I’ve been a huge fan of Trent Reznor’s band Nine Inch Nails for as long as they’ve been around. First introduced to their music in high school, I’ve followed every album release right up to today. Nine Inch Nails has been known for producing one of the most visually spectacular concert tours each and every time they hit the road. Detroit was a regular tour stop for them on every tour and it pained me as each tour went by and another series of unfortunate circumstances prevented me from seeing them live in concert. In all, it’s been 10 years since I discovered the music of Nine Inch Nails and finally in December I made it to one of their concerts – and it was everything I hoped it to be!!
Ultimately, it turned out to be amazingly fortuitous timing as I caught one of the final American shows at the end of the tour. After the tour ended Reznor posted on his website that this tour’s shows were in fact “the last shows for the foreseeable future”. Wow, talk about great timing. As for the show itself, no description I put in writing can really capture the experience, but if you ever get the change to see video of one of Nine Inch Nails’ live shows check it out. YouTube has a decent collection of fan video from the latest couple tours. You’ll be wowed. For this most recent “Lights In The Sky” tour Reznor partnered with Canadian production house Moment Factory to create one of the most technologically advanced tours ever produced. Wired magazine even did a write up on the show’s production that you can read here.
Whether you’re a fan of their music or not you simply cannot deny that Trent Reznor knows how to give back to his fans. He has launch a whole host of community projects since leaving his previous record label and going independent. Most significant of these is the release of his latest album The Slip, in its entirety, completely for free online. Reznor took it even one step further at the conclusion of this latest tour by making available (for free) over 400GB (yes, GB!) of raw HD video footage of three US tour shows. And guess what, the show I attended in Portland – and was about fifth row back for the entire time – was one of the three cities filmed. Fucking awesome!! I feel lucky to have found an artist who is so connected back to his fans. Even if Nine Inch Nails never released another album (highly unlikely) I would feel at peace having now been to one of their epic live performances.