Good Karma

Before the ACL Show
This music...this man...this experience. I am still trying to wrap my head around it. I am one of 200 people who were chosen (through NIN.com) to attend the the Austin City Limits taping of NIN on November 4, 2013. During a taping, the venue only holds about 800 people (according to web sources), and I will be one of them. This will be my sixth or seventh show--when you get to be my age, it's easy for experiences to blur. Besides all the live experiences, which are phenomenal, the coolest NIN thing to happen to me resulted in my daughter (not AT the concert, gees!). The second coolest thing happened to my husband, who caught a tambourine, during the Lights in the Sky tour. I couldn't go because I was nine months pregnant with my son. Now that tambourine sneaks back and forth from one toy box to the other. Knowing how this "toy" was acquired always makes me smile when it surfaces in a day's play. And now that T-Rez has his own kids, I bet he'd laugh too, particularly if he saw my daughter, who likes to put on fashion shows, using it as a prop on her runway.

In front of Austin's Moody Theater.
Statue of Willie Nelson over my
shoulder. Nov. 4, 2013. 

2 Days After the ACL Show
I wish I could say this was the best NIN show I had ever seen, but it wasn't. It just wasn't long enough, and they didn't play enough songs for the "BEST" moniker. Don't get me wrong, it was an unbelievable, almost ethereal experience. This was certainly the most intimate and unique NIN show I've ever seen, and the fourth best day of my life. 1. The day I got married. 2. The day I gave birth to my daughter. 3. The day I gave birth to my son. 4. November 4, 2013. I hope I can appropriately explain why the #4 is not hyperbole.

I received the email informing me that I had been selected to attend the taping of ACL at noon on Halloween. I don't think I slept more than four or five hours any night prior to the show. I would never have thought to place this event, or one like it, on my Bucket List prior to learning about it, but it certainly ended up there. My dad has been fighting leukemia and lymphoma, and--of course--he was admitted into the hospital with pneumonia on Nov. 2. Needless to say, I did not have a good feeling about this hospital visit; my dad has been one step ahead of the grim reaper since he battled back from the the brink of death in 2010.

My husband travels a lot for work, so we knew we could use airline miles and free hotel stays. However, finding someone to stay with my children and get them to and from school, gymnastics, and fed was a different story now that my mom needed to stay with my dad in the hospital. Luckily, I have amazing family members who understood what a great opportunity this was, and my kids were well taken care of in the hands of Aunt Cheri and Uncle Matt and Aunt Karen (huge shout out of gratitude to you!).

Robin Finck doing
Lindsey Buckingham
better than Lindsey
Buckingham does himself.
Photo by Rob Sheridan.

On Sunday, Nov. 3, we spent five hours with a gaggle of seven year-olds at the local children's museum for my daughter's birthday party. An hour and a half after the last kid was picked up, we were on our way to the airport. My dad was responding well to the antibiotics, and I received his blessing to have fun on this trip.

We flew into Dallas and drove to Austin. We arrived to Austin without a single glitch, found the theater, parked the rental car in the lot closest to where the tour busses were parked. My husband needed to find a place with free WiFi because he still had to work--somebody's gotta pay the bills, right? I decided to explore Austin on foot. This didn't last long since it started raining, and I knew that I was going to need a drink to calm my anxiety. I wondered into Halcyon, a cool coffee shop/bar/restaurant (unlike anything in STL). The bartendress informed me that the band had been in there the day before, that she had never been to a taping at ACL, and that I was one lucky girl since so many Austin natives never get to see a taping, especially the taping of such a well-known, important group.

The yellow circle indicates where we were standing. You can see my husband's face and my hair--sort of.  Photo by Rob Sheridan.

Review of the Show(s)
There was so much speculation about what the setlist would be. Would T-Rez dust off some of the classics that catapulted him to the top? Or would he pull a David Bowie when NIN opened for him? Would the TV audience be considered above all else? Austin City Limits airs on PBS, so "Closer" was probably NOT going to happen (which was perfectly fine with me). I refused to look online for leaked setlists because I wanted to be surprised--and I am glad I did.

Actual setlist held up by ACL volunteer.

I thought the setlist was perfect for the intimate venue. The new album, Hesitation Marks, is much more sparse and melodic to accommodate the kind performance adaptation this experience would require. I am used to general admission, on the rail or very near it, so I know how intense (sometimes violent) a NIN show can be. I also knew NOT to expect that since I watched old episodes of ACL to see how the crowd responded.

