Oh, man… what a friggin week!!!

It’s snowing like hell; it has over Milan, and it has while we were reachin Courmayeur for the weekend prior to Marghe’s day (let’s hope next weekend weather will be kind…).

I had a monstrous week at work.

I need music in these moments and luckely some blessed soul found a way to upload one of the very early covers of beloved babies of mine, a vintage version of Maroon5 singing one of my all time favorite songs, the awesome “Closer” by mighty Nine Inch Nails.

Those lyrics are DOPE. No wonder Adam loves them… they are so sexually charged is boltering out from the notes.

I love the whole of NIN album The Downward Spiral. It’s really a record everybody should know about.

On a more personal note, I have a message for Rodrigo (yeah: see darlin? I have no problem in mentioning you. NOTE: Rodrigo is NOT “R.”. Rodrigo is one of those people who thinks swagger is about proving how rich or well connected or reckoned you are, in order to impress. FAIL…).

I have for you this song and video instead.

I have always liked this artist, Robyn; and since this song came out everyone around me started and kept saying she sings like I would, about the situation there enlightened.

I agree.

And I answer you with that, Rod: take note, and give up.

You won’t ever reach your target

then let me be subtly bastard:

Point 1): do you really think I need anybody else’s wealth or connections? Lol

Point 2): Karim is anyway better of you there as well, anyway, even if I’d care about those stuff…

GIVE UP.

… you can’t handle me.

Non si vive di soli ricordi…

Venerdì
Fire party, festa in villa, tutto intorno a me è luce. Il collo, le braccia, adornate con bracciali fluorescenti.
Stiamo insieme tra la gente e arriva l’ora foto: ormai è la moda, per via di facebook si intende. Comunque ci divertiamo, la musica è buona, l’ambiente socievole e creativo. I raggi ultravioletti risaltano le linee bianche sulla mia camicia Calvin Klein Jeans, comprata alle Galeries Lafayette. Davvero azzeccata.
Ci sono una decina di ragazze che hanno colpito il mio sguardo. O io il loro.
Passa la serata, ci spostiamo in gruppo a casa di un’amico.
Mi intrattengo con Daisy, Flavio e Samuel. Fumiamo qualcosa fuori, Daisy si avvicina a me, il suo corpo tremante mi avverte che ha freddo. Senza pensarci un attimo l’abbraccio e lei sembra apprezzare il gesto da vero gentiluomo.
Si, perchè 5 minuti dopo la sento sfiorarmi le dita che le poggiano sul fianco.
Torno a casa alle 4.00.

Sabato
Dal giorno dopo a mercoledì non ho memoria.

Mercoledì
Serata discoteca. C’è un casino di gente. Nel preserata io e Flavio siamo andati a prendere le ragazze all’hotel Baia. Un gradito ritorno all’inverno scorso. Solo che tante cose sono cambiate in un anno. Tranne una, il rapporto tra me e Alexa, ovvero una infinita continuità di provocazioni e una serie assai numerosa di frasi ambigue. Solo che adesso se la fa con Flavio. Rimaniamo comunque soli mentre facciamo la fila per entrare al locale. Fila che poi aggiriamo ponendoci a pochissimi metri accanto all’entrata del locale fingendoci conoscenti di qualcuno accanto a noi. Alexa per tutto il tempo mi canta canzoni nell’orecchio. Una buona voce si, ma estenuante da sopportare a lungo data la sua enorme conoscenza del repertorio musicale italiano contemporaneo.
Anche lei vuole essere abbracciata. Tutte desiderose d’affetto queste pupe. Ci ubriachiamo e faccio le 5 di notte.

Venerdì
Si esce, come tutti i venerdì. Giro in città, saluto gente. Mi ubriaco, seduco una tipetta niente male che fuma davanti al locale.
Non ricordo l’ora in cui torno a casa.

Sabato
Ad halloween, posso finalmente mostrare me stesso, eccomi “vampiro”. Giacca Canali, jeans Richmond, immancabili denti da succhiasangue. Le donne dicono che assomiglio ad Edward, sapete bene a chi si riferiscono (purtroppo non quello interpretato dal grande Johnny), in macchina trovo anche dei Rayban che mi dicono il protagonista indossa nel film. Comunque, dato che la cosa è fonte di particolare attrazione, sto al gioco e flirto con due o tre pupe. Mi accomodo sul divano, Daisy siede a terra, appoggiata alle mie gambe; al fidanzato/Joker non resta che stare a guardare.
Tuttavia a fine serata, nonostante la sangria, sono sobrio.
Intorno alle 4 sono nel mio letto e fatico ad addormentarmi.

Martedì
Vado al cine con Flavio e due amiche, ci vengono a prendere fino a casa e la serata è piacevole e rilassante. Al bar non bevo nemmeno una birra.

Venerdì
Discoteca, Donne, Disinibizione.

Lunedì
Compleanno di Selina all’hotel Baia, alcool in abbondanza, indosso un maglione leggero nero CK e un paio di pantaloni scuri Trussardi, notevole la presenza di belle donne, quasi tutte dell’hotel, ma non sono dell’umore giusto. Faccio le 3 e mezza solo perché mi fermo a giocare un ora a PES10 a casa di Flavio dopo il party.

Mercoledì
E’ san martino, ma le cose non vanno per il verso giusto. Saltano tutti i programmi e torno a casa ancora alle 3.30 senza nemmeno rendermi conto.

Venerdì
White Russian al Cupido e per il resto vuoto totale. Torno a un orario imprecisato.

Oggi
Rimango per qualche minuto a fissare il nuovo piumone Bassetti a scacchi Verde, Giallo e Blu, con uno sguardo da ebete. Mi trasmette serenità.

immagine | Eat me drink me di kiwipecora.

(Above: Former NBA player and current ESPN music columnist Paul Shirley discusses some of his favorite records at Amobea Records in Los Angeles.)

By Joel Francis

Paul Shirley played in the 2005 NBA conference finals as a member of the Phoenix Suns and scrimmaged against Kobe Bryant as a training camp member of the Los Angeles Lakers, but he doesn’t want to talk about any of that right now. Shirley’s telling the story of when he first heard U2’s “Mysterious Ways” in the back of a school bus during high school.

“It dawned on me that I was old enough to have a CD player and I could play whenever I wanted,” Shirley said. “The first time I played ‘Achtung Baby,’ I thought it was the worst purchase ever, but after I played it 8 or 10 times, I thought it was the best.”

When “Zooropa” arrived a few years later, Shirley realized bands could grow and music could evolve. Nearly 20 years later, Shirley is still marveling at inventive new sounds and comforting old ones.

