clocksrun@hotmail.com - or message me if you have
any footage from this show! Thanks.
NOTE: A very detailed journal entry
First, I want to send out a
huge thank you to these people for making the day/night possible and more memorable.
BrokenSoul, for contacting me out of all that could have been
Her sister, for allowing me to enter in as her Spiral companion...!
Justin #1, ^ her boyfriend, for being quite the cool cat.
A particular Justin "Super Fan" #2 with a beanie on...!
ItsJustDave, for not being hard to spot! I was hoping to run into more people than expected. So that was good.
Also I must say, another cool cat.
I seriously could not have done it without, or it ALL would not've been possible if it weren't for "BrokenSoul" and her sister. Leaving the scene with people met and more than just a show experienced always means something for me.
Moving on! I'll just go ahead and mention that I had no idea what to expect of the day; things were being thrown up in the air as soon as I knew I'd be entering with Spiral benefits. So many people bailed out of the original batch of people I'd be going with, and uhghhuh I'll just censor all my anger towards them and the reasons for that. In the end, it turned out for the better... narrowing down to my dad, my sister, a friend, and myself.
Car ride wasn't too bad (to the hotel on Saturday). Boredom struck...
...that is, until the people mentioned above came into place.
Let's see here though... Sunday, heh-heh, I think I'm safe to say my (our) fun began at the Hard Rock Cafe: the meeting point for the top three starring.
1:30 p.m., I'm going to guess here. Worked out just fine, contacting, timing and everything. We take our table of 8. Mingle. I use the restroom. I come back upstairs. Within 5-10 minutes or so, everyone on my opposite side of our table starts... well I notice they begin reacting to something, something behind me. That something, that someone, was
Trent. He's walking along to my left away from me with a bigger guy, sound tech or bodyguard (I'm guessing) ...
...
Everyone's freaking out by now. I was. He was. She was. They were. Everyone. Though I couldn't see his face just yet, the shaved head, the army green colored jacket, the short and buff stature, it's all there. It's all relative. When I do notice it's him though for sure when he sat at a booth about 15 feet or so away from us, that's when things got serious,
we've gotta go talk to him!. BrokenSoul's sister, brave enough, collects everything she can find that we had since she seemed to be volunteering to go talk to him. Luckily, I had my copy of The Fragile I brought since I wouldn't be going back to the car until after the show, and originally wanted him to sign it if we got in for the meet & greet. She took that, nearly everyone's tickets, and anything else I can't recall. I decided to follow her and go pay him a visit! We both walk over there, hher first, as she seems to be determined enough. I can't remember what she said other than "excuse me..." "I'm sorry", about to ask for an autograph and so on, but I was afraid to think Trent would brush us off, about to order his food (I think he ate) and all. Haha.. after a nice pause, he says, "sure". Everything at this point is a bit of a blur, but I remember pretty much going TR hardcore on him and putting my right hand on his back, saying I'm a huge fan and I'll be seeing you in Brazil. Or something like that. Something to not leave him hearing what he hears every day, I guess. Ahah, oh well, what can you do. "Oh really!", Trent replies. And definitely at this point things are getting too murky to describe. That was the end for my direct experience with the man. He signed my ticket, and the copy of The Fragile I brought with - one of four, the first one I bought, which was a little more sentimental to me. We said thank you! And went back to our seats.
Somebody felt stupid accidentally using the flash.
10 minutes later? Rob Sheridan and his girlfriend show up. We knew "something" else was about to arrive when we saw Trent waving down somebody at the entrance, which was to my right. All before this though, my sister wants to go sit next to Trent and have a picture! What better time than now Rob there to take the shot, right? She went over, and apparently sat down on Trent's jacket ahaha... according to my sister, he said "Ah I don't care". Then, Trent said to Rob "well you're the professional" so he took the picture. She came back all giggly. And that was that. I'm not sure if my sister had anything to do with it, but they left Trent alone on the booth infront of the three of them.
