STREET SWEEPER SOCIAL CLUB

Street Sweeper Social Club, the new band formed by Rage Against the Machine gui­tarist Tom Morello, opened. Their badass cover of M.I.A.‘s “Paper Planes” was a highlight.

NINE INCH NAILS

It felt wrong some­how to see a band as moody and dark as Nine Inch Nails play while the sun was still up. But clouds soon moved in, obscur­ing a sun­set that would have been impres­sive over the water, mak­ing every­thing suit­ably gloomy and very, very cold as NIN chased sum­mer away. This stripped-down four-piece ver­sion of the band played a great cover of David Bowie’s “I’m Afraid of Amer­i­cans,” the best song Nine Inch Nails could have but never wrote, and ended with the over­whelm­ingly sad “Hurt.” Sur­pris­ingly omit­ted was “Closer,” what I would assume to be a req­ui­site entry in any NIN set list (but the end theme did fea­ture in a short instru­men­tal jam). Speak­ing of, said jam was one of only two instru­men­tal por­tions of the set (the other being The Fragile’s ambi­ent inter­lude “The Frail”). A lit­tle dis­ap­point­ing, given that Trent Reznor has been becom­ing more and more musi­cally exper­i­men­tal and adven­tur­ous of late, with whole chunks of The Frag­ile and the entirety of the mas­sive two-disc Ghosts being instru­men­tal. Per­son­ally, when it comes to Nine Inch Nails, the music (not so much the gloomy lyrics) is where the action is for me.

JANE’S ADDICTION

All thanks to Reznor for play­ing peace­keeper in reunit­ing the noto­ri­ously frac­tious and unsta­ble Jane’s Addic­tion, at least for the length of the NIN/JA tour. Basi­cally a funk/prog/metal power-trio fronted by the antics of Perry Far­rell, a… unique indi­vid­ual whose ego (he once re-released a raft of Jane’s Addic­tion songs under just his own name on a solo great­est hits album) has often cre­ated con­flict with bassist Eric Avery. The full moon peek­ing out from the clouds prob­a­bly only added to Farrell’s lunacy. They opened with their mag­num opus “Three Days,” an epic fea­tur­ing more dis­crete gui­tar solos by Dave Navarro than I could count. Hon­estly, where do you go from there? They kept find­ing high points to hit, how­ever, includ­ing “Ocean Size” and the closer (what else?) “Jane Says.” It only took a few songs for the age­less Navarro’s vest to dis­ap­pear (he must have one heck of a per­sonal trainer, not to men­tion a chest hair waxer), and Perry’s shirt fol­lowed shortly thereafter.

THE FUTURE

Reznor has made vague noises about Nine Inch Nails com­ing to some kind of end fol­low­ing this tour. It remains to be seen whether he means retir­ing the name in favor of solo work, start­ing a new band, or sim­ply ceas­ing to tour for a while. He’s report­edly been clean & sober for some time now, and engaged to be mar­ried, so more power to him. If he retreats now, he’d be going out on a high note. I hope the orig­i­nal lineup of Jane’s Addic­tion man­ages to keep it together to con­tinue work­ing in some form or another. With only two stu­dio albums to their credit (I’m not count­ing the awful Strays, writ­ten & recorded with­out Avery’s inim­itable bass), the world needs some new songs from them.

GETTING THERE AND BACK

I had a lit­tle unex­pected adven­ture on the long trip from Man­hat­tan all the way out to Jones Beach. Met a few fans on the Long Island Rail­road as we debated the var­i­ous ways of get­ting there, all of which suck. Thanks to Kim & friend for the impromptu car ride to the venue! But I didn’t have the same luck on the way back, an ordeal that included wait­ing a full hour for a LIRR train to arrive. Pic­ture dozens of hun­gry fans, shiv­er­ing atop an ele­vated plat­form in the mid­dle of nowhere.

THE VENUE

Blech. Sur­rounded on three sides by water, Jones Beach sounds nice in the­ory, but in per­son it’s cold. Never mind if you’re going to a show there dur­ing the sum­mer; dress warmly. Also, for a music lover used to all kinds of venues in Man­hat­tan and Brook­lyn, it’s in the mid­dle of nowhere, with no food or water for lit­er­ally miles. The exor­bi­tant con­ces­sion prices are, let’s be hon­est here, graft. Just to keep from dehy­drat­ing and get­ting a migraine from all the second-hand pot smoke, I reluc­tantly paid $6.50 for a bot­tled water, which I cer­tainly hope the venue recy­cled. Also, the sound sys­tem is kinda crappy. Jane’s were notice­ably louder than NIN, but Farrell’s mike sounded pretty muf­fled, espe­cially on the first and last songs.

THE AUDIENCE

The audi­ence was a weird mix­ture of goths, met­al­heads, and gray­ing thir­tysome­things like me. Although NIN has remained extremely rel­e­vant for some time now, the orig­i­nal Jane’s lineup has been out of action for more than a decade, and both bands date back to the late 80s / early 1990s, when I was in high school. The black-fingernailed lon­ers didn’t sur­prise me, but I didn’t really expect so many head­bangers. I even saw a middle-aged, bearded, fat dude in a skirt, a look I thought fiz­zled on arrival in the mid-90s. In ret­ro­spect, I shouldn’t really have been sur­prised, but I come at Nine Inch Nails and Jane’s Addic­tion from a dif­fer­ent angle. Lis­ten­ing to NIN is an exten­sion of my appre­ci­a­tion for elec­tronic and pro­gres­sive rock, and Jane’s vis­cer­ally filthy, slightly sleazy rock owes more than a lit­tle to Led Zep­pelin (who were also arguably a bit prog).

Offi­cial band sites: www.nin.com and www.janesaddiction.com

Buy The Slip, Nine Inch Nails’ lat­est album, and the new Jane’s Addic­tion rar­i­ties boxed set A Cab­i­net of Curiosi­ties from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.