“Music and basketball were both my outlets,” Shirley said. “People don’t understand, but there’s a lot of catharsis in both of them. When I came home from practice, mad at the world, I could put on ‘The Downward Spiral’ and all my troubles would melt away.”

As Shirley migrated from Jefferson West High School in Meriden, Kan. – located about 15 miles outside of Topeka – to Ames, Iowa as a three-year starter for the Iowa State Cyclones men’s basketball squad and a professional ball career that encompassed Spain, Russia, Greece and several stops in the NBA, music was a constant companion.

“The music I have taken with me has allowed me to feel at home in all different places,” said Shirley, who makes his home in Kansas City, Mo. “The ability to put on my headphones and pop in a CD is priceless. It’s like having a set of friends I can take with me wherever I want.”

When not rocking with his aural amigos, Shirley was taking his friends to live shows. An early concert at the Granada Theater in Lawrence, Kan. made a big impression.

“One weekend my brother and I were home from college flipping through the Lawrence weekend paper when we saw an ad for (textural post-rock band) Mogwai,” Shirley said. “We did a little research and decided to check it out for, what, $12 or whatever. When we got there the show was so intense and focused, it was like nothing I’d ever seen. There were four guitars and no vocalist. It was just overwhelming.”

That fix turned Shirley in to a live music junkie, prowling the scene searching for the next high.

“I don’t think of myself as a person on the cutting edge, but there are moments when you see someone who you now is going to be good before anyone else. Like when I saw Ratatat open for the Killers at the Hurricane or the Secret Machines at El Torreon,” Shirley said. “Moments when you see someone destined for, if not stardom, then goodness and that’s really cool.”

Shirley’s pro ball career never took off as planned, but through those trials another passion emerged: writing.

“It never occurred to me that I could write about this stuff,” said Shirley, who saw “Can I Keep My Jersey?,” his basketball memoir, published in 2007.

After writing a column for the Phoenix Suns Website, Shirley was asked to write for ESPN.

“I think they (ESPN) were thinking I’d go back into the NBA and then they’d have a player on the inside,” Shirley said. “Instead I went to summer leagues and overseas.”

The column died when Shirley grew tired of writing about basketball, but when ESPN launched a new, non-sports section of their Website, they asked him to write a music column. Every Tuesday he interviews indie bands, reports on a festival like Austin City Limits or Lollapalloza, reviews a concert or shares his musical opinions.

“It’s nice to be able to contact a band and say, hey, I live in Kansas City and see you are coming to town. Could I go to your show?” Shirley said. “Talking to musicians is nice, too, like when I got to chat with the Dandy Warhols, who I’ve liked for 15 years.”

Today, Shirley juggles the expectations that come with being an athlete writing for the Worldwide Leader with his passion for music.

“There is a disconnect between the athletes and their fans and music nerds and book nerds, and it’s probably exaggerated for me because I write for a jock Website,” Shirley said. “People have a hard time understanding that for me, talking about basketball is like them talking about their day job. It’s not as interesting to me (as music).”

Shirley acknowledges he could be drop stories about star players, or work as an analyst, but that no longer interests him.

“Basketball doesn’t inspire me,” Shirley said. “I can only stay interested in things for so long. Right now writing – specifically writing about music – provides the spark for me.”

Keep reading:

Paul Shirley’s ESPN collumn archive

More music features on The Daily Record:

Peter, Bjorn and John Heart Hip Hop

Jamie Foxx brings it to Sprint Center on Saturday

The Derek Trucks Band makes old-school rock new

Kansas City Rocks Out

Modest Mouse: Johnny Strikes Up the Band

Hail Death Cab

Ever Fallen For The Buzzcocks?

Out of the Tar Pit Back Onto the Stage

Local Doctor Claims He’s Treating Elvis

Down on “Cypress Avenue”

Gutted as I was to miss this show…

Some dedicated nerdy fans have compiled a video of NIN’s performance of the Downward Spiral – the first time the whole album has ever been played live – from HD footage taken at the show by other fans.

Credit also must go to Trent and the band for encouraging an open video policy at their concerts – full knowing that open source media and an eager community can only mean good things.

The only down side is the sound quality, which is better than most bootlegs I’ve heard, but obviously nowhere near soundboard quality.

Apparently NIN themselves couldn’t record this one-off landmark occasion because of exorbitant fees demanded by the venue. Other shows from their Wave Goodbye tour have been captured with high res audio and sound, and you can hear them playing Cars and Metal with Gary Numan himself on their website.

I look forward to whatever release the band puts out from this as well.

From the fan produced video, here is The Becoming…

Webster Hall, NY

Although I attended each of the Nine Inch Nails club shows during the Los Angeles leg of the “Wave Goodbye” tour, I did not go to their show at Webster Hall in New York.  Nine Inch Nails’ performance at Webster Hall was unique because they played The Downward Spiral in its entirety, start to finish.  Thankfully, I was able to experience The Downward Spiral when NIN repeated that set during their show at the Hollywood Palladium the following week.

However, as every live music fan knows, even if the set list is the same night to night, each show takes on a life of its own.  That’s, in part, why fans follow tours around the world.  It’s why people read message boards, blogs and reviews as a tour progresses – to get a sense of what happened differently that night; to find out what they missed or to relive the show again.

One of the many reasons I admire Nine Inch Nails is that they allow their fans to truly engage with their music.  They maintain an open camera and recording policy, as well as provide raw footage and audio tracks so fans can create and share their own remixes.

This One Is On Us, a project headed up by a Nine Inch Nails fan,  recently compiled and released a DVD of Nine Inch Nails’ performance of The Downward Spiral at Webster Hall.  So what? Well, the DVD is comprised entirely of fan recorded footage from the show, shot from multiple angles and it’s available (in several formats) free of charge.  Several sources were used in the making of this DVD which gives viewers the ability to experience the show from various perspectives.

You can watch the full show, track by track, here:  http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=7E15146D2F523968

For more info or to download the DVD, visit This One Is On Us.

Am 23. August 2009 kam es im Rahmen der Wave Goodbye Tour der Nine Inch Nails zu einer Premiere: zum ersten mal wurde The Downward Spiral komplett und am Stück gespielt! Die Band konnte das Ereignis dank irrsinniger Geldforderungen des Veranstalters für dieses Privileg nicht professionell filmen lassen, die “Open Camera Policy” für Fans blieb allerdings in Kraft. Und die haben sich zusammengerauft, Film- und Tonamterial gesammelt und die 60 Minuten TDS live in ein hervorragendes Bootleg verwandelt. Oder wie sagt Rob Sheridan, Art Director der Nine Inch Nails, es so schön:

The entire thing has been recorded, edited, and distributed entirely by fans, and it’s the latest example of the amazing things fans will do when their creativity isn’t limited by outdated, misguided restrictions.

