What the hell just happened?

I'm sitting at my desk right now, sorting through photos, listening to NIN and trying to figure out if I imagined the past three days. As if it wasn't epic enough that I finally got to see Nine Inch Nails live for the very first time, I was lucky enough to share the experience with Jaime-lee and Adam (@perfectelement on Twitter), two very awesome people who made the whole thing that much more special.

The mini-tour (if you could call it that...) started for me with a 6 a.m. wake-up call on Tuesday, after staying up way too late the night before, unable to sleep. As I often do, I panicked way too much about, well, everything that morning. Thankfully J-lee came to the rescue with some common sense and assured me that everything would turn out OK—which it did.

Manchester - 14 July 2009

The night of the Manchester show itself was bloody brilliant. While Mew were a little...bland for my taste, Jane's Addiction were on fire that night and put us all in the mood to get our faces melted off by NIN. We got rail in front of Robin, as you already probably know, and I would just like to say that he is beautiful. I usually try to tone down the public fangirling (I said TRY), but I can honestly tell you that watching that man play is truly captivating. Anyway. Onto the particulars...

Setlist:

- Somewhat Damaged
- Terrible Lie
- Heresy
- March Of The Pigs
- Piggy
- Metal
- The Becoming
- I’m Afraid Of Americans
- Burn
- Gave Up
- La Mer
- The Fragile
- Gone, Still
- The Way Out Is Through
- Wish
- Survivalism
- Suck
- The Day The World Went Away
- The Hand That Feeds
- Head Like A Hole
- Hurt

Somewhat Damaged—what an opener! When the opening chords were played, I could hardly believe my ears. We’d all been saying how amazing it would be for the show to open with it, and whaddoya know?? There it was! Adam pretty much squeed when they played TDTWWA, as it was the one song he really wanted to see. La Mer and The Fragile were expected, but that didn’t make it any less mindblowing and emotional when they were played.

I could quite possibly have got a few of the songs wrong or missed out a couple as a) I’m apparently not as familiar with the NIN catalogue as I once was and b) there were times when I was too busy flailing to note down the song on my phone. If you know for a fact that I’ve made a mistake somewhere, please comment and let me know. I haven’t been able to find setlists posted anywhere on the NINternet so I’m just going with what I’ve got.

My deepest gratitude goes out to Tim (TimA on ETS) for picking up my ticket for me. You probably won’t ever read this, but you’re a lifesaver, mate.

ETA Manchester QOTD:

J-lee: I came for Dave Navarro's nipples!

London – 15 July 2009

We three took the Megabus from Manchester to London at the ungodly time of 8:45 a.m. (it was early for us...) and arrived at around 1:30 that afternoon. Thanks to Jamie-lee (again) we made our way on the tube to the O2 arena where I met up with Paul (@paulb099 on Twitter) who bought my presale ticket for me and managed to snag us a nice spot in the line outside the venue. After the venue staff messed us around a bit by splitting up the queues and abandoning everyone with no word about how things were going to go down, we found ourselves waiting with bated breath for the ticket windows to open. When the time eventually came, Adam and I made a mad dash to Entrance D to hold our spot in the queue...and thankfully we got rail again, exactly where we’d been the day before—smack dab in front of Robin! J-lee wasn’t quite as chuffed as I was...

Now onto the show. Mew were...well, Mew again. It’s a shame, because I quite like there music, but I don’t think it translates so well into a live setting. In a technical sense, they’re miles ahead of most other opening acts I’ve seen, I just don’t think they were the best choice for a NIN concert. Jane’s came on shortly afterwards and got us rocking again, thankfully, and soon enough it was time for NIN. You get rail for your first ever NIN show and it feels like nothing will ever top it (short of meeting the band), right? Wrong. While we were waiting patiently for them, watching the crew set up, Ilan casually strolled onstage and started drumming. I think we all assumed he was just soundchecking or whatever, but it became all too clear that this wasn’t the case when Trent strutted out.

There was just way too much awesomeness going on last night for me to describe, but I’ll give you the highlights: manhandling Dave Navarro; shaking Rob Sheridan’s hand; saying hi to, shaking hands with and getting a smile from Tamar Levine; watching THE BIG FUCKING COME DOWN WITH ROBIN FINCK ON GUITAR; and, of course, hearing Trent introduce Gary Numan. It’s one thing for you to go to a NIN concert and have the band spring your favourite song, it’s quite another for them to bring Gary-freaking-Numan onstage to perform Metal and Cars. I’m still in disbelief about the whole thing. Did it even happen? According to this video, it did!

QOTD, courtesy of my mum:

Me (via text message): GARY NUMAN CAME ONSTAGE
Mum: Rude!

Setlist:
- Now I’m Nothing
- Terrible Lie
- 1,000,000
- Heresy
- March Of The Pigs
- Reptile
- The Becoming
- I’m Afraid Of Americans
- Burn
- Gave Up
- La Mer
- The Fragile
- Non-Entity
- The Big Come Down
- The Downward Spiral
- Wish
- Survivalism
- Down In It
- Metal w/ Gary Numan
- Cars w/ Gary Numan
- The Hand That Feeds
- Head Like A Hole
- Hurt

I think more than a few of us were a little disappointed they didn’t finish with In This Twilight, but it’s probably just as well—we (both the crowd and Trent) got emotional enough as it was during hurt; I can only imagine how bad things would have been if ITT had been played. Also, they played Non-Entity, The Downward Spiral and FREAKING REPTILE, so I can’t complain.

The Future, A.K.A could I have picked a cheesier headline?

With all this talk of Trent putting Nine Inch Nails to bed, it’s hard not to find myself tearing up when I think that the London show might have been the last time I’ll ever see my favourite band live. I just have to keep telling myself that even if the unimaginable does happen, at least I had the best experience I could ever have dreamed of for my first and last NIN shows. I got to see Jane’s Addiction (and both Jaime-lee and myself remarked that we would have been quite happy to have paid just to see them), watched my favourite band live after years of waiting, and met some truly wonderful people along the way. I don’t really want to end on a sappy note, but I just have to say that these past few days have been life-changing for me. I don’t think I’ll ever forget these shows, or the laughter and tears (of joy!) that Jamie-lee, Adam and I shared.

All that’s left to say is thank you for taking the time to read this and that if you’ve got shows lined up over the coming weeks, I hope you have as much of an amazing time as we did.

I’ll be back here at some stage once I’ve uploaded my photos from the concerts (all I’ve got so far are these ones of Adam and Jaimelee squeeing because we got rail in Manchester, Perry being all cute with Eric and Gary Numan!!!), but for now I’ll leave you in the very capable hands of Jamie-lee for her post-NIN|JA roundup.

-Ro