Nine Inch Nails Concert in Irvine

This was originally written on July 9, 2006.

I got to see Nine Inch Nails in concert last Friday at the Verizon Wireless Ampitheater. It was formerly called the Irvine Meadows Ampitheater, but the corporate world just had to have their say.

I discovered Nine Inch Nails while I was in high school. I was among the freaks of the school, aka the more interesting people you would hope to find in high school. They were listening to this band nonstop. The biggest song for them was "Wish," which is one of the ultimate rebellious antisocial teenage anthems. Then came "The Downward Spiral" which has since become one of my all time favorite albums. Powerfully disturbing, there is not a weak moment on that album.

It's funny actually. The first NIN album I ever bought was "Broken," and I ended up returning it the same day that I bought it. The music just scared the shit out of me, and I got all afraid that listening to it was going to turn me into this jaded individual. I would soon come to find out that music doesn't really do that. It's the world around you and your perception of it that does that. Music is an outlet, not an instigator. Remember that.

Their music ended up having a profound effect on me, and helped as a major outlet during those hellish teenage years of my life. The one song they did that I relate to emotionally is "Something I Can Never Have." I relate to it in the sense that I had this huge crush on a girl, and I could not stop thinking about her. I finally got the courage to ask her out, and she turned me down saying that she needed me as a friend and as "someone I can say hi to by the lockers." After that, she ignored me almost completely. It hurt like hell, and it really affected my self-image and how I thought most women viewed me. She treated me badly, and yet I still had strong feelings for that I could not for the life of me suppress. So the song is a savior in that it made me realize that what I was going through was depressing but normal, and that I was not the only one going through it.