.
Youtube: ThisOneIsOnUs & The NIN Hotline present : “The Downward Spiral : Live”

Download (Torrent): nine inch nails – the downward spiral: live
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Quelle: nin.com

Like a lot of people, I have a habit of associating music with the seasons. The Beastie Boys, for example, are good summer-listening music, while Dave Brubeck sounds best during the three frigid months of winter.

My favorite batch of music is what I like to refer to as “fall music.” I don’t know what it is about this music that makes it sound better during autumn, but (at least in my brain) that fact exists nonetheless.

Listed here (in no particular order) are my top ten favorite albums of fall. Some of them you’ve more than likely heard, while others might be a little more obscure. I encourage you to give all of them a listen, especially before December 21st.

If you have any of your own personal fall favorites, be sure to list them below in the comments section.

SHADY’S TOP TEN FAVORITE ALBUMS OF FALL

1. DJ Shadow “Endtroducing…”

2. Air “The Virgin Suicides: Original Motion Picture Score”

3. Moby “Play”

4. Rjd2 “Deadringer”

5. Nine Inch Nails “The Downward Spiral”

6. Radiohead “Kid A”

7. Portishead “Dummy”/”Portishead” (tie)

8. Plastikman “Consumed”

9. The Roots “Things Fall Apart”

10. Marvin Pontiac “The Legendary Marvin Pontiac”

Tricky and Tool are eleven and twelve,

-Shady

September 2, 2009
Hollywood Palladium
Wave Goodbye Tour

Wave Goodbye

It’s not often that the better a show is, the sadder the audience gets.  But such is the case when Nine Inch Nails takes the stage for one of the last times ever.

Nine Inch Nails is one of the best bands in the world.  Even if you don’t like their music, you can’t deny how amazing they are.  Well, you can deny it, but somebody will likely slap the $h!t out of you.

Tonight marked the first of four intimate NIN shows in Los Angeles.  This is also the fourth to the last show Nine Inch Nails will ever play live (hopefully they change their mind about that in a couple years). I’m still somewhat speechless so please forgive the brevity.

They could have played anything and I would have been happy. As they did at New York’s Webster Hall, they played The Downward Spiral in its entirety and everybody was happy.

On another note, NIN just sent a Tweet announcing that Thursday’s show at Henry Fonda is canceled, making tonight’s show at The Palladium the third to the last NIN show ever (hopefully they’ll make it for the remaining two!). Trent did mention that he was sick and couldn’t hear anything when he was performing tonight.  But if he hadn’t said something, we wouldn’t have known it.  He played and sounded great, 2 solid hours, no break.  The announcement on the band’s website says Trent’s doctor advised that he not play the next show.  “Reimbursement details will be posted as soon as we figure them out…” Fans will want more than their money back – this is an experience that they’ve been anticipating for months and one that they may not have another chance to partake in. People were already lined up outside the Fonda at 6:30pm tonight for tomorrow’s show (well, today’s show given the current hour).  I feel even more blessed to have been at the Palladium for this show and hope Trent feels better soon… soon enough to play NIN’s scheduled shows Saturday and Sunday.

Speaking of the Palladium, prior to this show, I refused to go to that venue for many years.  I had seen a handful of shows there (before Live Nation purchased it) and the sound was always awful.  They also used to search you as if you were entering a maximum security prison. And when you got inside it kind of felt like one. Now I know there are times to get upset when big corporations step in and take over a venue, but this isn’t one of them.  The sound system has been upgraded exponentially and you can walk through the front doors without feeling violated.

Bow down before the one you serve

Back to Nine Inch Nails. I can’t pick out one highlight. The entire show was a highlight.  Just being there, in a small venue (capacity: 4,000), watching one of my favorite bands perform some of my favorite songs and being able to see the sweat drip off them while they moved around the stage. As usual NIN sounded great and I think everybody who was there felt like they were part of something very special. I’m not sure anybody’s feet touched the ground for longer than a few seconds — the crowd was moving and jumping non-stop. I got some video (see below) of Trent introducing Gary Numan and talking about his influence on the sound of Nine Inch Nails. Gary performed “Metal” and “Cars” with the band and the crowd went (even more) insane.

Hopefully Trent is well enough to play The Wiltern on Saturday and The Echoplex on Sunday. Hopefully you can make it to one of those shows because this is not to be missed.  But just in case you’re missing this tour, here are some videos from the show at the Palladium:

Terrible Lie

Hurt

Gave Up

The Becoming

March of The Pigs

Head Like A Hole

Piggy

Trent introducing Gary Numan & his influence on NIN’s music

Mr. Self Destruct

Suck

Gary Numan & NIN perform “Cars”

More videos from this show can be found here: NIN Live at Palladium (videos)

Get well, Trent. We want to see you again this weekend!

Doesn't it make you feel better?

If you know me, then you know that my favorite band is Nine Inch Nails. In fact, I am straight up obsessed with them, hence the category this post is being filed under. Thus, last Sunday’s performance at Webster Hall, one of the final shows in the Wave Goodbye tour, which Trent Reznor claims will be the band’s last, was incredibly important to me.

I have only been listening to NIN since 2004, when I picked up The Downward Spiral via my mom’s company account with BMG music, which allowed us (for a time) to purchase select CDs for $5. It was awesome, and my CD-purchasing (or just music purchasing in general) has diminished ever since the service was pulled. I had been aware of the band since somewhere around 1998, and was familiar with mega-hits “Closer” and “Hurt,” and was re-familiarized with the latter when Johnny Cash released his even more popular cover in 2003. Sometimes, the manner in which I become interested in a piece of art or pop culture is strange and intricate, like an intertwining network of vines. In the winter of 2003, after I had once again been made aware of the band through Cash, I saw the trailer for the newest installment in my then reigning obsession: Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings adaptation. The theatrical trailer for The Two Towers featured a classic musical montage, set to a more epic version of Clint Mansell’s theme song for Requiem for a Dream. I watched the trailer over and over, and became quite fond of the song. My friend Tim, an audiophile and at the time, NIN fan, told me that the tune was actually a variation of NIN’s instrumental, “The Frail.” So I downloaded it, and liked it, although I wasn’t so sure Tim was right.

Today, I know much more background on the band, and the Requiem song, and I can safely say that it was definitely influenced by “The Frail.” They aren’t the exact same song, but Clint Mansell, the composer for Requiem, actually worked as an engineer on The Fragile, and was one of Reznor’s many protégés. The version of “The Frail” featured on the 2000 remix album Things Falling Apart replaced the soft piano chords with strings, provided by the world-famous Kronos Quartet, who also performed the score for Requiem. In that version, one can definitely hear the resemblance.