Taken by Rob... Trent & my sister, while I'm off to the far right sitting down with a hoodie on, laughing while holding another camera.
Yeah, you can make out what I mean there.
Anyway, we get out of there. On the way to the GUND. Jay-walking n' boy is it windy out...
Le Gund.
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SPIRALs below...
We get in line. Not too long of one. (at the time)
I get stamped.
All in the while, this security guard, was keeping us company. Funny fellow.
The line ends up pushed back some to a different entrance after everyone (most that arrived at a certain time) gets stamped and received their tickets. The body of people curve around the building - a bad sign, kind of. We overheard that 1) there were many Spiral members for this show and 2) There was going to be a soundcheck/m&g. Standing there in the cold for what uh... 2 hours or so? They got things going. We noticed the bald NIN crew guy counting people already with another guard. We were clearly afraid we wouldn't be let in, after having heard them counted some 40 already infront of us. We were literally, one of the last.
I took this cellphone shot, as I had to give up my real camera to my dad as he and the rest parted ways from the Spiral line.
Brandi much? Moving the sign.
At this point, my heart is beating. All after a combination of very cold weather and now entering a warmer place, and now Love Is Not Enough blarring loudly. Bone-chilling. I felt like kindergarden students being lined up going to recess or something as we made our way into the 125/126 stairset down to the arena itself. The music got louder. They appeared! Guards had us take the nearest seats it seemed, lined up by different rows. I was one of the last to sit down. We only got to watch roughly the last half of the song, but that wasn't bothering me so much at all. I was just glad to be inside. And I should just add right now, I feel for anyone and everyone that had to wait out there. Not only for not being able to get in, but the weather. I felt horrible, especially after seeing
ItsJustDave having to give me an item to have signed by Trent. No problem, and gladly did I, since I didn't have anything else to have signed at the time. So thank you! for not having me go in there empty handed, in a way...
...each member, starting with Trent, after signing this keyboard (as the rest of the band did after getting off stage) they had off to the side on a few seats,
...made way into my row and said, "I just saw you a second ago!" or something, haha... after the small talk with him, including my apology about the HR cafe, I said have a good one, he replies "Well I try", lol... funny stuff.
Anyway. I can't remember who came next up to me. Jeordie or Alex. Wait.. definitely Alex, as I'm thinking of it. I think? But yes, I got my ticket out ready for him and the others. He seemed pretty nice. Had an accent. Had this necklace on, meant something about nativeness he said to another, looked like a surfboard.
Then came Jeordie, someone I'm not fond of so much exactly, but cool to see his naturally half-dead appearance in the flesh. I gave him my ticket accidentally turned upside down and he said "hmm what am I supposed to do with this..?", baha.
Then I believe Alessandro came by. Yes yes, he seemed cool. Another strong accent in the band. Nice guy, he was though. I asked him out of the green, "So do you miss Jerome?" He said back.. if I can nail this down right, "Haha oh yes, definitely. He's doing okay though. He's doing better. I talked to him yesterday. He's doing alright, spending time with his dog and gardening". Ahh, that's so funny to think back on him saying, try and say that to yourselves with a strong Italian accent, or whatever.
Next, Aaron... he! was nice. Immediately shook my hand, asked "what's your name man?". He's such a short kid compared to the others. He asked if we all had heard a show in this place before, something like that.
There's some minor stuff I'm leaving out here, but this was the most of what happened while we were in there. We all had to use the restroom...
It seemed like an appropriate time!
walking back across the court...
Sitting back down, in no time it seemed, we had to be moved out and into the (our) "lobby", I'll call it, where they then directed us towards the merch, even though they weren't ready for us? That was stchoopid. So everyone just sort of stared at what we could end up buying by tonight. Great fun.
Mmmmmyspace.
6:30 now, it seemed that it didn't take so long for the hour or more to pass on, where we had to get 'lined' up for the doors which we entered before, the nearest doors.. to get on the floor, that be. We raced down there, aiming for the CENTER RIGHT section of the barrier.
