Whoa! The Nich Inch Nails show last night was g-r-r-r-reat!

After making it past the religious gauntlet outside, it was cool to discover that since I had bought my ticket off the nin.com pre-sale site, we had our own area to get our tickets and our own special entrance (which had no line waiting to get in). Smooth. It was nice to have the venue treating the band’s web fans kinda special. Once inside I did pick up a decal and a button pack (all icons from “The Slip”). Personally, I think concert t-shirts are way too pricey in gerneral. The cheapest one last night was $35. Gah!

Can I just say … I had a great seat! First row of the lower balcony. Sweet!!!

Deerhunter opened up first and I enjoyed their set. It was loud and very dense. I am fairly certain the the crowd didn’t quite know what to make of front man Bradford Cox. He performed the set wearing a cheerleader outfit. Towards the end of their set he informed everyone that the band was from Pigeon Forge (just down the road) and that his boyfriend, Cletus, was in the audience. Hmmm. I do think he was joking though the rednecks behind me didn’t seem to think so.

Then Nine Inch Nails kicked off the evening with “999,999” and “1,000,000.” The whole set list was pretty blistering with a down tempo break in the middle where they performed a few tracks from “Ghosts 1-IV.” The accompanying light show was quite incredible. Definitely would have been a nightmare for the seizure prone. The stage was pretty bare but later in the show three transparent LCD screens were used to make some quite striking effects. I wish there had been a tour program on sale as I would love to know who came up with the stage concept. For me, highlights from the set were “Discipline” and “Me, I’m Not.”

Another highlight of the evening was seeing Rob Sheridan (NIN’s current designer) running around and shooting pictures (on various cameras) and video. To me, he’s as much of a rock star as the guys up on stage. When I got home last night and checked the Nine Inch Nails Blog and Media Archive, I was surprised to find that I had made it into one of the pictures … even if I am tiny, blurry and in the background.

Photo by Rob Sheridan.

You can see fan photos from the show over at the event page on Facebook.

I can say that I will definitely try and see them again the next time they tour through the area.