I’m drifting, I know. Half of you have probably stopped reading already. “Get to the concert review!!” you’re saying. “This guy’s a massive dork, look how much useless trivia he knows about Nine Inch Nails!!” It’s true, I know a lot. And I’m sorry if I’m taking my time, but I think it’s imperative you understand how important this band is to me. It may seem silly to some, but Reznor’s music really has touched me, and has fundamentally changed my life. It continues to today, and Sunday’s show was sort of the culmination of all that. If you’re a music lover like I am, then you understand what I’m talking about. We all have that one band, or that one song, that just speaks to us. We don’t really know why, we might even be embarrassed by it, but it’s there. It’s real. And nothing can change it.

“The Frail” was not my true introduction to Nine Inch Nails. Just as my initiation into the world of jazz was precipitated by a videogame, Grim Fandango, my intro to NIN was spurred on by a television show, one I have mentioned before on this blog, and one that no one’s ever heard of: Touching Evil. The show premiered in March 2004, right after I returned from spring break in Spain, and starred a host of talented but then unknown actors: Jeffrey Donovan, now famous for his portrayal of super-spy Michael Westen on Burn Notice, Vera Farmiga, Kevin Durand, Zach Grenier and even Bradley Cooper. The premise of the show was a little silly: a former federal agent who’s lost all inhibitions due to a non-fatal gunshot to the head returns to help run a new division he co-founded designed to hunt down serial killers, but trust me- it was amazing.

The two-hour pilot featured Nine Inch Nail’s “A Warm Place,” which was previously used in Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers, and the low-fi version of “The Day the World Went Away” found on the companion disc to the band’s 2002 live album, called Still. It was also scored by Atticus Ross, a frequent NIN collaborator, who has helped mix and engineer practically all of their albums. I loved both songs and quickly downloaded them with Limewire or whatever pre-torrent program I was using back then. The Still version of TDTWWA was almost impossible to find, and I ended up with the album version, which was confusing, as it was drastically different- much louder and heavier, but the more I listened to it the more it grew on me. Eventually I decided maybe an album would be worth a listen- I had already started dipping my feet in rock music, having previously become a big fan of Pink Floyd and Radiohead. So I ordered The Downward Spiral and sat down for a listen.

At first I didn’t really like it. There was definitely songs that stuck out to me as good: “Piggy,” “Closer,” “Hurt.” But I had never heard anything quite that loud, dissonant, or jarring before. And my natural human reaction was: ugh. This is too loud. Where is the pleasant ambient music I thought I would get after watching Touching Evil? But as it was one of the few CDs I owned at the time that wasn’t jazz, I ended up listening to it constantly during my time at the New York Film Academy’s Universal Studios program in Los Angeles, and it quickly grew on me until, within mere months of first popping it into my stereo, I was obsessed. I listened to it constantly, and still have fond memories of smoking on the roof of my Burbank hotel complex, rocking out to “Ruiner” while watching wildfires burn atop the faraway hills.

I soon felt an almost addictive need for more Nine Inch Nails. So naturally I grabbed their second-most famous album, the double-disc epic The Fragile, and quickly ate it up. It took a little more time to grow on me- it was longer, and thus has more weak tracks, although I already enjoyed some songs more than those on TDS (namely “The Day the World Went Away,” “We’re In This Together” and “The Fragile.” Today, it is my favorite entry in the NIN catalogue, and the first disc is probably my most beloved piece of music ever produced. Even in July 2004 the music was inspiring me- while filming my spaghetti western I was working on a script inspired by NIN songs and structured around cues I planned to cull from TDS and The Fragile. The script has sadly been lost ever since my high school-issued Dell laptop went kaput, and it never got made, as my friends were a bunch of deadbeats and weren’t interested in helping me produce it. In the long run, it worked out: the script eventually evolved into my 28-page Intro to Dramatic and Visual Writing II project entitled Amnesiac, but as I went to Dublin and took music video production instead of Color Sync, it too never got produced. But the idea stuck with me, and it transformed into both my Advanced Television Production screenplay, called Portal (which did get produced), and an expanded one hour TV pilot of the same name. Funny how much impact a couple rock songs can have on one’s life.

I became a Nine Inch Nails fan at the perfect moment. One year after I started listening to them Trent Reznor released his newest opus, With Teeth and went on tour. In 2005 I attended my first concert, a massive show at Madison Square Garden with Queens of the Stone Age and Death From Above 1979. I have seen the band six times since then, and every time they have put on a superior show, but I’ll always have a soft spot for that first time, especially as I had just gotten into QOTSA the summer before. Reznor’s gotten very bad at picking opening acts as of late. The next show I saw had Saul Williams which was awesome. The next had Peaches, which was fun in a guilty pleasure sort of way, followed by Bauhaus, which should have been awesome except that they sounded sludgy and dissonant. Next was Does It Offend You, Yeah? which I don’t feel I need to elaborate on, and the last three shows, including the Webster Hall outing, featured the worst openers: HEALTH, Street Sweeper Social Club and The Horrors. Some of my friends like HEALTH and assure me they’re awesome, but in addition to looking like a bunch of hoodie-wearing hipsters cut out of Vibe magazine, they also put on an awful show and were almost booed off the stage. SSSC should have been cool, and they were anytime Tom Morello was doing a guitar solo, but the lead singer / rapper, Boots Riley was as terrible as his juvenile lyrics. The Horrors featured an equally douchebag-esque lead singer, who’s only capable of singing like Ian Curtis, and thus made the whole band sound like a lame rip-off of a lame-rip off of Joy Division.

But that didn’t stop the show from blowing me away. Before Reznor and co. took the stage I hadn’t exactly been in the best mood for moshing. But the second they opened with “Mr. Self Destruct” I couldn’t help myself. The rendition wasn’t quite as good as the one I had witnessed at the March 2006 show in Amherst (it’s a lot cooler when four guys are standing in a row at the front of the stage wailing on guitars), but it’s always a great opener. Next came “Piggy,” and a personal favorite of mine, “Heresy,” which is awesome live. Even when the band played the shorter, album version of “March of the Pigs” and segued right into “Closer,” I still didn’t realize what was happening. I was so overwhelmed with joy when they started “Ruiner” that it still did not occur to me. It wasn’t until “The Becoming” that it hit me: they’re playing the whole fucking album!!! And that’s when the show kind of stopped being just a concert, and transcended into a spiritual experience for me.

I wasn’t on drugs, wasn’t even drunk. But I felt high as shit. Sweat coated my body and kept getting in my eyes, but I didn’t care. The usually oppressive swell of the mosh pit now felt comforting, like I was somehow connecting with all the bald metalheads and fat chicks, like I was actually part of a community. People weren’t even moshing that much anymore- everyone was so amazed by what was happening that not even the crunching guitar riffs of “Big Man With a Gun” could get them all that riled up. We all knew we were experiencing a once in a lifetime event, something that was truly special, and would stay with us for the rest of our lives, and we knew we had to savor it.

