got tickets to nin worcester…SO EASY this time. took under 2 minutes, and that included the capcha image not showing up right away. i don’t get it, but whatever. next wed is mohegan sun, and then we’re done.
for what it’s worth i’ve found IE works better with musictoday’s servers than firefox. for future reference ha.
hip still hurts, but less, and i can stand up out of a chair without almost falling over and walk without limping. so off to the grocery store.
went to the dr today and got a shot in my hip. now i can barely walk. thanks dr! i had to leave work at midnight cuz i just couldn’t stand it anymore, and literally couldn’t stand. arg
so i guess i’ll do my review of “the slip” now that i’ve spent a week listening to it, mostly in the car.
1. 999,999 – instrumental. reminds me a bit of “pinion”, in that it has a noise that builds through the song.
2. 1,000,000 – my favourite song on the album, which is a bit odd since it reminds me of “the collector” and “getting smaller” from with teeth. also i realized in the car last night that it reminds me of david bowie. it doesn’t really sound like any bowie song i’ve ever heard, except maybe the drums – they’re a bit like “rebel rebel”. but i dig this song. i can definitely see this being performed live.
3. letting you – the beginning of this one reminds me of the beginning of “you know what you are” from with teeth. the drums are similar, just with a few beats left out. it’s alright. it’s grown on me alot. political lyrics.
4. discipline – i like it. it is reminiscent of “only” from…with teeth…ha. it’s got that sped up “billie jean” type beat to it. it’s dancy and fun, nothing super profound.
5. echoplex – i think the beat was a preset on my casio keyboard back in 1984. at first i thought the song wasn’t so bad but i realized tonight that it really irritates me. and it’s the beat that is irritating. at the end when the beat stops, i really like it. perhaps i’ll download the multi tracks and make my own version without the casio keyboard bit.
6. head down – again the beginning beat reminds me of something. i can’t quite put my finger on what, i almost want to say “march of the pigs” but it quickly goes away. i like the chorus much better than the verses. chorus lyrics are quotable.
7. lights in the sky – sounds like the quiet song on saul’s niggy tardust album (don’t know the name of it). it’s all i keep thinking of. very quiet song, singing, piano. i see myself getting tired of it quickly, especially if performed live.
8. corona radiata – instrumental. too long. somewhat boring…or rather just uninteresting. sounds like science fiction, add a theramin and it’d definitely be background to an alien/ufo movie. already fast forwarding it
9. the four of us are dying – instrumental. i like it much better than the previous one. definitely has a ghosts feel to it, could possibly be an outtake.
10. demon seed – like the music for the most part. guitar has a ghosts feel to it as well, and it could possibly be taken from one of the ghosts songs. i can’t quite tell. i like the “chanting” end.
after a week of listening i’m finally starting to get into it. it’s definitely grown on me, but it took longer to get there than with teeth did. there’s something missing, i don’t know what. it doesn’t really fit in with nin’s catalog. i don’t see a progression from “year zero” to “the slip”, where i can see a progression between all the other albums (well maybe not PHM to broken hahah) to me it just doesn’t feel like a nin album. it has a nin sound, but then again it has the sound of all the openers and other indie/little known bands trent listens to mushed in with nin and i’m not particularly fond of that. oddly, to me it has a more aaron type guitar sound, than a robin type. i don’t think it’s anywhere close to trent’s best work (perhaps he needs years between albums instead of months/weeks), and i don’t know how much i’ll listen to it after this initial discovery phase ends. i can’t really picture myself being in a “nin mood” and putting this album on. i’ve never been one to want every album to be the same, for them all to sound like “the downward spiral”, but…there’s just something about this that doesn’t feel right to me. and i do want “year zero 2”, the complete picture about that world he created. i’m still convinced it’s recorded and out there – he kept talking about having a 2nd new album ready to go back during the spring performance 07 tour, which we know was not “ghosts” (recorded earlier this year) or this album (recorded the last few weeks). this was a nice surprise, but i’m hoping it’s a temporary distraction.
now that robin is back with nin, i wonder if we’ll get more fragile instrumentals live. i’d love to see “the mark has been made” again. any of them really…another presale tomorrow, but just one. hopefully it goes better than last week.
off to army crawl to bed. so much pain!
