...only slightly battered

05.08.05

(Happy Mother's Day)

I was told by several people that if I wanted to get anywhere near the stage for the NIN show, I'd really need to show up no later than 3pm (Doors open at 6:30).

I decided to CTA over there, and it took for-fucking-ever. The train from Bryn Mawr to North-Clybourn was okay, and the bus N-C to Damen-Milwaukee was timely, but I sat at the Northbound Milwaukee bus stop for almost 20 minutes, freezing my ass off.

That's right. Despite weather predictions that it'd be in the temperate 70's to 80's, when I checked the weather before walking to the train, I thought it was broken when it said 48ºF -- the weather outlook had shifted into the high 40's to low 60's at some point when I wasn't looking. So, despite knowing that it'd be a burden later, I wore a long sleeved shirt that I knew I could tie around my waist at the concert.

I have learned over time that if you want to be anywhere in the thick of things at a concert, there are certain rules you should observe:

1. Don't wear you watch. It will somehow get ripped off you wrist and disappear into the crowd forever.
2. Don't wear jewelry that can get caught on other people. It will somehow get ripped from your body and disappear into the crowd forever. This is especially painful if the jewelry is attached to an ear, nose, or elsewhere.
3. Don't wear spiked wristband, collars or belts, or long-chained wallets/keys to a show. Security will likely make you take them off and throw them away before admittance to the theatre.
4. Wear pants that have zippered pockets. If you value keeping your possessions about your person, lock that shit up tight. I prefer capri-length cargo pants, because your legs get to breathe a little. And if they're a little military-looking, all's the better. It goes with your boots.
5. It isn't too bad of an idea to wear your cash, keys, id, and incidentals in a moneybelt around your waist, under your pants. You might end up with sweaty money, but at least you'll still have it on you -- kids at concerts carry big cash to buy overpriced t-shirts and posters. If I was going to pickpocket or mug others, this sort of place would be my ideal venue.
6. Don't buy your t-shirt until the end of the show. You might have to wait in line a little longer, and they might not still have your size, but at least you know it didn't get lost in the crowd mid-performance, and it's a warm, dry piece of clothing for you to don later.
7. Wear boots. I prefer old school combat, military-issue, steel-toed jump boots. You won't get your feet squished flat in the pit because you're wearing flimsy sneakers, and you can kick your way out of the pit if you need a quick route of egress. Also, if some sleazeball walks up behind you and grabs your crotch from the rear, bend your leg back and bring the foot up behind you to issue a well-placed kick in his bits. He will lose interest in your crotch, because his crotch has now become the center of his attention.
8. Wear thick socks, preferably ones specifically built for wear inside a combat boot, because your feet will need the cushioning, the moisture-wicking ability, and the prevention from chafing. Also, they generally come up higher than your boots, so if it is cold out, they offer another line of thermal defense.
9. Hydrate the fuck out of yourself before the show. Drink drink drink water until you feel like a water balloon, because you will sweat it all out within minutes of the main attraction starting.
10. Bring a large boyfriend of bodyguard with you if you can. If s/he love you, s/he will defend you from the crowd to the best of her/his abilities, and will sometimes hoist you up if you are small, so you can see over the tops of all the 6-foot+ tall people in the very front of the stage. (The irony is that the shortest people generally get stuck in the middle to back somewhere, because they aren't hulking brutes that can muscle their way to the stage. You know, hulking brutes that could easily see over the shortest people's heads if they were inclined to be that level of polite. Which they aren't. Harbor no illusions here.)

I ended up waiting in line with all the other people for like 3 hours, making friends with the people around me. In front of me, Luis was there with his girlfriend Lupe, and behind me were two guys named Tyson and Carl. Tyson looks a lot like Dean from Gilmore Girls. We all held places in line for each other when we needed to venture forth to find restrooms and foodstuffs throughout the wait.

I ended up peeing at Baskin Robbins - which had no toilet paper, and then getting a scoop of cherries jubilee on a sugar cone, and a bottle of water. The ice cream was tasty, but perhaps not the best culinary choice for the weather. And a couple of hours later, I ended up peeing at KFC, where I did not buy food to use the facilities as the sign on the bathroom door instructed.

In those three hours of waiting, I think Carl was the only one that didn't wander off even once. Tyson disappeared at least twice, and Luis and Lupe each disappeared a couple of times, both together and separately.

Dude, I think that NIN fans are keeping the tobacco industry alive. I smelled like an ashtray just from being in line outside, and there was a pretty stiff breeze going.

And there was some sort of entertainment while we waited, I suppose. Some interesting characters were eating fire, walking on stilts, and handing out candy to the line. We mostly made fun of them.

I was elated to see a woman easily my mom's age wander by wearing a SIN t-shirt. I saw a lot of older people, but not as many as I'd expected. And I even saw this girl there, but I didn't say hi, even though I know her. (I dyed her hair platinum blonde for a Dean's Guitar gig last year.)

When we finally got inside, my line-mates all went up to the balcony (where I should have gone) to get a bird's eye view of the stage, and I went and stood on the floor about 6 people back from the stage, entertaining myself with text messaging Matty at work for the hour I stood and waited. I also spoke to the girls to my right and left, who agreed that the obnoxious bimbos with the ratty hair that squeezed past us and went up front (despite our best efforts to prevent that from happening) both needed a good tug on their trashed-out pigtails.

The Dresden Dolls finally came out to play around 7:30pm, and we stood complacently while they played. The Dresden Dolls are classified as some sort of Brechtian Cabaret Punk, which I supposed is a fairly accurate description, and are comprised of Amanda (vox/piano) and Brian (drums/guitar). She's got a voice on her that could almost bring the walls tumbling down, and he's one of the tightest drummers I've ever heard.