As the band reached the quiet instrumental interlude “A Warm Place,” I found myself swaying back and forth, eyes closed, as if in ecstasy. Their music transported me to another place, a completely cerebral plane. When they finally reached the album-closer “Hurt,” people started shouting “Thank you, Trent!” I had always wanted to meet Reznor, mostly just to tell him how much his music had changed my life and because I get the feeling he’s a pretty cool guy. Tonight, I just wanted to shake his hand and say thanks for putting on such an amazing show.

After “Hurt” Trent announced that that was the first and last time the band had ever played The Downward Spiral in its entirety and in order. And if that wasn’t enough, they played another ten songs! I have to take a moment to give some props to the band’s guitarist, Robin Finck. He is fucking incredible. When I first saw NIN they had a different guitarist, Aaron North of the Icarus Line and co-founder of Buddyhead Records. He was great too, but nowhere near as awesome as Finck. Back in freshman year of college, my friend and fellow NIN-obsessive Bob Burdalski introduced me to the 2002 NIN concert DVD, And All That Could Have Been, and we both commented on how badass Finck was in it, and how we wished he was still with the band. So we were both overjoyed to hear that he was rejoining for the 2008 Lights in the Sky tour, and every subsequent show. He is amazing at the guitar. He has this great ability to take a really distinctive NIN guitar riff, and make his own, like the classic rock solo in “Ruiner.” And the things he does with feedback- astounding. Just a really, really, talented musician; he adds a whole nother level to the Nine Inch Nails live experience.

When the show was finally over I told my friend and companion Brian “that was definitely the best concert I’ve ever been too.” He wholeheartedly agreed. My ears rang for days and it took me nearly an entire week to conjure up the words to describe what I had experienced. It was the most fitting end to Nine Inch Nails I could have imagined, and I will never forget it, for as long as I live. Will this in fact be the end of NIN? I’m not so sure. Reznor himself has stated he plans to continue making music, and that he is merely tired of touring as a large band. Usually when a band declares their latest tour as their “farewell,” it’s total bullshit, but Reznor isn’t your average rock star, and is genuine enough to stick to his declarative statements. I could see him doing a more low-key sort of thing. Perhaps just him and Robin Finck, playing the band’s more quiet / instrumental songs. Either way, I’m excited to see what the man will do next.

SETLIST:

Mr. Self Destruct
Piggy
Heresy
March of the Pigs
Closer
Ruiner
The Becoming
I Do Not Want This
Big Man With a Gun
A Warm Place
Eraser
Reptile
The Downward Spiral
Hurt
1,000,000
Terrible Lie
Metal
Lights in the Sky
Burn
Gave Up
Suck
Physical (You’re So)
The Hand That Feeds
Head Like a Hole

Lucky bastards.

The entire Downward Spiral album…

I would give my left lung to see NIN play a set like that.

Thursday. NIN. Live at Arvika. saynomore.

Back from buying the world’s most raw, depressing and Downward Spiraling album. Deluxe edition. Finally. I come home, enter my front door only to find a white envelope resembling one of those vacuum cleaner bags that always finds a way to your dining room carpet. It was, literally. Nonetheless I picked it up and started to encrypt the tiny messages on the yellowish baglike accident:

- US airmail.
hopeful.
- sender: merch.com
- containing one CD and one t-shirt
euphoria.

So I run along with my new bought TDS, an olive-green ART IS RESISTANCE t-shirt in my trembling hands, and NIN: AATCHB Still album close to my heart.

How do all good things happen at once?

♥

The most amazing day.
.. and still, if possible, thursday will be even better.

This re-evaluation of The Downward Spiral was written for a 2006 Metal Hammer special on 90s music. This is, for me, an album that’s every bit as important as Highway 61 Revisited, The Velvet Underground & Nico, Bitches Brew, Master Of Reality, For Your Pleasure, Low, Closer, The Correct Use Of Soap and just about any other undisputed classics you care to mention.

In 1997, Trent Reznor was named one of Time magazine’s 25 most influential people, sharing the honor with the cartoon character Dilbert and then US Secretary of State Madeline Albright. He was called “the anti-Bon Jovi” by Time. His “vulnerable vocals and accessible lyrics led an Industrial revolution: He gave the gloomy genre a human heart…Reznor’s music is filthy, brutish stuff, oozing with aberrant sex, suicidal melancholy and violent misanthropy. But to the depressed, his music … proffers pop’s perpetual message of hope: There is worse pain in the world than yours. It is a lesson as old as Robert Johnson’s blues.” 

Reznor was the latest in a long line of brooding, dark romantic figures that included David Bowie, Lou Reed, Jim Morrison, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. He was also an overlooked recording genius, a studio nerd who pioneered a polished, aggressive hard rock sound that is still ubiquitous today.

He seemed an unlikely icon before and an even less credible one today. He’s still a figure of some importance and influence, yet the idea that he was perceived as the spokesman for generation x now seems faintly ludicrous.

Perhaps this is because he is now perceived as the Svengali behind Marilyn Manson, the puppet master who lost control of his creation. And for all his spikiness and the threat to the American way of life that he represents, Manson is more easily digested on MTV than Reznor ever was.

Throughout the 90s Reznor transcended genres and tribes: he appealed to goths because of his emaciated, pale demeanour; he appealed to fledgeling nu metalheads who loved the abrasive guitars and in your face beats; he appealed to ‘cyberpunk’ types who read Wired because it seemed that he seemed to be orchestrating the bleak future world of frazzled tech depicted by William Gibson in Neuromancer. Before the rise of his protégé Marilyn Manson,he was the USA’s most popular nihilist. This reputation rested largely on his masterpiece, the sprawling black hole of despair that was The Downward Spiral. 

Even today you can listen to The Downward Spiral and still discover things that you had never heard before. It’s almost as if the album has kept on growing and changing, updating itself between plays.

The first Nine Inch Nails album Pretty Hate Machine, recorded in 1988, was essentially an electronic work heavily influenced by Skinny Puppy, Ministry and Depeche Mode, with Reznor as one man band, creating all the songs and sounds in the studio. The abrasive follow up (of sorts) Broken introduced distorted guitars and a hard rock sensibility. These largely appealed to a cult market, the still-thriving industrial underground. But by the time he made The Downward Spiral in 1994, the ‘mainstream’ of hard rock – under the influence of everyone from Rage Against The Machine and Nirvana to post-‘black album’ Metallica – was moving towards where Trent Reznor had already staked out his territory. 

