Shot Dead In Dallas

A Global Conspiracy To Warp The Minds And Morals of America's Youth Through Sex, Pain, Rock'n'Roll, And A Video Store Near You...I Was There And I Saw It All And Every Word Of This Is True...And Where Is The Warren Commission When You Really Need Them, Anyway?

Well, this is a responsibility I never bargained for -- having to create for a.m.ninnie posterity a cogent and accessible review of the concert, the one for the vaults as it were, picked from the slagged remains of what used to be a functioning cerebrum. Fuck it. I guess the sooner I get started, the sooner I'll be finished, and I might as well begin at the beginning.

The evening started at about 5 p.m., when Ken "Rowdy" Rowley and I arrived at the State Fair Coliseum. The line for the floor already stretched from the side door to halfway through the first parking lot, but since the a.m.ninnie section was slated for the first tier anyway, it didn't bother us. We just got into line by the front door, with only about 15 people in front of us, and settled in for the long cold wait. (It was a few degrees above freezing and spitting snow ever so slightly -- this after nearly a week of unseasonably sunny-and-in-the-'60s clime. The weather must've known Trent was coming, and adjusted itself accordingly.) Oh, and it was frigid indeed under that gray Texas sky. Fires were lit repeatedly in the Slaughterhouse's metal garbage barrels, only to be extinguished by fleet-footed police officers and event staffers. Some of the rocket scientists near the back of the line actually started stealing the plastic liners from the cans and setting them on fire, apparently not realizing, even after lighting two or three of them, that all they do is disintegrate whilst giving off a noxious stench that isn't even good for a contact high.

We spent most of our 1:40 wait talking to the two 15-year-old girls behind us and deflecting the inquiries of fellow concertgoers who thought our a.m.ninnie "slaughterhouse live" nametags were backstage passes. (Yeah right, like I'm gonna wear one of those on the outside of my jacket, much less carry two dozen of them looped around my belt. Can you say "hit me over the head and leave me in a ditch someplace"?) Since very young ninfomaniacs are viewed with a certain amount of suspicion on the board, I was curious about these girls and their "first time" with nin. Came to find out that both of them have been listening "for as long as [we] can remember," think that "Trent is so incredible, there's just no one like him," and that "most" of their "trendy" little schoolmates "just got into 'Closer,' because he says 'fuck' a lot in that one, they're so disgusting, no proper respect, etc." Wow. (I guess the moral is to treat these kids nicely -- the future fashion victims will be present and accounted for, but some really ARE out there trying to grow up fine and strong and true, just like us...hehheh.) At last, we met up with some fellow a.m.ninnies, recognizable as such by crisp arson's Reznor Heater t-shirt (definitely the fashion statement of the evening, as Katy McCormack and Ken had worn theirs, too.

Once we got inside, we taped up our "alt.music.nin welcomes you" banner (executed by the lovely and talented Ms. Mick and eventually signed by every a.m.n. army grunt who reported for duty) and settled in to thaw out and wait some more. We staked out our position in the first tier, along the concrete retaining wall on Danny Lohner's side of the stage, within easy view of the sound board and backstage area. Then we stood around and watched the floor show (literally) -- the now-customary crowd-surfing to the Bowietunes playing between sets.

The Melvins took the stage at about 8 p.m., and I'll make this quick because it was too big a fiasco to merit much mention. Their first tactical error was for the lead singer to say, "I just want you guys to know, if we get hit with anything, we're going to play for another hour" before the first plank had even been cast. Someone (maybe Trent) shoulda told 'em that you just don't dare a roomful of drunk Texans, especially when the Pantera crowd had set an example by ripping the floor down to the hockey ice the weekend before. The pit brigade, which had actually stopped moshing a couple of minutes into the set (the penultimate insult for a Dallas nin crowd), immediately began tearing the brand new and hopelessly flimsy particle board into large jagged chunks and flinging it at the stage. So how did the Melvins respond? By saying they wouldn't leave until the whole PLACE was trashed, cameras and all. It only got worse from there.

After about 10 minutes (which seemed more like about forever), Mistress Lily pointed to the sound board and said, "Look, there's Trent!" Moments later, The Man took the stage to play Principal Skinner and get the crowd back into line. Actually, he wasn't nearly as stern as I thought he might be (Lily and I had been muttering "way to alienate the main event, assholes" under our breaths for several minutes). After the mighty shriek and choruses of "We love you, Trent!" died down, he told everyone that "we're filming this show tonight, the first time we've ever done this, and we're doing it here because Dallas has the best fucking audiences in the world." (Huge cheer, and totally unforced -- Dallas does love Trent, and only partially because Trent loves us back.) "Now I understand that you guys are pretty wound up, and I appreciate that. But the Jim Rose Circus is coming on, we're best friends, and if anything gets thrown up on stage, they're gonna leave. So I want you to beat the fuck out of anyone you see throwing." (All quotes paraphrased, but more or less accurate.)

After Mr. Reznor's timely and deeply appreciated intervention, the evening proceeded in much happier fashion. The Circus took the stage soon afterward. The act was the same as on the first leg of the tour except for two things: 1) the addition of Staplehead O'Shea, a guy who, well, staples things to his forehead; and 2) the fact that the Armenian Rubber Man's tennis racket didn't break when he got it over his hips, like it did on Halloween weekend. (Man-o-man was he pissed off that night! You could see it even from the stands.)

