Every now and then, without warning or expectation, life just deals you an ace card.
Wandering through the lobby of my work, looking forward to little more than cooking up a curry and settling in to watch Star Trek and The OC. A quiet Tuesday night. Turning on my phone, you have one new message...
"Daan, duude, get back in touch with me, it's Kathy, your mad friend buddy! Uhm I've got tickets, I've got one free ticket to Nine Inch Nails, so please call back soon cause I wanna get there by eight. Okay, cheers. Love you to come. Bye."
My first thought was: Nine Inch Nails. Allll right.
My second thought was: Who's Kathy?
My third thought was: Holy shit! I'm going to Nine Inch FUCKING NAILS!
My fourth thought was: I really should establish who this Kathy person is.
Check my phone's contacts list. I got a Kath, a Kathleen, a Katy, a Katie. I don't know who any of them are. These numbers just accumulate into my phone on weekends. It must be some kind of wierd bluetooth malfunction. The number harvester. None of the numbers match the number that called, so I just hit return call and, y'know, someone answers. I obviously can't say I don't know who she is, so I just sort of nonchalantly agree to the tickets and find out where she lives, which isn't far from my place.
Cathy, as it turns out, is a very cool Hamiltronian girl who I occasionally run into at gigs. She's high-energy so we are both big dancers and get along well. Not only does she have two FREE tickets to NIN, they're tickets to the after-party, as well! Sha-weet! My actual plan for going to NIN had been roughly along the lines to wander around outside the Academy next Wednesday with £50 in my back pocket, hoping to meet a desperate scalper. This was much better. Funny how your whole evening can completely change tack in one minute.
After a quick bite at Brixton Nandos (the worst of all the Nandos), we managed to catch the second half (did you know that if you have a backstage pass, they have a special little entrance next to the stage you can come out of, so you don't need to fight your way through the crowd to get to the front?) of the support act, Saul Williams, who was really good. The crowd [which was pretty much 90% goth. There were some great looking goth-chicks there. I say this a lot, and I'm not saying I want to be a cross-dresser, but girls really do get a much wider range of things to wear than men do. Pretty much all the girls looked liked they'd put a lot of effort into their outfit, while the guys were just like, in black jeans and NIN T-shirts. I was (having come straight from work) in a suit, so looked slightly incongruous] loved him, which he really seemed to appreciate. He kept saying things like: "Wow, they told me to expect the worst, but you guys are great. [roar] Much better than last night's audience? [roar!] Y'all like hip-hop? [roaar!] Wow." He was constantly chatting away. I didn't manage to pick up his album after the show, but I will look out for it on play.com as a result of his set, I was very impressed.
A few beers later and our man Trent came on. I took like a zillion pictures, but not many of them came out- the lighting was wacky. Since I was standing in the same spot and Trent doesn't really have more than one pose, the photos are basically all the same, except with different colours in the background:
So I didn't get many good photos (although I am particularly proud of this one) but, y'know, the joy of concerts can't really be conveyed with photos, videos, or words. They're things you just have to experience, and each one's different. This one was great, I mean, I've seen NIN live on four different occasions, and while I don't think anything could come close to the first time I saw them (in Baltimore on the Downward Spiral tour with Marilyn Manson, which I believe was voted live show of the year it was so good), it was definitely far more high-energy and focused than any previous show I'd been to. Trent didn't talk to the audience much (I believe his only words were: "Oops." and "That's all you get, you've been a great audience good night.") The light display obviously wasn't as impressive as I've seen as previous stadium shows, but the intimate nature of the venue more than made up for it.
The crowd was suprisingly unenergetic (I'm 28 and was dancing more enthusiatically than all the teeny-boppers around me), but I guess NIN is one of those bands you spend a lot of time appreciating, which doesn't leave a lot of time for dancing. I suppose I could dredge up a set-list but I never really saw the point of those. Needless to play they sayed pretty much every NIN classic (closer, wish, suck, head like a hole, terrible lie, something i can never have, hurt), plus a healthy smattering from the new album (getting smaller, with teeth, hand that feeds). A great show.
The after-party was pretty cool. Trent never showed up, but he's a recovering alcoholic and I think they tell you not to hang around in bars when you're trying to stay off the sauce. The rest of the band was there (Jerome seemed alright. Twiggy is apparently a bit of a dick), and I did try to get an autograph or photo, but they all seemed pretty involved in conversations with huge amounts of people and I didn't want to disturb them. Plus getting a photo with a member of NIN's live band is a bit like getting a photo with Trent's synth. Like, neat `n all, but just not Trent. I'll tell you who I did get a photo with, though: Only Gary fucking Numan! That's like getting a photo with the guy who invented the synth! He was sitting across from me and was really nice. We chatted about the show (he said it was good) and he seemed a really sincere, genuine guy. Go Gary!
Go Nails! You know, when I was a teen, my four favourite bands were: NIN, U2, Tori Amos + Pop Will Eat Itself. And I've seen them all in the last four months. Pretty cool.
d
ps- here's a 15-second clip from 'Getting Smaller', which I recorded as a private joke between myself and a friend.
This is a 
You know I don't think your friend gets the joke.
And let's be honest, could NIN really be as good as seeing the women I love?
It's the ringtone you made for me!
Aahh. It was hard to make it out on the vid.
As soon as they started playing I was scrambling for the camera.
So like, making ringtones for each other and all that (and a few other things), when are you guys getting married?
I'll propose at your wedding, Matthew. Zing!
HA! Err... zing?
Don't joke my friend, but whenever it happens, you're invited.
On a side note, if you're proposing, does that make Adrian the woman? :-)
Nicely done! What a great friend to have. If I'd been a little more together about it, I could have got you a ticket for next Thursday anyway as my brother had a spare one but guess you wont' be needing it now.
Roll on Wednesday