I’ve been searching for a worthy post topic to inaugurate this iteration of theScroll… I found it at the Aragon Ballroom (pictured above) this past Friday night in one of the final shows on Nine Inch Nails abbreviated farewell jaunt across North America. Intimate ballroom shows in New York and Chicago, wrapping up at the Echoplex in Los Angeles on September 6th. According to Trent Reznor, these will be the last dates ever under the moniker Nine Inch Nails. If that ends up holding true, Reznor and company are no doubt going out at the top of their game.
My history with NIN goes back to May of 1990… I saw them at the I-Beam in San Francisco almost by accident… a friend had written me that his brother was playing drums for that first incarnation of the NIN “band”… they were on a bill with Lard and Ministry. There wasn’t a whole lot of musicianship going on that particular show… I left unimpressed… but a couple months later I was going through the new releases bin at Rasputins in Berkeley and there it was… Pretty Hate Machine… I figured what the hell and bought it. A few days rolled by before I took to listening to it… but after I did… I must have listened to that disc a dozen times in a row. It was like nothing you had ever heard before. I was hooked… in for the long haul.
In the 20 years since then, Trent Reznor has never disappointed… one relevant album after another interspersed with experimental and remix projects, collaborations and soundtrack work… Recently in 2006, Reznor broke from major label distribution and embarked on the most ambitious experimentation into the future of the digital delivery of music yet… initially giving away two recent efforts in Ghosts I-IV and the The Slip.
And now, having tired most likely of the write/record/tour cycle, Reznor has decided to pull the plug on NIN as a brand. Perhaps he wisely discerned that the process that is NIN had run its course. Time for something new. The shame of it is, the players that make up the current NIN touring band are the best band Trent has ever had… and to arrive at that point now is the result of 20 years worth of hard work. It ends up equally satisfying and disappointing when an entity like Nine Inch Nails goes away at the top of their game.
At the Aragon this past Friday night, 6 shows from the end of the line, NIN’s set list touched on all phases of the bands evolution. The early aggressiveness of “March of the Pigs”, “Gave Up” and “Wish” to the more atmospheric, melodic songs from earlier this decade in “La Mer”, “The Fragile” and “The Wretched”… to a cover of friend Saul Williams “Banged and Blown Through” which comes from a fantastic, 5-star Reznor produced album from Williams titled “The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust”… if that’s an album you don’t have… or if you think hip-hop always sucks… buy that record now.
In the last third of the show came a tip-of-the-hat to those that have influenced along the way when Reznor brought out Peter Murphy for a couple Joy Division covers as well as a rendition of Bauhaus’ “Kick in the Eye”. Murphy then departed leaving the band to stoke up the frenzy again with “The Hand That Feeds” and “Head Like a Hole” before closing with an impassioned “Hurt”, which has become the go-to last song on many NIN set lists in the past few years. No encore on this night which was just as well… at 2 hours 20 minutes everyone felt they got what they came for.
As for now, the final version of Nine Inch Nails (as pictured)… Drummer Ilan Rubin, guitarist Robin Finck, Trent Reznor and bassist Justin Meldal-Johnsen are obviously leaving it all out on the stage at this point. Sensing that the end is near has to be a bittersweet feeling, but it made for a phenomenal farewell taste of a band that has meant a lot to me over the last 20 years… I’ll definitely have an eye open for wherever these excellent musicians land… and as NIN waves goodbye, I begin my patient wait for whatever comes next from the force of nature that is Trent Reznor.