In 1992 Reznor moved to Los Angeles. He had just signed a deal with Interscope that gave him the artistic freedom that he needed to work on his third album. He wanted a property where he could set up his own recording studio.

The Downward Spiral was one of the first albums to be recorded entirely using state of the art digital technology whereby sounds were recorded and stored on a computer hard drive rather than on magnetic tape. They could then be digitally altered – adding effects, reverb or taking such effects off and cleaning the sound up where necessary – rather than just putting the band in the studio, recording the instruments and mixing it together.

The beauty of digital recording is that it can really be done anywhere. The location Trent wanted had to be sufficiently isolated but large enough to accommodate the gear and any collaborators like producer Flood and his main collaborator/assistant drummer Chris Vrenna, whose job was to sift through hundreds of videos for samples to be used on the album. He found a house to rent in the Hollywood Hills, a ranch style bungalow on Cielo Drive. It’s a beautiful, picturesque location, set in the real super-rich Los Angeles populated by movie executives, actresses and musicians. The house he rented at 10050 Cielo Drive, Beverly Hills had had some famous tenants in the past, most notably maverick Polish film director Roman Polanski his beautiful young wife actress Sharon Tate.

One sultry night in August 1969 while the heavily pregnant Sharon and her friends were turning in for the night, a group of hippies broke in. In the space of an hour Sharon watched as her friends Abagail Folger, Jay Sebring and Voytek Frykowski were slaughtered in front of her. Then they killed Sharon, ripping the unborn baby boy from her womb. She was alive to see this. They wrote in her blood the words ‘Pig’ and ‘Healter Skelter’ (sic) on the walls and on the door.

Trent had moved into the house made famous by the so-called Manson murders.

“It’s a coincidence,” he told Rolling Stone at the time. “When I found out what it was, it was even cooler.”

Later, he admitted that he had in fact deliberately chosen the location for the bad vibes but regretted this after a meeting with Sharon Tate’s sister Doris.

At the time they were recording in the house, Vrenna and Reznor nicknamed the studio ‘le pig’, alluding to the word ‘pig’ scrawled on the wall in Sharon Tate’s blood by killer Susan Atkins. One of the strongest tracks on the album was also March Of The Pigs, though Reznor denied that there  was any connection between this and Charles Manson. 

Reznor had been listening to a lot of David Bowie and the influence of Hunky Dory, the 1971 album where he attempted to redefine the way that pop songs were written, had percolated through. Bowie had tried to break away from the traditional verse/chorus/middle eighth/repeat structure of songwriting on that album, something that greatly appealed to Reznor.

While The Downward Spiral was not planned as a concept album, there are linking themes and recurring motifs in the songs. He had been keeping notes on his inner state since his chaotic booze and chemical fuelled stint on Lolopolooza. This provided the conceptual backbone for the songs: “It is personal experiences, but it’s wrapped up in the highly pretentious idea of a record with some sort of theme or flow to ‘em, and it was meant to be…It’s become a kind of a dated 70s concept, but some of the records that influenced me a lot on this album, like [David Bowie’s] Low and even The Wall – I’m sure I’m ripping off Pink Floyd, in fact, I know I am ripping them off. There’s records, although they may appear dated today, that try to do things that are more exciting to me than, ‘Here’s my video track and here’s my dance song and here’s my power ballad.’ All that kind of disposability. It was just me bored, trying to come up with something that I kind of wanted to set the parameters to work within, to focus more.” 

The expectations for The Downward Spiral were almost crippling. Pretty Hate Machine and Broken had – in a sense – both been produced in secret. But the constant pressure from fans, admirers and other bands asking when the new album was out, how it was going, what it would be like, what the songs would be, what colour the cover would be, started to take their toll.

The album was more of a struggle to make than he realised it would be. The original intention had been to make the album quickly. Reznor cited the example of Nirvana who had gone into the studio and made Nevermind in two weeks. But the process was different for him and soon his new record company Interscope were expressing ‘concern’ at the time that album seemed to be taking to make.

Reznor and Marilyn Manson had started to hang out together, Trent was determined that he would sign Manson to his own Nothing imprint. But aside from the music, the two also shared an interest in LA’s seamier side. As Manson recalled in his book The Long Hard Road Out Of Hell, much of their time together was spent hunting groupies, indulging in strange sex and getting wasted. The stories of depravity that emerged from the sessions are legendary and not always repeatable for reasons of legality and taste. Suffice to say that Reznor even looked debauched, like some mildly bloated Byronic figure, or Jim Morrison after the booze and drugs had started to ravage his looks.

But Reznor survived. He later said: “I just wanted to kill myself. I hated music. I was like, ‘I just want to get back on the road because I hate sitting in a room trying to, trying to’ –how do you say this?—‘just scraping my fucking soul.’ Exploring areas of your brain that you don’t want to go to, that’s painful. You write something down and you go, ‘Fuck, I can’t say that. I don’t want people to know that.’ It’s so naked and honest that you’re scared to let it out. You’re giving a part of your soul away, exposing part of yourself. I avoid that. I hate that feeling of sending a tape out to someone: ‘Here’s my new song. I just cut my soul open. Check it out. Criticize it’.”

Reznor wanted to finish the album and get the Hell out of LA and back on the road.

“That’s the stupidest fucking reason for doing an album I’ve ever heard,” American recordings boss Rick Rubin told Trent when they ran into each other. “Don’t do it. Don’t do it until you make music that it’s a crime not to let other people hear.”

Somehow shaken by Rubin’s advice, Reznor knuckled under and – taking time out to work with Manson – delivered the finished album almost a year after he had started work. The flurry of writing and recording produced 16 songs and some leftovers that would crop up on b-sides, or would be reworked as material for remixes for Nine Inch Nails as well as other artists.

The songs were like frontline reports from the battlefield of Trent Reznor’s psyche. That they were classic songs of negativity, angst, despair and hatred would come as no surprise. But Reznor’s voice – previously heard only through a bank of distortion and FX screaming in mute nostril agony – was transformed, seductive and even sweet. From the deceptively quiet intro to Mr Self Destruct, through the piano melody on March Of The Pigs to the grandiose almost-pop of Closer, to the tenderness in the hate-ballad Piggy, it was clear that The Downward Spiral was an album with light and shade, with blended colours rather than just blocks of bold primary hues.  There was enough of the cyber jackbeat on Heresy and the intense title track itself that connected Reznor to his earlier work and still had him filed under ‘Industrial’. But the truth is that he wasn’t so much part of a different genre as an entirely new game altogether.

Attempting to recreate the same sense of ‘masterpiece’ about The Fragile, Reznor succeeded in making a great album that could only be listened to in small doses: in The Downward Spiral he made something magnificent that took you on a journey all the way to the heart of darkness. 

