Nine Inch Nails (1990)

I don’t remember a lot about this show, except the following:

1) A Sea of Black clothes

2) Sweat. Lots and lots of sweat

3) Some jackass imitating Eddie Vedder by doing the backwards “dead fall” from the balcony into the crowd.

OK, #3 was actually pretty cool. I, myself, have a dubious history of crowd-involved histrionics (see my earlier blog about the Transvision Vamp show… sigh). But this dude, the one at the NIN show, was just fearless.

I am very happy I saw this early show, as I also had tickets for NIN opening up for Peter Murphy the following year, but I ended up in the hospital on the day of the show… I hate that I missed that show! I also enjoyed NIN at Lollapalooza in ‘92, but that’s just not the same thing as seeing such a cool band in a tiny venue like St. Andrew’s Hall.

Oh! One other memory: When opening act Meat Beat Manifesto took the stage, some dude was dancing around the stage, dressed like a giant crocodile. Or dinosaur. Or maybe Barney. I don’t think it was Jack Dangers, but it might have been. Pretty funny, looking back.