Nine Inch Nails at John Paul Jones Arena -- 11/5/2008, Charlottesville, VA
I’ve been to a few rock concerts in my time, not as many as some people I know, mind you, but enough to know that what I saw at John Paul Jones Arena this past Wednesday was not a rock concert. It was a gathering of the Cult of Nine Inch Nails, a gathering to witness the visions of the Prophet Trent being conjured forth in the form of lights and music and images both surreal and vulgar. It was some ancient tribal ritual updated by a digital shaman using technology rather than hallucinogens to induce an altered state of mind. Above all else, though, it was art of the highest caliber, not just the music itself but the whole performance, the whole experience. Not every band can afford a show like this, of course, and the feel of a NIN show wouldn’t suit a lot of bands, but even so, it’s the sort of thing that makes everyone else look dull and lazy and unoriginal. So, in order to allow the rest of the rock world to go about their lives without having to hang their heads in shame and in order to allow myself to continue enjoying normal rock shows, this thing must be classified as “something else.”
This “something else” does, of course, have some elements that wouldn’t seem out of place at a good concert, for instance the relentlessly pounding rhythms pulsing through many of the songs, the beautiful melodies that fade into screeching noise for dramatic effect, and the drummer whose sound is amplified so much that you sometimes feel he might knock a hole in the floor on the next downbeat. What makes this so enthralling, though, is the way it’s all tied in with the visuals. I’ve seen other bands use lighting effects before, but for the most part, they just sort of feel like they’re tacked on. Sure, they make the show more visually interesting, and it’s not as if the lights are sequenced to run counter to the music, but I’ve never seen another show where the lights truly felt like they were an integral part of the experience. Every piece of the NIN show, including the lights, felt like it was absolutely essential to the whole work of art.
The piece that felt truly innovative, though, was the use of imagery. Sometimes this imagery was abstract enough and simple enough that perhaps I shouldn’t separate it entirely from the lighting effects, such as when the band appeared as silhouettes against nebulous green shapes shimmering spectrally on a screen behind them, but they also did more complex things using meshed screens in order to create layered effects, such as when giant puffs of smoke wafted slowly across a screen in front of the band while blue-white lines danced in time with the music on a screen in the background. There was a song sung to us by an enormous, nightmarish face composed entirely of roiling static that seared through a tamer, more serene image. Usually, only the mouth of this thing could be seen, but once, it showed us its eye, prompting you to think “That thing is looking at us.” When the song was finished, someone appeared with a light to drive out the demon. Each sweep of the lantern erased part of the image as the screen returned to darkness wherever it had been touched by the light. Even the least abstract images often had a dreamlike quality to them when paired with the music, like when the band played a slower, gentler song in front of an image of rolling sand dunes under a foreboding, cloud-streaked sky. Of course, not everything was so subtle. During “Survivalism,” the band performed in front a simulated monitor bank with images from various cameras, some of which seemed to be showing live feeds and some of which seemed to be showing taped content. (I’m assuming the monitor that showed a couple walking into a bathroom and having sex at the sink was taped.) Clearly, Trent Reznor wants us to know that we are being watched.
But regardless of whether the presentation was subtle or in-your-face obvious, all these visual effects created an emotional landscape upon which each song could be built into something more substantial than it would have been as music alone. This isn’t to say that the music wasn’t great in its own right, because it was. The point is that Nine Inch Nails took something that was already excellent and created this world around it that only served to magnify that excellence. Maybe there are other bands out there doing things on this scale, creating holistic works of live art and sucking you right into the mind of the artist, but if so, I haven’t seen them. So, in fairness to other musicians, I encourage you to continue supporting more typical rock shows because they really are a lot of fun, but if you want to see something more, if you want to see what’s possible, go see Nine Inch Nails.
This “something else” does, of course, have some elements that wouldn’t seem out of place at a good concert, for instance the relentlessly pounding rhythms pulsing through many of the songs, the beautiful melodies that fade into screeching noise for dramatic effect, and the drummer whose sound is amplified so much that you sometimes feel he might knock a hole in the floor on the next downbeat. What makes this so enthralling, though, is the way it’s all tied in with the visuals. I’ve seen other bands use lighting effects before, but for the most part, they just sort of feel like they’re tacked on. Sure, they make the show more visually interesting, and it’s not as if the lights are sequenced to run counter to the music, but I’ve never seen another show where the lights truly felt like they were an integral part of the experience. Every piece of the NIN show, including the lights, felt like it was absolutely essential to the whole work of art.
The piece that felt truly innovative, though, was the use of imagery. Sometimes this imagery was abstract enough and simple enough that perhaps I shouldn’t separate it entirely from the lighting effects, such as when the band appeared as silhouettes against nebulous green shapes shimmering spectrally on a screen behind them, but they also did more complex things using meshed screens in order to create layered effects, such as when giant puffs of smoke wafted slowly across a screen in front of the band while blue-white lines danced in time with the music on a screen in the background. There was a song sung to us by an enormous, nightmarish face composed entirely of roiling static that seared through a tamer, more serene image. Usually, only the mouth of this thing could be seen, but once, it showed us its eye, prompting you to think “That thing is looking at us.” When the song was finished, someone appeared with a light to drive out the demon. Each sweep of the lantern erased part of the image as the screen returned to darkness wherever it had been touched by the light. Even the least abstract images often had a dreamlike quality to them when paired with the music, like when the band played a slower, gentler song in front of an image of rolling sand dunes under a foreboding, cloud-streaked sky. Of course, not everything was so subtle. During “Survivalism,” the band performed in front a simulated monitor bank with images from various cameras, some of which seemed to be showing live feeds and some of which seemed to be showing taped content. (I’m assuming the monitor that showed a couple walking into a bathroom and having sex at the sink was taped.) Clearly, Trent Reznor wants us to know that we are being watched.
But regardless of whether the presentation was subtle or in-your-face obvious, all these visual effects created an emotional landscape upon which each song could be built into something more substantial than it would have been as music alone. This isn’t to say that the music wasn’t great in its own right, because it was. The point is that Nine Inch Nails took something that was already excellent and created this world around it that only served to magnify that excellence. Maybe there are other bands out there doing things on this scale, creating holistic works of live art and sucking you right into the mind of the artist, but if so, I haven’t seen them. So, in fairness to other musicians, I encourage you to continue supporting more typical rock shows because they really are a lot of fun, but if you want to see something more, if you want to see what’s possible, go see Nine Inch Nails.
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