Trent Reznor, along with his media director/guru Rob Sheridan have developed a pretty hefty band-fan interaction iPhone application and launched it on iTunes a couple of weeks ago. Now Trent and Rob are seeing the new update of their application rejected by the Apple store because of some “explicit content” in one of NIN’s new songs, “The Downward Spiral”, that is merely just streamable in the application’s podcast.

Trent is obviously not happy about this at all. In  Apple’s world, apps like the virtual fart thing can make you a millionaire. Apps like iSnort, that lets you snort virtual cocaine lines, are accepted. There are enormous catalogs of “explicit content” related music sold on iTunes, and yet just because of one song (who by the way is also sold on iTunes), a perfectly respectable app, created by a perfectly respectable music 2.0/tech-visionary/rock super mega star, is getting shoved off the shelf because of some content that doesn’t even pertain to the app itself.

Incomprehensible indeed.

Trent posted Apple’s rejection letter, as well as his outraged reply on his forums. Here is what came out of it:

Follow-up: XXXXXXXXXX

Dear Craig,

Thank you for submitting nin: access to the App Store. We’ve reviewed nin: access and determined that we cannot post this version of your iPhone application to the App Store at this time because it contains objectionable content which is in violation of Section 3.3.12 from the iPhone SDK Agreement which states:

“Applications must not contain any obscene, pornographic, offensive or defamatory content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, etc.), or other content or materials that in Apple’s reasonable judgement may be found objectionable by iPhone or iPod touch users.”

The objectionable content referenced in this email is “The Downward Spiral”. Since the app is live on the App store, please make the necessary changes to the application as soon as possible, and resubmit your binary to iTunes Connect. Thank you

Regards,

iPhone Developer Program

Trent retorts:

Now, “The Downward Spiral” the album is not available anywhere in the iPhone app. The song “The Downward Spiral” I believe is in a podcast that can be streamed to the app.

Thanks Apple for the clear description of the problem – as in, what do you want us to change to get past your stupid fucking standards?

And while we’re at it, I’ll voice the same issue I had with Wal-Mart years ago, which is a matter of consistency and hypocrisy. Wal-Mart went on a rampage years ago insisting all music they carry be censored of all profanity and “clean” versions be made for them to carry. Bands (including Nirvana) tripped over themselves editing out words, changing album art, etc to meet Wal-Mart’s standards of decency – because Wal-Mart sells a lot of records. NIN refused, and you’ll notice a pretty empty NIN section at any Wal-Mart. My reasoning was this: I can understand if you want the moral posturing of not having any “indecent” material for sale – but you could literally turn around 180 degrees from where the NIN record would be and purchase the film “Scarface” completely uncensored, or buy a copy of Grand Theft Auto where you can be rewarded for beating up prostitutes. How does that make sense?

You can buy The Downward Fucking Spiral on iTunes, but you can’t allow an iPhone app that may have a song with a bad word somewhere in it. Geez, what if someone in the forum in our app says FUCK or CUNT? I suppose that also falls into indecent material. Hey Apple, I just got some SPAM about fucking hot asian teens THROUGH YOUR MAIL PROGRAM. I just saw two guys having explicit anal sex right there in Safari! On my iPhone!

Come on Apple, think your policies through and for fuck’s sake get your app approval scenario together.

Bark?

Trent Reznor’s relationship with Apple seems to be suffering a sort of downward spiral, eh, pig, piggy pig pig pig? I’ll let Patrick fill in the details if he wants to, because I am no expert whatsoever on iPHone apps. Or you could just go read the link while I stay here and make the dispute sound Nine Inch Nailsey:

Apple: “We’re In This Together!”

Trent: “Terrible Lie!”

It’s difficult to create a good remix album. To be successful, it needs to draw on the source material of the original album while offering a different experience. Needless to say, most remix albums end up being terrible and accomplish nothing more than giving a nice paycheck to a lazy artist. Thankfully, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails is not one of these lazy artists, and his remix albums always manage to create a new perspective of his albums that often rival the original in quality.

The Downward Spiral is considered by many, including me, to be the magnum opus of Nine Inch Nails. It is a haunting, nihilistic look at a man being driven to the point of insanity and suicide. It was a huge success both critically and commercially, driving Nine Inch Nails and its frontman into the spotlight. With this companion remix album, Reznor focuses on the heavy industrial side of the original. The result is a heavier, noisier, and often times more disturbing reinterpretation. Further Down the Spiral is certainly not for the faint of heart, and those who found the original to be on the border of what they can tolerate in terms of dissonance and heaviness, this album is certainly not for you.

Every song that appears on Further Down the Spiral is drastically reworked from its original counterpart (with the exception of “Hurt”, which was perfect the way it was anyway). Despite some songs being remixed multiple times on this album (four remixes of “Mr. Self Destruct” and three of “Eraser”), there is never any repetition as all of these offer completely different perspectives of the originals and feel like completely different songs.

Further Down the Spiral has a constantly shifting soundscape. Blasts of industrial noise are common throughout the album, especially on the “Self Destruction” trilogy. Chilling vocals contribute to the atmosphere of “The Downward Spiral (The Bottom)” and “Eraser (Polite)”. An ambient techno subtext is also present, probably due to the collaboration with the notable IDM artist Aphex Twin on “At the Heart of it All” and “The Beauty of Being Numb”. All of these influences combine to create an album that at times reaches the emotional power of The Downward Spiral. It’s not unlikely that finishing the album will leaving you feeling hollow and numb, which is probably exactly what Reznor intended. This album is a perfect fit for a day when everything falls apart.

Further Down the Spiral is an essential companion to the The Downward Spiral and should be required listening for any Nine Inch Nails fan. By elaborating on the industrial aspect of the original, Reznor created an album that is possibly even more nihilistic in its scope.

Rating: 4/5

1. Piggy (Nothing Can Stop Me Now) [4:03]
2. The Art of Self Destruction, Part One [5:42]
3. Self Destruction, Part Two [5:38]
4. The Downward Spiral (The Bottom) [7:29]
5. Hurt (Quiet) [5:09]
6. Eraser (Denial; Realization) [6:34]
7. At the Heart of it All [7:14]
8. Eraser (Polite) [1:16]
9. Self Destruction, Final [9:53]
10. The Beauty of Being Numb [5:06]
11. Eraser, Over, Out [5:59]

Morning.  Continuing on today with the third part of this little look at the 20 albums that had the biggest impact on me.  Yesterday ended with Nirvana at #10 and so we pick up from there.

