This entry was prompted by Nine Inch Nails being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 2 days ago on Nov. 7 2020.
We came in late to the NIN fan club. It wasn't until 2012 that they made an impact on us. That's when one teenage member of our family, who shall remain nameless, branched out from many years of school choirs and joined the 'School of Rock'. One of the first shows our 'mystery singer' did was NIN music that included vocals on 'All The Love in the World', 'Capital G', 'Terrible Lie' and 2 of the songs from this featured album 'Piggy' and 'Hurt'.
Above all else, those are basically the tracks we've come to know. Proponents of industrial rock, NIN are somewhat of an acquired taste.
This is a concept album about a man's 'downward spiral' to his ultimate suicide. The whole album becomes slightly more macabre when you find out that Trent Reznor bought the house at 10050 Cielo Drive in L.A. and recorded the album there. That was the house where Sharon Tate and others were murdered by the Charles Manson family. He moved out after the recording was done and the house was demolished.
Some of the sounds used on the tracks are sampled from a variety of sources, each one more bizarre than the last. Screams in 'The Becoming' are from a giant robot falling on a crowd in the movie "Robot Jox". 'Reptile' has the sound of a woman falling down a hill taken from 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' and not to be outdone, the beginning of 'Big Man With a Gun' has a distorted recording of a porn actress having an orgasm. Fun for all the family!!
In 1997 David Bowie did a collaboration with NIN on his song 'I'm Afraid of Americans'. He'd been touring with the group and although he'd done the song by himself originally, the NIN version became the more popular mainly because of the video.
So .. two video links I'm adding are not NIN themselves. The first is our family 'mystery singer' with an excellent version of 'Hurt' and the second is the Bowie/Reznor video mentioned above. The third is NIN doing 'Capital G' ..
"I pushed the button and elected him to office and
He pushed the button and he dropped the bomb"
Nine Inch Nails - see what you think.
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