Aleph Ersatz

Two days, ten hours of travelling, two months of planning and nearly $250 cost to myself, this concert was probably the most complicated and difficult one I have been to.  And it was worth every moment of waiting and every penny spent.

Alongside Tool and Weird Al, Nine Inch Nails is one of the three bands I must eventualy see.  I travelled all the way from Surrey to Victoria making the 5-hour one-way trek by bus and ferry all the way.  This was necessary because throughout the Lights Over North America tour Vancouver proper was skipped not one, but twice, and being the second leg of the tour, I had to go before I missed them once again.

I knew this show was going to be good, but this was better than I expected.  The Save On Foods Memorial Center is a small venue, holding maybe five-thousand, but this was the PERFECT size for this event.  Despite being bumped from three feet from the stage to a distant ten, I had he prefect view from dead centre.  (Excluding the two tall people blocking my peripheral.)  I was able to see the band, hear the music, and take in all the amazing visuals.  This is a big bonus because not only was this a sonic assault, it was also visually stunning.

Each song had an array of effects, from simple lighting, to crazy visual effects via three interactive screens surrounding the band on both front and back.  This acted as convenient curtains for the 30+ instrument switches that occured during the two hour set.  The band spent a good hour-and-a-half, stopping only twice for a few minutes before the “encore”.  Sadly, there was no actually encore.  Once the planned “encore” was done, the house lights came up immediately.  Dampening the hopes of the throngs that did not want this to end.

Adding to all of this was an excelent croud.  There were cheers, but no jeers, few assholes, and plenty a extremely fumigated “no-smoking” encironment on the floor.  The croud was respectful, and even tried to cheer the opening band, The Bug, despite their completely out-of-place Dub/Bambatta style music that completely bored the crowd.  But hey, most of us tried to get into it, it just was not what we were there for.  Even with the female vocalist giving herself a faily erotic rub down mid-song…

The Nails set list was a good mix of the classics and the new stuff, getting the crowd going, but providing ample stimulation during the slower songs.  Best of all, while some people were singing along, most people knew the words to the older stuff more than the newer stuff!  Being one of those people, I found that delightful, knowing that I wasn’t the only person rasping out Terrible Lie verbaitim, while stumbling over Echoplex.

Below are some fairly-crappy recordings from the show, because there was a very lax recording polocy.  I tried to put them in order, and they are pretty bad, but gives a good idea of how the show was.  I was probably 10 feet to the left of the guy recording, starting directly at center stage.  The audio was also much better at the show, the recording does not do it justice.

The rough you-tube set list:

March of the Pigs

End of Gave Up

The Wreched

Closer

Vessel

Survivalism

Echoplex

Only

The Hand That Feeds

Trent Yacking (yay we were awesome)

Hurt

They also played some other favourites, including: Wish, Terrible Lie, Head Like a Hole (which ended the main set), Another Version of the Truth, a Piggy  remix, several parts of Ghost, and the Encore-closing In This Twilight.

From this I have to say this was probably the best concert I have ever seen.  Perfect venue size, perfect respectful crowd, no equipment failures, just a full-on sonic and visual assault of the senses.  Even during the break, Trent state that this was a good croud, and was met with another round of confirming applause and cheers.  I will be doing this again when the next tour comes around.