Right up against that baby.
Security guards briefing with Saint Nick.
Light checks.
Opening bands... the thing about them both is, I knew I'd be more thrilled to see Autolux...
...I knew I wouldn't have to 'get into' their music really, but more so just observe. With Queens, I know their songs somewhat, but being right before Nails... and both being equally 'louder' bands, I didn't want to lose any kind of energy from it. The last few songs they played were great though, just great. I wore my earplugs all until those. I could really go in depth about what I liked and didn't like about them, so much I noticed, but take these from our beloved Stones and let's move on.
...annd you can see the Autolux bassist sitting in watching the Queens set.
Jose the ape! waving goodbye...
Nine Inch Nails... curtain lowered...
...it seemed forever for them to started after the QOTSA were off. I'm pretty sure it was something to do with the light fixtures that were routinely lowering down with guys on top of them, fixing something, I don't know what. I took frequent cell phone shots of what I could all around me.
Pinion!
What's there to say directly about the show? It was awesome. Nincredible type, awesome. Yes there was a projection problem. Trent was greatly pissed. Everyone can agree with me on that. Sin was a great song to cut back into after he said something like "Do whatever you want now but it's coming for you after the show cocksucker"... I don't know how people can remember word for word what he says, I sure can't. And yes, there was a song cut, more than likely Beside You In Time... sadly that had to happen. This show was twice as hard to breathe as it was in Congress. But less chaotic, I'd say. A less chance of being shuffled around, if you had a good enough grip on things such as: the bars, legs, waists, and never forgetting a lot of feet-locking. My ribs on the right side are really feeling things today
^ look closely, it's Aaron's cab just over the bars after he kicked it down, Head Like A Hole style. I was laughing so hard when I saw all the security guards' facial expressions when he did that. They were all shaking their heads at the same time, like what the fughhh...
...all in all, it was a rather messy show, but equally fun... since for me, messy means nothing about how good it was. As far as Alex's drumming goes... for me? Hmmm clearly, it wasn't the same without Jerome, at all --
...he's playing a set of Pearl, almost identitically set up the same as Jerome. L crash is lower. He was wearing gloves. His sticks have grips. His earpieces fell out a bunch from his hair, if I'm not mistaken. He made a lot of funny faces as if he were being shocked or something. During some songs it looked like he was actually singing along. Who else noticed that? Yep. And yes, there were indeed 'cue cards'. As I saw while everything was being set up, Jeremy placing them in order and onto one of these things...
(a smaller version of that, something like that)
EDIT:
but you know... what can you expect so soon? That's coming from me straight. It's his third show though. We all realize that. And he really didn't do horrible, neither was it just 'not so bad', he did quite well really... but for some reason in Wish? ...for me at least, he did more of a gallop snare thing, and not quite that 'marching' sound to it. I don't know, that's just my detailed mind coming in, as a drummer or not, I noticed it right away. But, forgot about it just as quickly.
My sister's view (Section 127):
"Before"
Highlights of the show... other than being very happy of hearing played The Frail/The Wretched (as expected)
SUCK, I think anyone's receptive towards that one... so damn loud.
SIN, which I had never heard before live.
REPTILE, yep, embrace the green.
ONLY, interesting live! But, I was having a bit of trouble with a crowd surfer or two landing on me all within it. I gave almost no attention to the stage during this song.
BURN, the drummer to me did NOT play it the way Jerome did at all... as I'm listening to the Fresno bootleg right now, he did not plug in that many close bass drum hits. It seemed light in that sense, but was very loud.
The "after" picture
Once again... thank God and Trent for not allowing 'Quicken Loan Arena' on the lithographs, seeing that it's going to be changed to that officially in late November. 'Q Arena' would've been acceptable, but I'm happy with whoever's decision it was!
NIN (not cellphone) VIDEOS: Coming soon!