On October 1, I attended the NIN show in STL. Sadly, I didn't get to spend much time with the new album for this show--and I turned out to be down-right pissed afterwards. At one point, I turned to my husband and asked him if we were at a Cure concert--"Everything" has THAT kind of guitar riff. The great thing about seeing a NIN show is that it translates much better live than most people might imagine since the albums are mostly electronically produced. Being this unprepared for a live performance, however, made me feel like I had seen the movie before I read the book--and I HATE to do that. At least in Austin, I'd be better acquainted with Hesitation Marks because it has been on endless repeat since the STL show.

The ACL setlist breaks down like this ... of 17ish total songs performed

• 10 from Hesitation Marks (2013)
• 1 from Pretty Hate Machine (1989)
• 4 from The Fragile (1999)
• 1 from The Downward Spiral (1994)
• 2 from Year Zero (2007)
• 0 from The Slip (2008)
• 0 from With(a) Teeth(a) (2005)

I thought for sure that "A Copy of A" would be the opening song, but I was pleasantly surprised. I can see how the pace would need to be set differently for this kind of show instead of the arena tour. That's the thing about NIN music, everything is where it is supposed to be. It has such an organic feel to it even though it is artificially and electronically produced. Strangely, it never feels natural upon an album's first ten listens or so--you have to get comfortable with it, take it on a few dates before you really open up to it's potential. It's never love at first listen. That's also what makes the music last through the evolution of a fluid industry in a fickle culture.

Highlights

The famous Austin City Limits backdrop.

• Starting with "All-Time Low" and  being able to scream "Hey, everything is not OK" while most of the lame, middle-aged* pseudo-fans around me were wondering what the song was. It was as if they suffered from shock, only to (falsely) be reinvigorated when TR threw in a few lyrics to "Closer" to raise the audience's anticipation. It was like TR knew he was singing to a room half-full of idiots who hadn't listened to NIN since he got clean and sober. Wait, he's clean and sober? Really? (Ugh, facepalm.)
• "The Frail/The Wretched." I can never hear these two songs too much. Hell, I even had "The Wretched" as my Android ringtone for years before I switched to an iPhone. The menacing intro still gives me goosebumps no matter how many times I hear it. Plus, you get to yell "stuck in this hole with the shit and the piss" when you sing along. What's not fun about that?
• Going deep into the vault for "Sanctified" and "The Big Comedown." The fans around me, most of whom had stopped listening to NIN after The Downward Spiral (pussies, right?), vaguely remembered the songs but certainly couldn't recall the lyrics. Hell, most of them couldn't recall the names of these songs, which is understandable with the newly funkified arrangement for "Sanctified." (This has to be a result of adding Pino Palladino, right?) There was no excuse for not knowing "The Big Comedown." 
• "Survivalism" is such an intense song to try to keep up with vocally. Plus, it made the rubes around me a bit nervous when my husband and I started getting a little "into" it.
• "Even Deeper" is one of my favorites. Shout out to Dr. Dre, yo. (Yes, that Dr. Dre, you idiot).

  

  Charlie Clouser, Trent Reznor, Dr. Dre,
  and Danny Lohner.

• "Find my Way" is a prayer. A mantra for those days when you are stuck in a hole with the shit and piss. It is as moving through headphones as it is live--at least for the women who have the orgastic** pleasure of watching TR sing it.
• "Hurt." I don't know how many times I've seen NIN close with this song or how many times I've watched live performances of it, but THIS--THIS was mind-blowing. There is always some douchebag who screams as the song gets quiet--ALWAYS. Not so on this night. The quiet parts and whispers were held sacred. Even the producers and people behind the scenes were in awe.

This producer knows what's up. Here's a couple more:

• "Satellite" just kicks ass. Period. Prior to the release of Hesitation Marks, my kids used to complain when I would play albums like Still or With(a) Teeth(a). They called it "creepy music." Now, they ask to hear "Satellite." On Halloween, (after I learned that I had won the NIN lottery) my cup overfloweth when my daughter requested "Came back Haunted." It was Halloween after all. Had she asked for "Burn," I might be slightly concerned.
• Ilan Rubin forcing me, practically against my will, to fall in love with "Various Methods of Escape" 
• Pino Palladino finally looking comfortable on stage.
• Back up singers, Lisa Fischer and Sharlotte Gibson, providing some seriously kick-ass ambient awesomeness that reminded me of Pink Floyd.

* I am 38 years-old, so I have the right to label someone middle-aged. 

**Not a typo. See F. Scott Fitzgerald's masterpiece, The Great Gatsby.