Monday, May 29, 2006

Nine Inch Nails Flashback

I finally got around to listening to the Nine Inch Nails tracks posted on your standard life and it inspired me to dig through my collection of NIN recordings for some rare and little-listened to tracks. I remember getting turned onto Pretty Hate Machine by a friend in college back in 1991. It was simply amazing. I would listen to it over and over and over and over. Back then you couldn't just go online to find more music by a band or even find much information about them so all I knew was NIN was Trent Reznor, and Trent Reznor was NIN. Fast forward to about a year later with the release of Broken. Oh my gosh, what a shock. Absolutely nothing like the electronic / techno PHM...Broken was a half hour of pure anger and destruction. When I think of NIN, I personally still think this album defines Trent. I saw Trent a few times live, but he fell off my radar screen after the long draught following The Downward Spiral. My interest has been rekindled with the release of With Teeth, although I still favor the older, angrier, rawer NIN.

Nine Inch Nails - Supernaut (mp3) - This was supposedly one of the two songs on the mythical, grail-like Halo Zero (along with the demo version of Suck). It was recorded by Trent and 1,000 Homo-DJ's and at the time, Trent was engaged in a vicious battle with TVT, his recording company. They insisted that his vocal be removed so Al Jourgensen altered the track slightly, claimed he re-recorded it, and released it anyway.

Nine Inch Nails - Get Down, Make Love (mp3) - the Sin single : This little gem is nestled between three versions of Sin and it is one of my most favorite NIN tracks ever. It was written by Freddie Mercury, and if you listen carefully, you'll hear Freddie at the end of the song.

Nine Inch Nails - Burn (mp3) - Natural Born Killers Soundtrack : Oliver Stone brought Trent in to produce this soundtrack and it's truly an amazing array of genres and sound-bites from the movie. Burn was one of three NIN songs on the album, but it is the only one not found on any of NIN's halos.

Nine Inch Nails (with David Bowie) - Reptile (mp3) - Live at Great Woods, 9-16-95 : If you were to see NIN on the Outside tour in 1995, you would have noticed a strange mixture of listeners in the crowd. Nine Inch Nails opened up the shows, David Bowie came on stage to perform some songs with NIN, and then NIN left and David Bowie had the stage. This track and the next one (a Bowie song) come from one of these shows.

Nine Inch Nails (with David Bowie) - Hallo Spaceboy (mp3) - Live at Great Woods, 9-16-95

Buy some NIN of your own

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