Nine Inch Nails at The Hollywood Bowl

by chris cunningham

No no no, of course I didn’t take that photo. Steve Bell and I were off to see Nine Inch Nails [LINK] tonight at the Hollywood Bowl. We met for dinner first at Zankou Chicken [LINK]. Which gets a namecheck in the Beck song “Debra”. “Like a fruit that’s ripe for the picking I wouldn’t do you like that Zankou Chicken” Vicki ate with us and then Steve and I drove over and parked across from the Pantages theater. The parking lot there is cheaper and then we took the metro train down to Hollywood and Highland. That way we didn’t have to deal with the insufferable parking fiasco that is the Bowl. Could that place suck any more for parking? 18,000 seats with 3000 parking spots. That’s only 6 people per car, ummm-yeah no biggie.

Anyway, got there while Queens of the Stone Age [LINK] were on stage and I’m sooo not into them. Ok, their two hits I like but that’s it. There was one 30 sec. spot where they were kinda rawkin’ but after that it was back to subparville for them.

Steve grabbed a couple of beers for us which were overfilled and spilling over so he had to take a swig of each on the way back. COMPLETELY FORGETTING HE WAS SICK WITH RABIES, SARS, OR LYME DISEASE!!! Maybe it was polio? Well, whatever was making his throat hurt! Fortunately he remembered and warned me so we could disinfect the hotzone with my shirt. I ended up drinking from the opposite side of the petrie dish. Seems to have worked.

Finally the lights went out and a low rumble started and off they went off for two hours. Trent only said about 5 words to the audience. Very personable guy. Ha. Midway through the set a curtain dropped in front and visuals came on and a whole ambient/mellow song section began. Yeah, I’d say that pretty much bummed everyone out. Lots of video of people having fun interspersed with war machine footage. Talk about a Debbie Downer [LINK].

We sat where the red star is behind their heads. Not so bad considering most of the seats forward of that are boxes. I’ll just repost my NIN remix I did for my own self indulgence. [The Hand That Feeds Remix LINK]