Then it was time for the a.m.nin army to settle in for the big one -- form our unbreachable bulwark against the barrier wall, get another beer, powder the nose and get knocked flat by the bouquet from where an inexperienced concertgoer had made an early evening of it in the bathroom sink.... (Obviously, no one had told this anonymous damsel that a nin concert is one stiff belt best taken straight-no-chaser.) Meanwhile, the ninnies adopted a pair of boys in the adjoining section who looked no older than about 10. Maybe they were the sons of event staffers, but they seemed to be there by themselves, so we conveyed honorary ninniehood via a pair of blank nametags and encouraged them to hang out with us for the rest of the night.

Finally, the coliseum went dark and the relentless steamroller rhythms of "Pinion" filled the air. The place went NUTS. We all know that Trent is the master of the pregnant pause, but the wait for him to tear through that curtain seemed particularly excruciating this night. The electricity was at full power from the first moment, and by the time the band at last kicked into "Mr. Self Destruct," everyone in the room was in their own zone. I speak from experience -- I spent the entire night in that zone, shrieking lyrics, dancing my ass off, oblivious even to the pain in my right fist, which I'd been pounding rhythmically against the retaining wall in a slamdance frenzy during MSD and which by mid-show was well and truly fucked up.

We now pause for the set list:

encore:

More highlights:

Trent licking the mike during "Sin." Whoa. Wonder if he was tipped off to that "Missionary Man" thread?

Trent hitting himself in the head with the mike to get those asynchronous rhythm noises at the beginning of "Piggy." Ow! Talk about your found percussion....

HiS. How to describe this...let's just say that, even though Trent is still beating the shit out of his equipment, at least now he's showing it a good time first. A really, really good time. The mighty moshing women of a.m.n. were stopped dead in their tracks as if by gunshots, that's how good a time....

Relative quiet during the "Hurt" movie. The whole room was mesmerized, I think, but at any rate the atmosphere was perfect for once. Maybe, because of the cameras, there was some sense in the crowd that this was for keeps, and that it betterbygod be right. Whatever it was, I was grateful for it later, when I had time to think about it.

The intro to TOT: "This is a song about sticking your finger up your ass."

Trent climbing onto the speaker stack overhanging the pit during DII.

Lily and I looking over at "our little guys" during HLaH and catching both of them banging their heads in perfect time. It was just so sweet. (I haven't felt that pleased and proud since my own niece, 17 months old at the time, launched into an instinctive pogo while watching the Mudstock version of this selfsame song over Thanksgiving weekend. So to all you people who say you're sick of HLaH: It does have its uses, and I've seen them up close.)

The guys with the hand-held cameras coming by the wall multiple times to shoot Lily in her mesh-and-vinyl shirt and Katy in her Reznor Heater tee.

Trent dove at least twice and threw Robin into the pit once -- and Robin dove under his own power, along with Trent, at the end of HLaH. It was this final plunge that nearly dicked the encore, because the crowd had decided that Trent wasn't getting away so quickly this time. Someone finally killed the lights, possibly hoping to expedite the recovery process, but we could see from our vantage point that Trent had to be carried backstage and had lost his shirt (at least) to the moshers. It was a long time indeed before the band came back out -- we suspected that Trent might have hit his head against the barrier wall that creates a little moat between the stage and the pit, which would have rung his bell but good. Lucky thing that the encore is comparatively downtempo. By the time it started, he seemed little the worse for wear and did a fine job wrapping up the show.

The a.m.ninnies stuck around while the crowd left, hoping for a chance to get down on the floor for a moment to get a group photo next to our awe-inspiring flag (which Lily promised to deliver backstage after-show, along with a.m.n. nametags for each band member and Sean Beavan). It was at this point in the evening that the event staff became rather hostile toward us. Turns out that they'd seen our nametags and thought we'd tried to make bootleg backstage passes. To which my response was: I know what the backstage passes look like. If I'd wanted the nametags to look like passes, they would have looked like passes. (It didn't help that Lily already had gained access to the floor with hers, haha, and that Buck Satan had used his to scam a couple of teenage girls in the lobby into thinking that he was Trent's brother, Terry, and that there was going to be a big party after the show in Room 431 at the Sheraton, if they wanted to stop by and bring all their friends....)

The staffers civiled up somewhat when they saw how genuinely surprised and pissed we were at that suggestion, but they still wouldn't let us take a picture from the floor (probably because they were embarrassed that I'd gotten the camera into the auditorium without a photo pass in the first place). So we took down the sign and got several lovely shots of the flower of a.m.ninniehood (Southwest Division) posing with it amidst the concrete and metal rails of the "M" section.

"...that's all I can think of but I'm sure there's something else...way down inside me I can feel it coming back...."

And how's that for a gratuitous mixed metaphor?

Good night and thank you -- KT

"now all you Texas motherfuckers can sleep soundly...and everything is all right."
-- Trent Reznor, Dallas USA, 11 February 1995

New evidence suggests that this case should be reopened.