Anyone who knows me even a little knows that I’m an enormous Nine Inch Nails fan. To date, I’ve seen them 13 times since 2005 from everywhere as close as downtown Milwaukee at the Eagle’s Ballroom to as far away as Green Bay, WI to the north; Champagne, IL to the south; Moline, IL to the west; and Indianapolis, IN to the east. I’ve been a fan for years (since 1996 at the ripe old age of 12 when I bought Halo 3: Head Like A Hole after hearing the song on the local rock radio station and falling in love) but after winning tickets on the radio to the sold-out small-club warm-up tour stop on 5/6/2005 in Chicago, I was completely blown away and my rabid addiction to the band started.
Walking into the front doors
People who haven’t yet seen them live don’t believe me when I tell them this but: NIN puts on the greatest live show of any band. The energy, the reworked and sometimes re-imagined takes on songs, and the lights…my God the lights. Even on tours – like this final (final) Wave Goodbye tour – with subdued lighting, the stage is head-and-shoulders above any other band’s production I’ve seen and I’ve been to a A LOT of concerts.
Oh, and bear with me…I forgot my camera on Friday night so all these pictures are from Saturday, but I needed something to help spice up this post. The entire set of 211 photos can be viewed here. The gist is the same. 
Anyway, I’m rambling and the point of this was to give my opinion and review on something I’m obviously very passionate about/downright obsessed with. So it’s Friday August 28, 2009 and it’s the first of two nights of the second-run of the Wave Goodbye Tour. After seeing that the band pulled out a performance of The Downward Spiral in its entirety to start the Bowery show on 8/23 in NYC, I was beyond stoked with visions of Friday’s show starting with The Fragile: LEFT and Saturday’s beginning with RIGHT running through my over-excited mind. While that was obviously way too lofty a hope, the show the band put on was nothing short of legendary.
At almost 2.5 hours, it was damn near the longest NIN show I have attended (the initial Wave Goodbye stop in Chicago on 5/29/2009 was close, thanks to Jane’s Addiction being unable to make the date for whatever reason) and, without a doubt, was made up of the most eclectic/random and unpredictable setlist I’d ever seen.
- Pinion
- Wish
- Last
- Discipline
- March of the Pigs
- Something I Can Never Have
- The Frail
- The Wretched
- Closer
- Terrible Lie
- Head Down
- Banged and Blown Through
- Burn
- Gave Up
- La Mer
- The Fragile
- Non-Entity
- Gone, Still
- Lights In The Sky
- Eraser
- The Downward Spiral
- 1,000,000
- Letting You
- Survivalism
- Down In It
- Atmosphere (Joy Division cover w/Peter Murphy)
- Dead Souls (w/Peter Murphy)
- Kick in the Eye (Bauhaus cover w/Peter Murphy)
- The Hand That Feeds
- Head Like A Hole
- Hurt
I remember turning to Sean, my partner in crime at 9 of the 13 NIN shows I’ve attended, before the show started and saying “It would be cool if they opened with Pinion again. I haven’t heard that since winter 2006.”
And then they did.
And then they continued into the next two songs from 1992’s Broken EP. I thought FOR SURE we were going to get the entire album at this point. “Help Me, I am in Hell” had been played nightly on the summer 2006 tour, “Wish,” “Gave Up” and “Suck” had been staples since forever while “Last” and “Physical (You’re So)” had been making the rounds since 2007 (2009 for “Physical”). The only song that was left was “Happiness in Slavery” which, while sampled during “The Great Destroyer” a few times in Europe the summer of 2007, hadn’t been played since 1994 or 1995.
Alas, it wasn’t meant to be; as I was thinking all this, the band was exploding into “Wish” and it was almost impossible to hear the song over how deafeningly loud the crowd was. The energy in the air was palpable; the crowd a sea of heads, arms and hands surging, swelling, rolling and tumbling with the breakneck beat of the song. Everything but the crowd was drown out during the controversial and easily most-well-known lines of “Wish” (emphasis is mine):
Gotta listen to your big-time, hard-line, bad luck fist fuck
Don’t think you’re having all the fun
You know me
I
Hate
Everyone
Ilan’s thundering double-bass run at end of “Wish” was a perfect way to end the song and prepare the crowd for “Last,” which was equally loud. The crowd seemed somewhat shocked (I know I was) we were getting such a rarely-played song (and likely a number of others thinking we might see the resurrection of “Happiness in Slavery” if this Broken theme kept up). Putting an end to hopes of another night starting with an entire album in order was the fun and dancey “Discipline.” Since Sean and I missed the Lights in the Sky over North America 2008 tour last summer (and then fall for the rescheduled show in Minneapolis) we never got to see any of the staples from that tour. That was a nice treat and definitely one I didn’t think I’d be lucky enough to hear.
“March of the Pigs” has always been a favorite and I was more than happy to hear it again. This rendition seemed to be particularly brutal (but was nowhere near the level of intensity the follow night’s performance of it would have). “Something I Can Never Have,” however, was a complete and utter buzzkill. Coming from such high energy created by the start of the show to that song just caused an immense crash. “The Frail/The Wretched” salvaged that a bit as did a very unexpected “Closer (to the Only Time)” which had AMAZING lighting thanks to those powerful, bright and deliciously lush LED panels in the back. The red used during “Closer” (and again later during “Burn” and “The Downward Spiral”) was simply stunning to look at.
