ETS Tour Journal

This was originally written for my blog, and assumes the reader has little or no knowledge of NIN and NIN concerts. I thought I'd share it here as well.

Yes, I went to a NIN concert at 5:00am. Well, sort of. We just arrived home from Vancouver last night, and tonight was the NIN concert. Talk about bad travel planning - I didn’t take into account that September 12 lasted about 1 hour for us. Since we skipped a day by traveling this way, that meant that the concert was the very next “night”. After just a few hours of sleep when we arrived, we were still on Vancouver time, so the concert started at 5:00am for us.

Thankfully, as soon as the band hit the stage, we weren’t tired anymore. I am now though.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from a Nine Inch Nails concert in Hong Kong (amazingly, this was the first time they have visited this city). I have been to one other concert in Vancouver (from the With Teeth tour), and I constantly watch All That Could Have Been on DVD and Beside You In time on Blu-Ray. I pretty much know how Trent and crew are going to act on stage, but it’s the audience that is different here.

The venue was Hall 10 of the AsiaWorld Expo, right next to the airport. This is where all the “big” western bands perform - the last to perform there was Avril Lavigne in August. The next will be Linkin Park. However, unlike most huge exposition centres, only the floor in front of the stage was open to the crowd. To me, this meant one of two things; you were either going to be right in the thick of things, ending up with bruises and battle scars, or you’d end up waaaaaaay in the back, unable to see a thing. I was sort of right on the first account.

We had several ways to get to AsiaWorld - when we go to the airport, it’s usually with suitcases so we often just hire a taxi. It costs $200 HKD for the 40 minute trip, and is very convenient. Other options are to take the Airport Express - after about 30 minutes on the regular MTR, you pay $60 HKD for the remaining 20 minute ride on the Airport Express train. The ride back is 50% off, so $90 each for a round-trip. Finally, there are two buses at our disposal; E22 which costs just $18 HKD but takes over 1 hour 40 minutes to arrive. Or A22, which is a much shorter trip at 70 minutes, but costs $40 HKD ($20 HKD on the way back, so $60 each round trip). We took A22, since the price was reasonable, and the stops are right by where we live.

We arrived promptly at 8:00 pm, and considering that quite frankly one of the best rock bands of all time was in town, it seemed quite dead. There were TWO gates to hand in your tickets, and neither one had a line. We bypassed the $20 Coke machine (about 3X normal price) and grabbed a concert T-Shirt. $220 HKD for a shirt, but I always regretted not getting these in the past, so there you go. The tour dates on the back are specific to the Asian part of the tour, so not only is the shirt a memento for the concert, but for this part of my life in general.

The opening band, THE LOVESONG was just starting their opening set. They are a hardcore/emo group local to Hong Kong. They were actually pretty decent at times; it’s clear that NIN brings in their own sound engineers to create a good-sounding concert even in big, empty rooms like this one. THE LOVESONG doesn’t have that luxury, so the lyrics were pretty much impossible to hear. Still, they had their moments, particularly when they got into the more melodic parts of their songs. You can check out some samples on their site.

The floor was pretty much empty; we walked right in, and without crowding anyone we were standing about 20 feet from the stage. If we REALLY wanted to, we could have been right up there (hey, HKers are used to some pushing and shoving, right? ).

After the set was over, it took NIN what seemed like an eternity to start their performance. I’m sure it was at least 30 minutes. By that time, there were one or two ‘rushes’ to the stage, but we held our ground. The entire time, we enjoyed a ‘pretty good’ spot on the floor, all things considered. We were sort of at the ‘back of the front’ - between the people who really wanted to get as close as possible, and those who didn’t mind hanging back to soak up the atmosphere.

The opening songs were all the fist-pumping anthems to set the mood - people were jumping and pumping fists like you’d expect. I was pretty much sandwiched in between two people, front and back, jumping together as people behind us smashed forward. But as soon as Trent settled into a slower song (for the life of me, I cannot recall the set list, sorry), that was put to an end. And it never started again. In fact, the crowd wasn’t nearly as rowdy as those I’ve seen at other NIN concerts. There were a few crowd-surfers, and I think one guy wanted to start a mosh (but no takers). Everyone in front of me was what I’d describe as ‘excited’ and ‘enthusiastic’ but not necessarily ‘rowdy’ or ‘totally out of control’. I’d look back once in a while, and the crowd behind me was pretty much ’subdued’ (like I said, I was stuck in between these two crowds, quite convenient actually). I never had a problem with being squished forward at all, which is quite refreshing actually.
At one point, I considered shoving my way to the front, Canadian style, to get things going again. But I didn’t really want to ditch Andrea on her own, nor did I want her to get smashed up. So I hung back, headbanging, fist-pumping, and jumping at the appropriate times .

