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As you might have figured out by now, I am a big Nine Inch Nails fan. If you hadn't figured that out, you're either a few cans short of a six-pack, or you haven't seen my NIN CD collection yet. Either way, when I discovered the boys in black were doing an east-coast tour of Australia I just knew I had to see them. The only problem is that I don't live on the east-coast. So, I planned a NIN Tour Trip. Nine Inch Nails announced concerts in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. I wanted to see all three shows, but couldn't afford the extra cost of flying to Brisbane and back. So I just decided to go to the Melbourne and Sydney shows - so I could watch the show from the seats at one gig (Melb) and be rocking out in the mosh in the other gig (Syd). To give you an idea of my proposed travel plan:
As you can see, the inital plan was to fly from Adelaide to Melboune to watch one NIN show, then from Melbourne to Sydney to watch a second NIN show, and then fly back home from Sydney. It doesn't look like much on the map, but that's something like around 3,300 kilometers! (about 2000 miles for those of you who aren't in metric.) Then, out of the blue, NIN announced a SECOND Sydney show! So I decided to go to that as well since I couldn't afford to make it to Brisbane. Yay! So ended up having one NIN gig in Melbourne and TWO in Sydney, totalling three shows. The trip absolutely rocked my world. Read on.
I got the best surprise of all when I opened my letterbox to find two NIN-related items. One was a Japanese copy of "With_Teeth" my good friend Mika sent me from Japan, and the other was my tickets to the NIN concerts! Alright! And what a coincidence that they arrived on the same day. Now all I had to do was wait until August... *sigh*
I was a bit slack in booking the Sydney accomodation but managed to get it under control. The place is very cheap, but it shouldn't matter since I won't actually be in the hotel room all that much. I also was slack in booking a flight back to Adelaide from Sydney, but that too was taken care of. Today was a normal day like any other, at work. I couldn't keep my mind on the job, though. How could I? I spent the day being soooo unbelievibly psyched about finally getting to see NIN live. I just hope I get enough sleep for tomorrow!
The support act was
an Australian band called Bird Blobs, and they were a totally poor
choice for a NIN concert. Their style of music is very – interesting
– and wasn’t accepted very well by the crowd. Added
to that, they were experiencing a number of technical difficulties,
and ended up getting booed off the stage.
After the concert,
my friend Curtis was drenched in sweat after being crushed in the
mosh for most of the show. While we were waiting for other friends
outside he took his shirts off (he was wearing three of them) to
cool down. Just then, some stupid teeny kindergoths girls walk past
(who looked like they wouldn’t know what a mosh was) and say
to him, “You’re a lot more attractive with your
shirt on, you know.” Without even thinking about it,
I said back at them, “and you’re a lot more attractive
with your mouth shut.” Her stupid bitch friend flipped
me the finger. Hahaha. There was also some guy walking around dressed
as a pirate, which sure beats the hell outta all the idiots in PVC
and eye-makeup that I was seeing. UPDATE: My friend Owen was able to use the funky infra-red feature on his laptop to extract the photos off my camera-phone, and some Melbourne NIN shots can be seen by clicking here.
I woke up early-ish on Thursday and made my way to the airport. I met Curtis at the Skybus since our flights were at similar times (even though I was headed for Sydney and he was headed back home to Adelaide).
Oh boy was the hotel dodgy. Imagine a TV cop show like “Law and Order”, and then imagine a scene involving cops busting down a door in some dingy hotel looking for a drug dealer or something. This is what this hotel reminded me of. Not only was it a shared bathroom for each floor (with no shower curtain in the Men’s), but the elevator also didn’t have safety sensors. I nearly found out the hard way when I waved my arm in the closing elevator door in an attempt to keep it open and nearly lost my arm. There was also an inexplicable orange stain on the wall in my room.
After checking in, Mika and I hung out at Starbucks until late into the night. We also witnessed a crime – a car came hooning around the corner the wrong way down a one-way street. While the car was still running (and still in motion), the driver jumped out and bolted into a nearby hotel. The still-moving car eventually hit a tree, just as three cops came sprinting around the corner looking for the driver. They never found him. Myself and Mika were questioned by the cops, and we watched the police examine the car CSI style with ultra-violet torches. Welcome to Sydney. Other interesting things I noticed in Sydney include that people pay no attention to the pedestrian crossing signals (they just cross whenever they feel like it), that Taxis don’t stop (see the next story) and that many people are unnecessarily quite rude. I also noticed that Sydney people are very stereotypical – the Emo kids really look like models from a bad MTV magazine cover. The girls with money pulled off the rich-princess look. It was easy to spot the tourists in Sydney – they were the ones who didn’t give a fuck what stereotype they fit into. I really wish I’d remembered to bring my Bling and Fiddy Cent sweaters to Sydney now.