Burn (but the same lights/color was used for Closer & The Downward Spiral)
A late-in-the-set take on “Terrible Lie” allowed for all that lost energy to come screaming back as Trent destroyed his mini synth table up at the front of the stage right at the climax of the song. It was incredible to see and is, without a doubt the best performance I’ve ever seen or heard of the song.
“Head down” and “Banged and Blown Through” were both songs I never got a chance to see. The former was a heavy energy booster while the latter (a Saul Williams cover) was more mellow but surprisingly enjoyable. I never liked the song until it was played right in front of me and now I’m hooked. “Burn” and “Gave Up” were particularly brutal renditions of set staples but “La Mer” was a soothing, beautiful journey.
La Mer
It was particularly poignant as its my favorite song of any band ever and has been the Holy Grail of NIN songs for me since my touring started. I saw it live for the first time (in full-band form…I don’t count the piano/guitar intro to “Into the Void” from the summer 2006 tour) on 5/29/09 but it was just as powerful this night. “The Fragile” was a nice segue back into the show and “Non-Entity” was a prize so sweet, I never could have imagined we would get it. Such a powerful song and this version was no different.
My hopes soared when drummer Ilan ran over to the mid-stage synth station to begin playing “Gone, Still” (with the most lush green lighting I have ever seen behind him) because, traditionally, the song that follows is “The Way Out Is Through”–one of my favorites from The Fragile.
Gone, Still
Instead of TWOIT, though, Ilan remained at the piano and the band went into a chilling rendition of “Lights in the Sky.” I was awestruck they decided to play this. I definitely thought that would be a song I’d never get to experience and it was every bit as haunting as the studio version is. Probably more so.
Things picked up again with the broken-flute intro to “Eraser” coming on over the PA as the lights went down. It sounded like Trent was blowing into a broken kazoo on stage as well. I’d recently heard the reworked 4-man version of the song from a bootleg of the Bowery show and was ecstatic to hear it in person. The soothing, almost hypnotic first 2/3 of the song do nothing to prepare for the aureal assault that is the final third…and the crowd was into it. Robin’s insanely loud and thick guitar was drowned out by 4500 people screaming “KILL ME” along with the band.
To keep this night of unbelievable awesomeness going, “The Downward Spiral” was next. Yet another song choice that caught me completely off-guard. Due to how long the set had been going already and how insane the song selection had been up to this point, I heard the wind sound of the intro and immediately conceded that it was “Hurt”; that this was the beginning of the show’s finale because there was just too much awesome already and keeping up this level of intensity could threaten the integrity of the space-time continuum. The sampled screaming on the track as the full band kicked into this beast summed up exactly how I was feeling. This was the best NIN show ever.
And things continued in this trend with “1,000,000″…yet another Lights in the Sky tour gem I wasn’t sure I’d ever get a chance to hear live in person. I thought I was dreaming by this point and exhaustion was setting in from fighting to keep my balance in the ever-tumultuous crowd. I kept thinking to myself, “No way. No way is this happening. They’re going to end it any minute now with ‘The Hand That Feeds’ or ‘Hurt’…this can’t keep up.”
But they did keep up, and blistering renditions of “Letting You” (a song I downright despised until seeing it) and “Survivalism” saw to it. A particularly heavy version of “Down In It” was a nice treat…this was the end of NIN and, as Trent put it over the intro loop, this was “the song that started it all.”
Then we were “graced” with Peter Murphy. I’m not the biggest fan of this guy…his voice annoys me and he has a tendency to screw up lyrics (case in point: Reptile from both NYC shows a few nights earlier and again the night after this show) and he sort of stole the attention away from NIN. However, “Kick in the Eye” was a damned cool song and “Dead Souls” was a song I only saw once before in 2006. Both were ridiculously heavy and got me moving.
As usual, “The Hand That Feeds” and “Head Like A Hole” rounded out the end of the fast/heavy part of the night and, again, as usual, both were excellent performances that got the crowd fully engaged.
Bow down before the one you serve...
I wish there was some way to show or convey just how heavy this concert was, but there isn’t. Even the bootlegs won’t do it justice. There was a brief pause after the feedback from Robin’s guitar died out and lights went dark. A dimly light spotlight showed Robin sporting an acoustic and the opening notes to “Hurt” came over the PA.
Not really my favorite song, but I guess it was poignant (somehow?) since this was the FINAL final tour. I was really hoping to get “In This Twilight” as it is, in my opinion, the classiest ending to a show that NIN can possibly pull off, but it wasn’t meant to be. For as played-out as “Hurt” is, it was still great to have one more song and the final three chords were three of the night’s heaviest. It was a fitting end to an all-around barnstormer of a show.
Throat raw, ears ringing, sweat pouring off me and legs almost refusing to work, it was time to get back to the hotel and get whatever rest we could before doing it all again the next night!
Tags: 2009/08/28, Aragon, Aragon Ballroom, Chicago, NIN, Nine Inch Nails, Obsession, Wave Goodbye
