Wow. All I can think right now is wow. 24 hours after the fact. Last night I went to a Nine Inch Nails concert. This was the first concert I've been to in probably 12 years.

Around a month and a half ago one of my friends saw that NIN was scheduled to come to town. Come hell or high water she was going to be at that concert with somebody. It boiled down to me or her husband. We both were pulling for it to be me At the time my husband didn't have a return date for his deployment, only
that he was due back sometime between the middle to the end of this month. Seeing as the concert was on the 18th, and the original proposed arrival date for him was the 14th, I was cracking my knuckles with anticipation for quite a while. If I hadn't been able to come to the concert my friend would have taken her husband. No offense meant to him but we all know a concert with your man isn't nearly as much fun as with one of your girls! So the day the tickets went on sale she went and scored two of them.

Last week I still didn't know clearer details about hubby's return so I bluntly asked him in an email if I should look for a sitter for the munchkin or what. He said yes the next day so I asked one of my friends and she couldn't. I was bummed but I had another friend on back up and she came through!

So here we are, day of the concert. I was really excited (duh!) and was telling everyone I bumped into online that I was going to NIN that night! We had our usual breakfast of milk and cereal. Got dressed. Ran a cuple errands. Had sushi for lunch. Played and read together until it was time to go. I dropped the munchkin at my friend's house before dinner time. I thought to myself that I should eat before the concert because I'd never known there to be food at concerts but my adrenaline was so high that I wouldn't have been able to eat anything. Went over to pick up my friend.

We were there quite early so we drank beer, people watched,and smoked until the performance started. I bought a packet of warm roasted spicy almonds to fill my tummy. I hadn't had those since we lived in Florida and they were sooo good!

The opening band was someone I'd never heard before but my friend had. We went into the arena a couple songs into their set and staked out our spot for the night.

Ater what had seemed like a lifetime NIN was finally on stage! Totally surreal! I could barely believe I was actually there. I was bouncing almost the whole show and screaming along with all the words remembered and known. I only have three NIN recordings and they are older ones so admitedly I felt clueless for bits and pieces of the show. Regardless of that it was amazing!

The tickets were for the open floor area in front of the stage so we wormed our way around or a bit and inched closer. We ended up in a pretty intense section of the crowd and some dude went crowd surfing. My friend and I both got kicked in the head! Lucky me got away with just a bonk to the nose but she got worked. I looked over and my eyes bugged out, she was bleeding down the side of her face! So I yelled at her that she was bleeding and we retreated back to the spot where we'd been rocking at before. The gash turned out to be half an inch long and reasonably deep. She got a little dizzy and told me that if that had happened at home she would have gone to the ER for stitches. The bleeding was controlled pretty quick though with the aid of the back of her check book and my pirate bandana. No other major injuries took place. Toward the end of the show someone was getting pretty wild and we were both nervously glancing over.

Now to the fun part, NIN's performance! They sounded great! Trent Reznor didn't miss a beat and he played a little too. He did guitar on some of the songs, Keyboards on a couple and tambourine on many. The band seemed pretty tight too. This was their second trip to Hawaii. Trent Reznor told a humerous antidote about their first time over. To paraphrase: It was 1994. None of them had ever been to Hawaii and they were all determined to do the whole beach thing. So out they went, five of the skinniest whitest guys possible and it was 60 degrees out. They spent five minutes in the water, said F**K THIS! and hit the bars!

There was a screen of lights. They did some really cool effects for "The Great Destroyer" but I don't think they used the light show aspect to it's full potential. I would have liked to have seen a little more of the dancing lights, maybe even programmed to be like a video screen to see closer looks of the performance. Minor things though, really. I am elated I got the chance to see NIN! It was worth waiting over a decade. What made this even more awesome was that this was the last gig of the "Year Zero" tour, and it was the ONLY date in the USA!

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