toronto public onsale FAIL. shut out again. adr2 shut out. eric managed to get me 1 ga about 6 minutes in. i really can’t believe ga tix were gone immediately. and i usually have good luck on ticketmaster. i got ice bowl tix immediately when everyone else got shut out. arg. this is obnoxious. to top it off…i tried to get seats for adr2 and ticketmaster won’t accept my credit card. w.t.f. *update* just got a call from citicards fraud protection. card was denied because they thought the purchase was being made fradulently by a 3rd party. wtf. i spent 800$ on tickets for wicked on ticketmaster last month, and apparently that wasn’t suspicious. but me trying to buy $166 seats to nin was. whatever.
this whole thing has been so aggravating.
my ghosts special super limited edition weapon of mass destruction arrived yesterday. i got #84/2500. my special gilcee print is one of the bubbling water/ocean images. it’s a really nice package. i just don’t know what i’m going to do with it now. it’s black cloth covered…that means if i have it out it’ll get covered in dust and cat hair. gotta figure that one out.
i suppose i should do a review of “the slip”. i’ve been putting it off in hopes that i’d like it more…ha tomorrow.
dream: i was getting ready for some nin fan party. i don’t know if it was something official, or just a gathering of fans who knew each other. trent started texting me about if i was going or not. apparently his super smart iphone could see into my phone, and see into other messages i had sent, and message board posts i had made. he said he liked my screenname, which was something like, leavemealone or some crap. it didn’t make sense. he kept texting me so fast i couldn’t keep up with replies. so i went to this party and it was in a grocery store. you had to pay 57 cents to get into the grocery store and they had security in front to make sure all the customers paid. i had a ticket to this party tho so i gave it to them. trent was there, and suddenly it was like rock of love. there were all these slutty girls sitting around him and fighting. i went over to say hi and he wanted me to sit down but the slutty girls were taking all the chairs from me. then he started talking about tattoos and he pulled up his shirt to show everyone his tattoos. i was like…when the hell did trent start getting tattoos? on his right pec he had this big red coat of arms sheild with the initals KD in ugly midieval gold font. he had another big red coat of arms with his own initials on his side. on the lower left side of his chest he had this chart and the top said “my favourite things we’ve done together” and it was just a list with dates of things he had done with some person like “played catch on the beach” 1994. he also had what looked like a character from south park on his left pec. they were all pretty horribly done too but i didn’t want to say anything. i wanted to txt adr2 that i saw trent’s tats but then i remembered trent would be able to see anything i say cuz he can get into my phone through his iphone. i went up stairs to get away from all these people and it really did turn into rock of love, and instead of trent it was bret michaels.
presales…clusterfuck. god i loved the spiral.
so here’s the story. toronto went on sale at noon. i went on at 11:50 to log on and get ready. page won’t load. finally, it loaded, logged on…then wouldn’t load. loaded to the sale page, but click the link to buy…won’t load. 12:06 finally loads, sold out. fantastic. reload for 20 minutes, and then i really had to leave to be at the terminal at 1. no luck. eric managed 1 ticket by reloading, but no one else i know got any. we have to bet on the public sale friday now.
5 pm brought cleveland, detroit, nj, philly presales. loading time was still awful, but i had logged on at 4:15 to get to the sale page, then had to wait for the “buy now” links at 5…sloooow sloooow slooow loading. i got cleveland fairly easily….and that’s a relative term (took at least 3 refreshes, and slow loading, to get it to work). got 2 tickets to that, just in case. then the captcha images stopped loading (with another problem of half the time the system not accepting what you typed in, though it was correct). fantastic. detroit image wouldn’t load, neither would philly. finally got nj to work, got 1 ticket. back to detroit, image not loading, somehow finally it worked and got 2 tickets (i think) for that, just in case. back to philly….image finally loaded, sold out. refreshed for about 15 minutes and managed to get 1. so i THINK i am set. i say “think” because their “ticket allotment” page is not the best, it just lists NIN as every option, it doesn’t tell you which show and I have yet to get any confirmation emails (i got 2 now, nj and cleveland, and now managed to buy a 2nd ticket for nj). i’m nervous that my address was screwed up because they make you type it in, then have this absolutely silly “select city” button to choose the name of your city. I JUST TYPED IT IN! wtf. so my typed in city is correct, but the select city still says niagara falls from the info used in the 05 tour presales. (*edit* all emails in, i have 2 for cleveland, 2 for detroit, 2 for nj, 1 for philly)
everything was so much smoother when it was spiral only. i don’t understand the reasoning behind eliminating a pay-for fan club. every major band does it. nin is too big for a public free presale, despite putting names on tickets and will call only to deter scalpers. music today servers just flat out can’t handle the traffic, and the system is very very buggy. i know ticketmaster sucks in every way, but even their “fan club” presales that require a password go better than this, mainly because they have the server power.
