When booking my trip to Los Angeles this year I discovered it happened to coincide with the final show of Nine Inch Nails’ Peel It Back tour. If there was ever an omen this was it; I had to book a ticket to the show.
And what an expensive ticket it was! Somewhere along the line the ticket companies changed their tune on the once frowned-upon practice of reselling tickets (formerly known as “scalping”) when they realized they could double dip on fees: once on the original sale and once again when the ticket was resold. How that’s legal is beyond me.
But anyway, back to the show.
It began with Trent Reznor sitting at a piano keyboard, performing a solo version of Right Where It Belongs on the secondary stage in the middle of the auditorium. He was soon joined by Atticus Ross and several touring musicians before making their way to the big stage to play some of their biggest hits, including March of the Pigs and Closer, darting back to the second stage for a brief set of remixes.
As the night came to a close, Reznor thanked everyone for coming to the tour’s last show, and mentioned that the next song seemed to unfortunately take on new meanings recently: I’m Afraid of Americans. It seemed far more melancholy than I remember, if for no other reason than the vocal snippets of David Bowie (RIP) which remain present in the backing track.
About a week ago on this very blog I suggested some foreshadowing in my post about a certain play, and wouldn’t you know it: Head Like a Hole turned out to be one of the last songs of the night.
The show ended with a performance of Hurt (see video above) which the audience participated in by holding up their phones with flashlight mode enabled, the same way concertgoers used to hold up lit cigarette lighters — ask your grandparents, kids.
Which leads to my last point. I’d expected the audience to mostly be around my age, perhaps slightly older as I was only in middle school when many of NIN’s best known songs were released. But no, the crowd ranged in age from teenagers to the gray-hairs-and-canes set, perhaps skewing slightly toward the latter. Trent Reznor himself turned 60 this year but still appears to be in incredibly good shape, and is arguably a more confident performer than he was back in those early days.
There’s no point in me offering a recommendation here as the tour is now over. That said, if I were to see Nine Inch Nails again I’d prefer a much smaller, less cramped venue than the Kia Forum. Those looking for more NIN in their lives won’t have to wait for long, as they scored the soundtrack for the upcoming movie Tron: Ares.
