NIN, take 2!

I believe in the blog I wrote about the NIN show in August, I expressed a fervent desire to be in the pit instead of in seats for the next one. So, if the curiosity has been killing you, we did indeed get presale GA tix for the show last night in Columbia. Also, while I have decided that I am in no way too old to be in the pit, I am really out of shape for it. My legs are killing me already.

Anyway, a probably overly long recap of the day:

We found out a few months ago, after we got our tickets, that one of our friends was also a NIN fan and wanted to ride up with us if she got a ticket. Which was fine with us, except the presale was already sold out and she'd have to be in a different line and everything, and we knew there'd be little chance of staying together once we got to the arena. But with all of that understood, she got her ticket and wanted to go anyway.

I decided that if we were going to do this, we were going to do it right, and that meant being right down on the rail. So we left town at 6am with plans (and an arsenal of cold weather gear) to wait outside in the freezing cold all day like real die-hard fans. I was half afraid that we'd get there and find a whole line already waiting, and half afraid we'd get there and have nobody else show up until hours later. Reality was a bit more on the side of the latter. When we arrived, there was little sign of an impending concert besides some security barriers outside and a couple of empty chairs that looked to be waiting for the first two people in line to return. We went to the box office area in the lobby, and then spotted about four people already camped out down at the other end. Kourt was worried that we were going to end up in the wrong place or miss something, so we asked them where we were supposed to be, and they said that the presale line was around the corner, but that we could wait in the main lobby for the time being.

Over the next hour or two, a handful more fans trickled in, and we started to actually socialize with each other. We played a few rounds of Uno and Bullshit, joked around with each other, and had a pretty good time. One girl remained passed out totally asleep in her sleeping bag for the entire morning, snoring even, in the midst of all our noise and her cell phone ringing off the hook.

All through the morning, one of the staff at the arena would pop in periodically to tell us what the plan was for lining up and such the rest of the day, and he asked how many of us were presale and how many of us had just regular tickets. When our friend Lauren said she just had a regular ticket, another guy who was waiting with us said he had an extra presale ticket with nobody to give it to, and that he'd let her take it so the three of us wouldn't get split up.

I just have to say for the millionth time now really awesome NIN fans are.

So yeah, they actually let us wait inside the lobby instead of out in the cold until about 2pm, when they moved us down to the basketball office entrance and, again, let us line up and wait inside that little lobby area. Of course, by that time comatose girl had woken up, and it became quite clear that we all liked her a lot better when she was asleep. Turns out she's one of these superfans who, somehow, has the means and time to go to half the shows on the tour, has all sorts of (probably exaggerated) stories about meeting various band and crew members, knows what hotels the band is going to stay in, has Trent's autograph tattooed on her back, etc, etc. Couldn't shut her mouth to save her life. Also couldn't put her cell phone down for more than ten minutes. Oh, and also hadn't showered in at least a day.

Anyway, we waited around in the little lobby for several more hours as the fans trickled in. We met some really cool people in line, including some that I know from the nin.com forums, and we all had a really good time talking and sharing snacks and playing the occasional card game. We talked a bit, even, about what we'd do if one of us caught Trent's tambourine, and decided it would be cool to pull it apart and take the little cymbal pieces out and let everyone have one, because they'd make cool necklaces.

Around 5pm the line started to finally get pretty long, and we prepared to get our tickets and get down to our spots on the floor. That process didn't quite go as smoothly as it could have, partly because the staff at that part of the process had a median age of around 70, and seemed to have very little clue what was going on. But the NIN crew got things under control and made sure we got our tickets, got through security, lined up again, and got taken down to the floor without the line order getting messed up and people mauling each other.

When we finally reached the rail, Kourt and Lauren and I were just off front center, slightly to Robin's side. We chatted a bit with the security guy in front of us, who was really cool.

Annoying girl got slightly more annoying once we hit the floor. A friend of hers, who had just arrived prior to us being let down onto the floor, made her way to the front. They talked a bit, and Miss Superfan goes into this lecture to her friend about not letting people push their way to the rail, all the while making room for this girl to do just that.

It was a bit of a blessing in disguise, though, since it meant Kourt had a one-person buffer between her and the other chick.

The opening act was a Japanese band called Boris. They're okay. I honestly couldn't believe that anything that loud could actually lull me to sleep. Yet it can. No thirty minute long strobe light solos this time, just a ten minute feedback solo, during which time the security staff gave several people earplugs.

The NIN show, however, was beyond amazing. There was one small technical glitch before Me, I'm Not, but it was quickly resolved without Trent resorting to smashing anything, and everything else seemed to go off without a hitch. The setlist was similar to last time:

999,000/1,000,000, Letting You, Discipline, March of the Pigs...

I really expected the pit to get really brutal during MOTP. There was a lot more crushing going on and people were definitely jumping around behind us -- not like we weren't jumping too -- but it wasn't anywhere near the brutality we experienced at LP this summer. Granted, being on the rail is a lot easier than being back in the crowd with nothing to hold on to, but still...

...Head Down...