11) Soundgarden – Badmotorfinger (1991)

If Nirvana were my own private Beatles, then Soundgarden became my Led Zeppelin with this record, which is still my favorite of theirs despite the rather large leap they made in songwriting with the release of Superunknown in 1994.  I’m quite certain I had heard “Hands All Over” from than the brilliant Louder than Love (1989) on Headbanger’s Ball prior to getting into this band, but when “Outshined” first unspooled on my ears it all clicked.  It had that insanely heavy chugging riff and the banshee wail of singer Chris Cornell, but somehow managed to remain an exquisitely melodic song.  This song was way heavier than most of what was passing as popular heavy metal two years prior and the dudes in the band just looked like they lived underground in tunnels somewhere, coming out only to play shows in dark rooms.  On a personal level, guitarist Kim Thyail completely blew the door off the hinges for my own playing (or lack thereof).  When I first saw the TABs for “Outshined” I remember thinking WHAT. IS. THIS??? You mean I can make my guitar sound heavier and play power chords with one finger just by tuning my E string down a step???  YES!!  Thyail always claimed to have ripped the dropped tuning from the Melvins, I believe, but my guess is he influenced more young guitarists in the nineties than any other player of the decade and that’s no joke.  An amazing record with incredibly talented musicians who I would probably pay more to see a reunion show from than any other band I can think of.  Including Led Zeppelin.  Here’s the great “Rusy Cage”:

12) Nine Inch Nails - the Downward Spiral (1994)

You know what I love about this record?  The notion that Trent Reznor sat in a room and made it himself.  That’s probably not even close to accurate, but that’s more or less what I took from this at the time and I’m sure I wasn’t alone.  How many people listened to this and thought “Gee, if I get a computer, a drum machine, some mics and a guitar, I could probably be my own Nine Inch Nails!“  Of course, there’s a little thing called “talent” that can’t be overlooked but I don’t want to downplay how inspiring a record like the Downward Spiral was and is to like-minded musicians even if I know this record will mostly be remembered as that one where the guy said he wanted to “f*ck you like an animal.”  NIN’s debut, Pretty Hate Machine, is an outstanding record in its own right but with Spiral, Reznor wasn’t just swinging for the fences he was swinging for the fences on Pluto and he by and large got there.  This is an incredibly textured, expansive record that moves back and forth between industrial and goth and metal and pseudo-dance-electronic-whatever and it does this without ever feeling disconnected.  I was late getting into the CD game, but this is not an album that should be listened on cassette or probably even vinyl.  Taking a break to flip sides with this one seems borderline sacreligious to me.  This is an album that should be played from start to finish with no stops and no distractions.  In that way, it’s a very cinematic record, playing like a film that doesn’t pause for commercial or station identification.  So many other bands in the mid to late 90’s took their shot at becoming the next Nine Inch Nails.  The fact that I can’t think of a single one that succeeded is a testament to the songwriting ability of Reznor, which has never quite come together so well as it did on this album.  Here’s “March of the Pigs”:

13) Tool – Undertow (1993)

I think I’ve mentioned before that there was one album I listened to more in the nineties than any other and this is it.  Tool completely and utterly changed everything (again!) for me when I heard this record.  There was nothing even remotely as mysterious as this in my music library and at the time I sort of just felt like you either got Tool or you didn’t, and if you didn’t then it was your loss.  In fact, I probably hoped the fewer people who got Tool the better; they felt like my secret, like the dead body in the woods that nobody else knew was just waiting there to be discovered.  Of course, this wasn’t exactly the case since the band had already released an EP prior to Undertow and were gathering a following that was increasing in numbers by the day.  But that said, this album and primarily its music videos (directed by guitarist Adam Jones)  distinctly altered what I looked for in music, visual art, and film.  It wasn’t enough to just have a surface appeal; Tool had a layer of subtext in all their work that I didn’t fully grasp and I loved it because of that.  Having said that though, the surface layer of what Tool was doing was pretty freaking awesome as well.  The guitars were heavy but not solely through the use of volume.  The drums were insane and off-putting but without entirely disconnecting from the song.  And Maynard’s voice was simply molded from some other species.  The word “haunting” is overused, but with that dude the shoe fits and he wears it well.  I remember being lukewarm about possibly going to Lolapalooza in 1993 despite having had a blast at the show in 1992.  And then I bought Undertow something like three or four days before the concert was to be held.  I listened to that album probably twice and that was all it took.  I bought a ticket the next day.  Here’s an idea of what it looked like:

14) Quicksand – Slip (1993)

I first heard Quicksand where else but on Headbanger’s Ball, which should further prove that at one point MTV actually used to be capable of improving people’s tastes instead of the opposite.  I knew nothing about the NYC hardcore scene from which this band rose and took a radical departure from, only that when I surprisingly discovered my neighbor had bought this disc I was determined to borrow it from him either with his permission or not.  Here again was a record that took only a listen or two before knowing that this was something different and something really, really good.  The closest reference I had was Helmet.  The dropped tuning, the stop and start rhythms, and a voice that shouted as much as it sang.  But there was also a deep seed of melody on this record and it didn’t have the same aggression as Helmet, though this did not leave it with any shortage of energy.  I listened to this CD over and over again, and aside from my one neighbor I honest to God knew no one else that liked this band until I went to college and soon realized that they had a sizable following.  Unfortunately, it was also around this time that the band broke up, leaving behind only two albums and an EP.  It sucks but Slip is still here to enjoy and discover.  If you’re into this kind of music at all I cannot recommend this album enough.  You can find a lot of imitators, but none who do what Quicksand does quite as well as they did on this record.  Here’s the mighty “Fazer.”

15) Jawbox – For Your Own Special Sweetheart (1994)

Here’s another band I stumbled upon that really stood out from the rest of the alternative rock landscape, but never quite really caught on.  Oddly enough, like Quicksand, Jawbox is often referred to as a post-hardcore band though I had no idea what that meant at the time I was listening to them both in constant rotation (and am still not sure I know what it means now).  All I knew then was that this band had guitar sounds I wasn’t familiar with and two singers that somehow worked a melody around these dissonant chords and quirky rhythms.  Another thing I knew was that nobody else in my circle was listening to them, and not even a neighbor this time.  I think the internet has changed this sense of “privilege” when it comes to music like this.  Now, if you like a band you can find thousands of other people who like them as well within seconds of a MySpace search.  I don’t lament this change, mind you.  In fact, I would’ve welcomed it at the time, I’m just merely pointing out the differences between now and then.  Because back then I would’ve loved to had a forum to shout about how great this record and Jawbox are.  And since Heath Michaels hasn’t invented a time machine yet, this blog will have to suffice.  Here’s the amazing “Savory”:

Whew.  These are hard to write but fun to think about (if not necessarily fun to read).  I’ll wrap things up tomorrow.  Until then…

E se fosse già iniziata?

immagine | Vatican Museums spiral staircase via Atlas Obscura.