By this time, since rammsteinlurker and the girl were talking across the lineup, people in the line were starting to take notice. Rammsteinlurker yelled out “Go on. Check the tag. I bet you it has a Hotmail address on it.” The guy standing next to the girl lent over and read the tag on the back of her shirt. There was about 2 minutes of golden comedy silence while everyone waited with baited breath for what was on the tag. Eventually, the guy slowly read out, “Wall underscore of underscore fame underscore eighty-six at hotmail dot com” which caused a lot of people to break out laughing, much to the annoyance of the girl. Hey, the Pretty Hate Machine shirt I was wearing was a fake shirt – so what? But this girl took it really poorly, and sat there noticeably pissed off until the doors opened. “Oh well” rammsteinlurker responded, “I didn’t come here to make friends. I came here to rock out.” Hahaha.
Even though they played the same songs in a slightly different order, performance wise, Friday night’s concert was much better than Melbourne’s. This was partly due to the fact that Trent was better connected with the crowd and more energetic, but also because being in the mosh was awesome. It was good to be able to watch and appreciate the fantastic light-show from the seats in Melbourne (which wasn’t noticeable when you’re up close), but being that close to Trent was a special experience I will never forget. I even cried during the song Hurt, as did many people around me. The best part of the concert was during the song Starfuckers Inc. For those of you not familiar with the song, it is a very hard and fast song (in other words: excellent for moshing) with a slow breakdown in the middle before returning to the frantic beats. During the breakdown bit, the crowd started clapping along – but not in time. Trent was about to sing the quiet verse but lost his place because the crowd was clapping out of time. In a very tongue-in-cheek way, he said, “If you’re going to clap, you gotta fucking clap in time. See you guys fucked the whole middle section up. I was singing it right and you fucked me up.” Trent then motioned to the band (who was still playing the slow bit) and said, “Stop, forget it” and walked away from the microphone. The band stopped playing, and the pavilion would have been silent, were it not for the thousands of laughing and cheering fans. After a few moments, the drummer clicked four beats and Trent whizzed around to scream the next verse while the band chimed in with the frantic ending of the song. It was hilarious, mind-blowing, and a very professional recovery. There’s a video of the incident somewhere in this thread.
While making my way to the club, I learnt an important lesson about Sydney: the Taxis don’t stop. I mean that in two ways. The first way is that when I tried to flag down a taxi, none of them would stop – even the empty ones with the vacant light lit up. I got to the point where I’d walk off the footpath and literally wave in front of the taxis, but they’d simply change lanes and keep driving. I eventually caught a taxi by waiting until one stopped at an intersection and then getting into the cab before the driver could complain. The second way, is that even though Sydney people don’t pay any attention to pedestrian traffic signals, it usually doesn’t matter because if there’s a car, the car will slow down and beep at them. Taxis don’t. Myself and friends were crossing a road later in the evening and a taxi came straight through, barely missing us, and yelling at us from his open window. Fantastic.
I’ve been to Sydney several times, and not once have I seen any of the sights. I usually just rock up for concerts, party, and then leave. Well not this time, damn it!! I was determined to see the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Opera House if it was the last thing I did. So on Saturday, Mika took Matt and myself on a tour of Circular Quay. Not only did I get to see the Opera House, but I also got to touch it! Wooo! There was also a cool street performer at Circular Quay who I’ve seen before, but it’s still neat watching someone juggle a chainsaw.
Later that evening, Matt and I went back to Hordern for the second Sydney Nine Inch Nails show. We didn’t bother lining up this time since we saw heaps of General Admission seats free from the night before. We got a seat close to the stage and took some photos. He was using a digital camera with 10x Optical Zoom, and those shots came out great. I was using a crappy disposable camera, but the results aren’t too bad. It was really interesting seeing the same band at the same venue two nights in a row. And you know what? It was just as good the third time around. I was blown away yet again, and still cried during Hurt, even though I was in the seats. NIN also mixed things up a bit by playing four different songs from the previous shows: Piggy, No You Don’t, The Collector and Even Deeper. Rock.
For an idea on where I was located during the Sydney shows, click on the image below:
Sunday finally arrived,
and it was time for me to go home. Matt and I woke up at 9am to
check out by 10am. Not long after we awoke, we heard a really dodgy
male scream come from one of the rooms near us, followed by someone
banging on the floor/walls. The sooner we left that hotel, the better.
My flight didn’t leave until 4pm, so Matt, Mika and I hung
around in the city for a while. The
complete set of photos are here.
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