So last night, Marisa and I went to a Nine Inch Nails concert!!I know what you're thinking: Oh my God I'm so jealous. Especially you, Maddie. I know you're just green with envy.Anyway, let me start from the beginning. Risa and I got there at about 5:30, doors opening at 6:30. As soon as we got there people began to form lines at the gates, so we joined the Under-18 queue and prepared for an hour of waiting. However, we hadn't even been there five minutes when Marisa spotted her brother and his friends at the very front of the queue! Usually we pretend not to know Cameron and his associates, but for the next hour they were our best friends. We hung out with them, told a few Jew jokes (So these Jews walk into a bar ... and ten minutes later they own it) sang some songs with Marisa accompanying on air piano (Coin operated boy. Sitting on the shelf *ding* he is just a toy *ding*), came up with a few ideas for band names (Cameron? At The Disco), started a sitting down trend and I got head-raped by Alex many, many times.And THEN - they finally opened the doors. I was the third person in, which is a really cool feeling especially when you look back and see the hundreds of people in the queue all glaring at you. So we ran down the hill (it was at Riverstage, open-air arena) to the mosh pit and joined the thirty or so Spiral members who had already been let in. Somehow we had lost Cameron, Alex and Tim so it was just me, Marisa and Gabe. We were all excited to be so close to the stage (third row from the front) but our excitement slowly waned over the next hour when nothing happened ... and nothing continued to happen ... and we knew that the opening band was due on at 7:30 ... and still nothing was happening. Cameron, Alex and Tim joined us in our prime spot after maybe half an hour (much death-staring from all the people they had to push through to get to us). It was starting to get a little bit uncomfortable, since we had all been standing in very close proximity for about an hour. Everyone's legs and backs were sore, and I think Gabe was a bit worse off than most because he was standing behind me. I have very long, very thick dark hair and the general humidity of the situation had made it frizz out. In Gabe's words: "This wouldn't be half as bad if you didn't have all that hair!" - but he wasn't the only one suffering. The back of my neck was boiling. At 7:15 I was seriously considering chewing off one of my bra straps to use as a hairtie. It didn't come to that, though, and at 7:30 or thereabouts the opening band came on. I think they were called something like Serena Maneesh, and they were Finnish. Well, as soon as they came on the crowd started chanting "Finland! Finland! Finland!" They turned out to be pretty bad. Their songs all sounded the same, with no lyrics sung in English as far as we could tell, and the guitarist/singer/frontwoman chick had no stage presence at all. She didn't address the crowd, played with her back to us half the time, and in the last song when her piece was over she just put down her guitar and left the stage without thanking the audience or even looking at them. When they left I heard someone (I think it was Gabe) say "Thank God they're Finnished!" which struck us as a pretty good joke at the time. Another half hour went by, in which we watched techincal guys come in and out and halfheartedly yelled "Take it off!" to the good-looking ones. The crowd grew restless and started up several chants "Rez plz!" and "Nine Inch Nails!" among the popular ones. Suddenly about ten minutes before NIN were due on, I looked behind me and realized that while before I had been in the third row of a mosh pit containing maybe 50 to 100 people, I was now in the third row of a mosh pit containing about 300 people. I swore, and everyone else looked at what I was looking at and swore too. A chick in front of me said to her friend "We are going to die. But it'll be a happy fucking death."And then - and then - they finally came on. The crowd went absolutely wild. Trent had hair a few inches long, and looked even hotter in the flesh than he does in photos. He was wearing a dark green shirt. Then they started to play, and I was suddenly being crushed to death. There was a very tall guy beside me who up until then had been very nice, apologising to the people behind him for his height, but when the music started he turned into a crazy moshing machine. I was being shoved from all angles and literally had to turn my face up to the sky to be able to breathe. But then I noticed that it was raining! A Nine Inch Nails miracle - it hasn't rained in Brisbane for months and months. And it was the best feeling, to have cool rain on you when you're moshing along with a few hundred other hot and sweaty bodies. I lasted in the third row for maybe three songs, but one of them was Survivalism and I wouldn't have missed that for anything. Being in the mosh pit for that song completely owned. It got the biggest response and it was truly incredible to be there with all these people, all screaming "I got my fist I got my plan I got survivalism!" My thoughts during that three-song period alternated between "This is so amazing" and "Oh fuck, I'm going to die."Then I decided to move out a bit, and I got to the middle of the mosh pit where I could breathe. It was a really good spot, I could see Trent and Jeordie really well and I could mosh but also avoid death by crushing. Over the next few hours they played (not in this order):
Gave Up
Down In It
March of the Pigs
Suck
The Hand That Feeds
Only
Wish
Closer
Hurt
Heresy
Burn
and a few others that I didn't know. It was all really good and there was a feeling of mutual appreciation between the crowd and the band. Everyone was respectful to the band and to each other and Trent thanked us between songs. Their performance was fantastic, they screamed and smashed and threw themselves into garbage cans as per Beside You In Time. I knew Marisa - wherever she was (we'd been seperated not long into the show) - would be happy since they'd played her favorite, Hurt. I was happy that they'd played Closer and Only, two songs I had really hoped they would play. But I was still hoping for Head Like A Hole, which was granted to me as the last song. I made sure I got back into the front of the mosh pit for that, and it was totally worth it. I was tired, but when the chorus started I wasn't tired any more. There's nothing like actually seeing Trent Reznor screaming "Head like a hole! Black as your soul! I'd rather die than give you control!" and screaming along with him, and hearing thousands of people doing the same. That was the highlight of my night, and I couldn't stop smiling afterwards. Ris and I had a little bit of trouble afterwards, because we'd arranged to meet where we came in, and only later did we realize that that could have been about twenty places up and down the walkway. It was made doubly hard by the fact that we were both dressed in black like the vast majority of people and I was wearing a NIN shirt that about one-third of the audience seemed to also own. But we did find each other in the end, so it all worked out.All in all it was an incredible night, the best concert of my life. NIN put on an amazing show and I would encourage anyone who has the chance to go see them. They are fantastic musicians and Trent Reznor is the hottest man over 40 ever. It was all completely worth the $83.60 ticket, hours of waiting, shitty opening band, sore back, stiff neck, many mosh-related injuries and the $3 I paid for 600 ml of water. I'm so glad I went and I can't wait to see them again.