As far as the performance goes, you can tell that they didn’t go ALL OUT, but rather played a nice performance. As performers, NIN is pretty much at the point where they are still going to be REALLY FUCKING GOOD even if they phone it in. Not that they did that tonight, but they were sort of in between that and going so hard that they’d pass out after walking off stage. I don’t blame them at all, considering the small crowd. Trent did seem gracious, and seemed to enjoy Hong Kong, this being his first visit there. The set list consisted of a surprizingly small amount of YEAR ZERO material, and a lot from the rest of NIN’s extensive catalog. The old standbys were there - March of the Pigs, Suck, Burn, Closer (they must be sick of this song by now.. I know I am), Hurt to close the show, etc. The highlights for me were an unexpected performance of Dead Souls, a cover of a Joy Division song that was featured on The Crow Soundtrack, and an amazing performance of Head Like a Hole.

I’m glad I was able to actually drag my lethargic ass out of my chair to check out this concert - after just 4 or 5 hours of sleep in the past 3 days, it was to the point where I think I would have gotten a refund if that option was available. I’ve now seen NIN up close, and I am greatly looking forward to the next opportunity, whenever that will arise.

I’ll close with a note to all concert goers - Please turn off your fucking cellphones and cameras during the show. If you want to take a picture of the band or something, go for it. Then put it away. Especially during the quiet, darker parts of the show, 2 or 3 dozen of these things would pop up, their LCD screens blinding everyone behind them and blocking the view. I don’t know what is the point of going to a concert if you’re just going to watch it on a tiny screen. You might as well check the clips on Youtube that other idiots already filmed.

Yup, time for bed.

hyperpower!
the beginning of the end
heresy
terrible lie
march of the pigs
the frail/ the wretched
closer
survivalism
burn
gave up

me, im not
the great destroyer
eraser
only

wish
the good soldier
no, you dont
suck
dead souls
the hand that feeds
head like a hole

hurt

a few pics from last night

i love free wifi at hk airport

the big comedown was on the setlist and soundchecked but not played

good solid show, crowd kinda sucked at the front though.

trent made a nice speech about how they were pleased to be here and with the crowd's reaction and he thanked the Lovesong, who were decent enough, and the promotors for getting them out there finally.

Great pictures solar :)

Definitely agree about the crowd: really quite annoying at times. But being able to be that close up made up for it.

Also definitely agree about the people with phone cameras, especially those who continue to film whilst moshing/being smashed about at the front. Do you really think you're going to get good footage from that??

fantastic picts!!!
and a new Hanky ^_^

after being in hk for 5 days before my visit to korea i was very happy to be coming back for the 36 hour layover and go to the show. since it was hk and i knew the first people in line were all going to be foreigners we didnt rush to get to the venue. the people who waited around for most of the day had the venue staff against them in attempting to organize a line. the venue did a decent job of putting up dividers to create a line they just did it 6 hours too late.

a message to venues that do not host concerts very often: letting people run down moving escalators is not safe. taking tickets on a different level from the entrance to the hall is really dumb. perhaps this should be rethought such that there is an orderly line up by the hall doors, not upstairs, then you are not asking for someone to fall down a moving staircase.
that said, running into the venue is quite fun. the last time i did shows in europe, 7 years ago, they didnt seem to care if people ran like hell to get to the barrier either. back then, the distance was significantly shorter.

the venue was less of an airline hanger than i thought i would be. it was a huge room used to converntions/ conferences that had been black curtained off in attempt to save some of the acoustics.

the opening band, the lovesong was decent. i like realy liked whatever their 4th songs was. with less guitar and more bass it could have passed for hard energy music. they seemed really happy to be there and alluded to the need to get an hk scene going since there didnt seem to be much happening locally musicwise.

the barrier seemed to be pretty far from the stage.. no anticipation of flying guitarists tonight. the screen for M,IN/ TGD/ etc. was much closer so it felt like they were right there when playing the middle part of the show. the screens looked less wide too, but that was likely because the stage set up and much more space at the sides.

the setlist was basically the same as the night/ show before. i will never get tired of hyperpower --> TBOTE. or heresy.

TR thanked the promoter for getting the show there and the lovesong for opening. there wasnt that much talking.

performance wise the band wasnt that much different from korea. the crowd was shit and this put a huge dent in the show for me. like the venue, if the city doesnt get a show that often people dont know how to behave. there was a lot of unecessary pushing at the front and we must have had the entire hk chapter of the twiggy ramirez fan club behind us. ironically enough, the kid behind me by the end knew the joy divison song more than he knew any nin stuff.

the nin dot com photo of "hk fans" made us laugh since its a picture of a bunch of foreigners in the front row. thanks to the person who called us ugly in the comments, complement accepted.

getting home from this show was such a headache. no taxis would take anyone who wasnt going to kowloon/ hk island. we had to go back to the airport and find the hotel bus from there. i should have just gone and checked in the the flight since i was back at the airport in 6 hours anyways.

show was not quite as good as seoul. crowd sucked at the front - had peoples arms waving in my face the whole time, those wristbands they gave out were nifty but i kept getting struck in the eye with them, ouch.

was kinda disappointed the big comedown was soundchecked and on the setlist but not played, its an old favourite of mine.

my photos are here http://www.flickr.com/photos/msnaut/set ... 066845570/

here are a few









not tagged feel free to steal

my video: http://hk.myblog.yahoo.com/suede99928/a ... 1&next=556