We knew Trent would be throwing the tambourine during Head Down, and he lobbed it high and hard enough that it came down a few rows behind us. One guy managed to catch it, and the douchebag behind me tried to grab it out of his hand. There was a little bit of a scuffle, but there were enough of us around trying to get the second guy to back off and not be an asshole that he finally wised up and let go. Yay for fairness!

...The Frail, The Wretched...

One of the guys near us had a set list before the show because his mom was part of the arena event staff and brought it out to him, so we already knew we'd be getting The Wretched after The Frail. I'm almost a little sad that I knew what was coming, because it took the suspense out of things. Still, though, I was super excited to finally get to see ALL of the Wretched without being pulled aside and chewed out for shooting videos. In fact, the security guys were actually going out of their way to move out of the way so we could shoot pics and video unobstructed.

...Closer...

Trent's got some cool new visuals to go with Closer this time around, and he actually sang as part of the chorus of The Only Time instead of just using the breakdown in the middle.

...Gave Up, Me, I'm Not...

Like I said, there was some little technical glitch before the song started. Trent was actually kind of funny about it. I think we got some video. Once they got everything working, the song was great.

...The Great Destroyer, 5 Ghosts I, 17 Ghosts II, 19 Ghosts III, Ghosts Piggy, Pinion/Wish, Terrible Lie, Survivalism...

They SO should have had the cameras on our part of the rail. We were going nuts. The girls who were on the screens were just standing there being dorks. FAIL.

...31 Ghosts IV, Only...

It's so much cooler to watch the effects on that from the floor than it was from the seats, as cool as the view from the seats was. In fact, I think that was true for the whole show.

...The Hand That Feeds...

I was super happy that he didn't skip it this time like he did in St. Louis. Thankfully he's stopped having to do the whole "picture of George Bush morphing into a pic of McCain" visual to go along with it. It's fine on its own.

...Head Like a Hole. And then for the encore: Echoplex...

After which Trent gave his customary band introduction and speech. We just got a short couple of sentences in St. Louis, but he was kind of talkative tonight. He asked where he was, because he said it was the part of the tour where they just get off a bus, go into the arena, do the show, and get back on the bus again. He asked if there was anything cool to do in the area and if it was a cool place to live (and got mixed responses) and said he grew up in a place where there was nothing to do. Then he introduced the band, and made some joke about how he'd called Justin the wrong name at the beginning of the tour, calling him Jeordie White. Then some guy held up his iPhone with a scrolling request for Trent to play The Big Come Down, and Trent told the guy that if he downloaded the iPhone update he could get the words to scroll faster so he wouldn't be wasting everyone's time. And then finally he told everyone to go get The Slip for free at their website, and to get every other album they'd ever done for free from everyone else's websites, because he doesn't give a fuck anymore.

...The Good Soldier...

Here's where it takes a little turn for the worse. At the end of The Good Soldier, Trent had another tambourine to toss. He'd looked our way a few times during the song, and when it came time to throw it he lobbed it our direction. The problem was that the lights cut out just as it came into reach, so nobody could see well enough to grab it and it fell inside the rail in front of where we were standing. We'd already joked with the security guard about how if a tambourine fell down inside the rail he should give it to us, but when he picked it up and the lights came on again the annoying chick screamed and reached for it. She's taller and louder than us, and he handed it to her. We protested, pointing out that it landed in front of us and that she not only already had an autographed tambourine from another show, but she also was going to another handful of shows on this tour. The guy apologized and said he didn't know that. Kourt tried to reason with the chick, but she wouldn't give it up. So at that point we figured there was no point in putting on a nice face to her like we'd been doing all day for the sake of peace in the line, and got hateful. Kourt pointed out that it's really no surprise she goes to all these shows alone, and as we were leaving I made a point of stopping to tell her that every time she'd left the lobby during the day, everyone else had made fun of her. Not that it helped, and it certainly wasn't mature, but the bitch needs a fucking reality check. Nobody likes her. The NIN staff obviously barely tolerates her -- you can tell by the looks on their faces when she talks to them. She only thinks she's special and isn't a "stalker." I'm sorry, having a list of all the hotels the band will be staying at officially qualifies you as a stalker.

...Hurt, In This Twilight.

Again, I cried a little at the end. Maybe it was exaccerbated by the fact that I was pissed off about the tambourine. I don't know. It's hard not to tear up, though, when he's singing Hurt just ten feet away from you.

So, after the show, we planned to go grab some dinner with a friend we met in line from the nin.com forums, but we couldn't find a place close and she didn't want to drive too far out of the city because she had a hotel room to get back to. So the three of us ate dinner in Jeff City. We were starving and exhausted by that point. The drive home was harder than we thought, since we were all not only tired from being awake something like 20 hours, but also from the exertion of being in the pit. But we made it safely home with no major catastrophes, and only one minor one -- I accidentally sat on my purse while we were playing cards and put a dent in our digital camera. It still works fine. Just now it's got a NIN concert battle wound. Sort of.

We got a crap ton of good video clips this time. I'm sure Kourt will be uploading them soon.

I hope they tour again in the States next year sometime. I wanna go again!!!