan You Will Love This Post - Part Two

For those who might be curious, here's the set list:

Somewhat Damaged
The Beginning of the End
Last
The Collector
Discipline
March of the Pigs
Something I Can Never Have
Reptile
Meet Your Master
Banged and Blown Through (a Saul Williams song, BTW)
Burn
Gave Up
La Mer
Non-Entity
Gone, Still
The Downward Spiral
Wish
Heresy
Survivalism
Down In It
Hurt
The Hand That Feeds
Head Like A Hole

Encore:
Echoplex
The Good Soldier
Dead Souls
In This Twilight

No "Closer", but then again, Trent probably feels that if he never plays that one again, it'll be too soon. ;-)
As soon as the band hit the stage, you could see the crowd surge, from the back of the house right to the edge of the stage--I know the phrase "wave of humanity" is a total cliche, but it really did look like a tidal wave of bodies, and made me cringe for the sakes of the people on the rail. Seeing one's favorite band that normally plays arenas in a venue only holding 500 people? WOW...the sound and the lights were both amazing, although between the lights and the chemical smoke, it made for rather difficult photography from where I was...so I decided to concentrate on the show itself and not so much on shooting it, although I did get a few pictures:

I'll try not to discuss every single song, but here's a few comments:

--"Something I Can Never Have", with Justin on upright bass, was absolutely gorgeous, and the closest that song's ever come to making me cry.
--"Last"--a song that was never played live until just the last couple of years, and one I'd never heard live before this, so that was a rare treat.
--"Burn" and "Dead Souls" are always a treat, especially the former; being able to yelling "I'm gonna burn this whole world DOWN!" along with Trent is always cathartic, and just in case anyone was still confused, the line is "I am the angel of your destruction", not "agent". :D (That's been a subject of much debate over the years, although not nearly as much as the great "sun/star" debate in Pearl Jam's "Black"...BTW, has anyone settled that one yet? Damn it, Eddie, enunciate!)
--"Non-Entity"--one of the two songs recorded for the all-star Hurricane Katrina telethon (only "Hurt" was aired), and another one I hadn't heard live before.
--"Meet Your Master"--It's a very political song from a very political album (Year Zero), but I never realized until then just how great a pole-dancing song it would be...the things that come to mind after you take a dance class called "Voluptuous Vixens", aka "pole dancing for fat chicks", eh? Or, in the immortal words of Emma Goldman (and whoever thought she'd be namechecked in a NIN concert writeup?), "If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution." Oh, yeah... ;-)
--"La Mer"--anyone who thinks NIN is only angsty ranting and raving needs to hop on out, by The Fragile, and check this one out. For those who didn't already know, Trent's a classically trained pianist, and that training definitely shows in this song and many of his other instrumentals. He's made noises about doing more instrumentals in the future, and already released Ghosts I-IV earlier this year; I can't help but think that more film scoring (he's already done Natural Born Killers and Lost Highway) is a distinct possibility. (Look out, Danny Elfman--there's a new kid in town!)
--"In This Twilight"--the final track from Year Zero, and quite possibly the prettiest goddamn song ever written about the end of the world, it's what's makes me refer to the rumored Year Zero followup as "Lullabies for the Impending Apocalypse". ;-) It's also a lovely closer, with each band member putting down his instrument and walking offstage, one at a time, until only Trent is left, playing the piano outro, before he finally salutes the audience and walks off as well... *sigh*
...and that was it, my quite-possibly-last NIN show ever, and #25 in 15 years of fandom (17 of which have happened from 2005 onwards--he's done more touring from 2005-2009 than from 1994-2004; no wonder the poor guy needs a break!). *sigh* We all staggered out of the venue, caught up with our friends on the rail again ( here's my friend Riot, dead center the next night at Webster Hall, straight from the New York Times ), and then went (or, in my case, limped; my feet were killing me!) our various ways. Julia was able to stick around for Webster Hall the next night, during which the entire The Downward Spiral album was played for the first and last night, but I had to take the bus back to Boston and be at work Monday. *sigh* There are only a handful of shows left (1 more tonight at Terminal 5 in NYC, 2 in Chicago, 1 in Toronto, and the final 4 in LA), and if you have the opportunity to go, don't miss it--it'll definitely be worth whatever trouble you have to go to. Then again, I'm hopelessly prejudiced, so... ;-)

Oh, and as for how the baked goods were received? Here's what Justin had to say about it on Twitter:

justinmj@RobinTMP: OM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM. THANK you! Love, JMJ

(What did I make, you might ask? Chocolate-chip oatmeal cookies and double chocolate espresso brownies--that would be brownies with chocolate chips and not quite a tablespoon of instant espresso powder added to the mix, with cinnamon sugar sprinkled liberally on the batter before baking. I joked on LiveJournal that we should start calling these "8-Nom Brownies" from now on, since those were apparently what inspired Justin's Tweet, which led a former roommate of mine to pipe up:

"OCTO-NOM!"

...immediately followed by her boyfriend's response:

"You owe the Army a new keyboard!"

Thought you guys would appreciate that one!)