non spiral fans bitch that the spiral was elitist. well i’m sorry if you couldn’t afford 40$ to join. but the point of fan clubs was to be special, and to get special things. through the history of rock and roll bands had pay for fan clubs. and for alot of the time, they weren’t even run by the bands, but by random ppl who decided they were experts and could provide a service. now most are run through the bands, the bands get the money, and clearly history shows that i have no problem forking my money over to trent. 1000s of dollars later, yes, i do feel like i deserve to have special treatment, and be offered a private presale.
shit i gtg. this was all so irritating i’m going to be WAY fun at my friends for dinner 😛
another new nine inch nails record released on nin.com today. “the slip” halo 27. seriously trent!! we’re not used to this. this one is “on him” for everyone’s support, 100% free, through a torrent (through tracker.nin.com…) it includes both leaked tracks. we’ll see what the rest sounds like in the morn…
another new nin song…”echoplex”…distributed by way of iLike.com. just like leaked songs before year zero…if we are getting a new album, perhaps on monday, i really need to listen to the album in full. i didn’t have much of an opinion on “survivalism” and “my violent heart” when they were leaked for the arg, but as part of the whole album i love them. i think the same about “discipline” and now “echoplex”….they’re both “ok”. sorta dancy, “echoplex” makes me think of all the “80s” like openers trent has had on the tour the last 3 years. do i particularly like that style? no. but i didn’t really like year zero leaks, and i didn’t really like “the hand that feeds” and i thought “the day the world went away” was boring, but in the end always, always, like the full albums.
presale info was posted, toronto tuesday. a bunch more wednesday, then 1 each the following 2 weeks.
i went to see Avenue Q on thursday with jenn and jeff at Shea’s. HILARIOUS! for those who don’t know what it is, it is a musical that is basically Sesame Street on crack. adult themed puppets. i enjoyed it much more than Spamalot, as it was something pretty novel. the songs are very funny, most of the dialog too. one character is japanese complete with broken english and the r/l mispronunciation. she was quite funny to us because she sounded just like all our players at work. the best puppets were the “bad idea bears” ha!!! yeah. it was great. highly recommend it.
for the 7 shows in august, looks like we’ll be seeing a band called “deerhunter” open on 3 of them, and a band called “does it offend you, yeah?” open for 4 shows. deerhunter sounds very boring, does it offend you, yeah? sounds very 80s and more interesting. all and all neither are surprising based on openers trent has had over the last 3 years. fits in the same “mold”. there are 3 other bands on the tour on dates we’re not going to. wonder what happened to saul tho, since an interview the other day had saul stating he’d be opening for trent this summer…and related, i put in for vacation, and ended up taking a full week to cover cleveland/detroit and nj/philly despite there being 4 days between the 2 stints….hoping for an additional show so i’m not wasting my vacation days. we don’t need 4 days to drive from detroit to nj.
and for anyone using the nin.com system for presales. i registered my email yesterday as instructed, but when i was asked to create an account, i tried my usual “elegant” username…and it was taken. i created a new one, but i suspected that our previous music today/spiral accounts did transfer, so for shits and giggles i tried just now to buy tickets for the KY show logging on with elegant and password and yep, it worked. and with tickets on sale for and hour and a half now, they are still available (and $45), so i’m less stressed about the “extremely limited quantity” and demand.
finally went to the falafel bar on elmwood, yum yum. i also went to the mall just to go to the new tea store, and they convinced me to buy the “perfect tea maker” thing…off to try it.
cassie and i, for some reason, had a discussion about metallica yesterday. which lead to me reading their wiki article and getting really irritated. i tried to make my case that lars is a total douchebag, but she thought hetfield was the main asshole. well speak of the devil…lars today tells rolling stone that metallica is considering giving their new album away for free on the internet, that they’ve been paying attention to what was done by radiohead and nin. WHAT THE FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!! the band that killed napster and sues their fansites is now going to let fans have their music for free afterall. fuck metallica. fuck em all!
it amuses me that trent blogged meathead’s flash video for “discipline” as “leaked pre-production ideas for stage sets” hah what a sense of humor.
of course, you can officially download “discipline” at nin.com….and here is the embedded artwork
wtf….did rob get bored and decide to draw on it with a red marker? not the most interesting thing in the world. more proof that i need his job. 🙂
and boooo philly won game 7. so next round is rangers/pittsburg and montreal/philly. both should be interesting series, and i hope pitts and montreal come out on top.