You may have heard "Coin-Operated Boy," which is a pretty amusing hit of theirs, and was actually what they'd played live on Mancow's Morning Madhouse the previous morning.

Some dude was heckling her from the balcony about her hairy armpits -- she doesn't shave them for some reason, and she stopped playing long enough to relate a story about how she'd heard that at a Marilyn Manson show, someone had thrown a bottle at him, and he stopped singing, saying that he wouldn't start again until someone beat the shit out of the bottle thrower. She said that she wasn't going to start again until someone hugged the heckler for her, and told him that he was a good person despite his bad behavior. Which elicited much chuckling. And then the music started again.

My only complaint is that every single one of their songs seems to be at least 10 minutes long. You had me for 6 minutes, and sometimes even for 8, but 10 is just too freaking much.

I still enjoyed it, though.

(Except the part where some assmonkey behind me threw a glass of beer towards the front of the stage, and it spilled all over my shirt. Great, now I smell like cigarette smoke and beer! Yay!)

NIN took the stage around 8:30, and wow.

The second the lights came up, the crowd surged forward, and I spent the next couple of songs bobbing around with the tide in a sea of fans. Ocassionally, I would be able to see a tiny peep of Trent or someone else through a gap in the crowd, which was terribly exciting.

I was dead certain that I was going to make it to the front of the crowd, and get to actually see Trent in all his glory, but I underestimated the ferocity of the crowd.

(Yes, I was directly in front of Trent at Carver-Hawkeye Arena, pressed up against the fence, for a large chunk of the Downward Spiral show, with tens of thousands of people crushing me from behind. But I was also like 22, and stupid as shit. The only reason I got out of there was because the fencing kept buckling forward where I was standing, every time the crowd surged, and I sincerely thought that when the people in the seats stormed the floor, I was going to get crushed to death below the bodies of the people behind me when the fence collapsed. Otherwise I would have totally stayed put. You should have seen my arms. They were black and blue from the wrists to the elbows from where they were pinned between my body and the security fence. It was fierce.)

However, at some point I got lodged up against a Trent-wannabe who had his arms raised up at pixie-height throat level, protectively wrapped around his girlfriend. Very firmly and rigidly held up to protect his girlfriend from the crowd. Enough that when I was pushed up against his arm, and started to choke and sputter because my windpipe was literally being crushed, and I was clawing at his arm and flailing my arms around in the international sign for "I'm choking to death, help me!" he didn't yield an inch of space. I'm not even sure he noticed, but I'm hoping I drew at least some blood with my stubby little half-inch nails.

Fortunately, the crowd surged back for a second, and I was able to regain my breath long enough to turn and tell the giants behind me that I was getting out. The crowd begrudgingly parted, with people yelling "OUT!" over their shoulders and pushing me back through the crowd until I was safely away from the crushing.

Honestly, I might have actually been able to stay on the floor a lot longer if it hadn't been for the likelihood of a crushing arm suffocation repeat. (A lot of the guys in the audience had their arms held up rigidly at pixie throat level.) I've been doing pilates every day for the last couple of weeks, and I've built up enough arm strength and core strength that I was able to completely hold my own. I have to admit, all the ab work and the breathing exercises really fucking helped me.

I wandered back up the aisle in the center of the theatre a bit, until I had a good, unobscured view of the show, and could see more than just a few little flashes of stage here and there. (Here are some sucky phone-camera pix of what I saw. I had a great view, but these pix don't make it look like that at all.)

The music was fantastic. Everything sounded as good as it possibly could -- and Trent being clean and sober this time really helped with his lyrical recall. I've heard that in the past he was notorious for fucking up the words to the songs. Most likely from the bottle of tequila he'd sucked down, or the lines he had snorted, moments before taking the stage.

There was a good mix of new and old stuff at this show:

Pinion
You Know What You Are
Sin
March of the Pigs
The Line Begins To Blur
Something I Can Never Have
The Hand That Feeds
Terrible Lie
The Collector
Closer
Home
Burn
Everyday Is Exactly The Same
No, You Don't
Suck
Gave Up
Hurt
Wish (hearing that many people yell "FIST FUCK!" at once was funny.)
Head Like A Hole

And the lighting effects were great too. There were columns of what looked like LEDs behind the band, and they'd flash colors along with the songs. And during some of the songs, they functioned like the display on an equalizer, which was very interesting.

I know it's a hit-or-miss thing to say that it sounded like a pre-recorded gig, but I mean it in the way that the band was so seamless and awesome that I could have been listening to my iPod with the sound cranked up, staring into a blazing, multi-hued sun. But of course, I wasn't. I was at an excellent concert, that I can't put into words enough how much I enjoyed it.

It was worth the ungodly amount of money I paid on eBay for the ticket, and I am definitely going to see them in the fall if they come through here again on an arena tour. It would have been even more worth it, though, if I'd gotten to see Trent up close and personal. But, hey. I got something out of it.

After the show, I wanted a shirt, and this girl with a handful of somethings yelled, "Everyone, the line starts over there!" and handed me something, so I got in line. I looked down and saw that it was a The Dresden Dolls demo disc, and then realized that I was in line to get it autographed by Amanda and Brian.

What the hell, it was cool.

And they were very nice. I told him his drumming was tight, and he thanked me. I told her that she was beautiful and so was her voice, and she hugged me. I also told her that I'd heard them on Mancow the day before, and that they'd sounded great. She asked me if they'd sounded naked, and I told her that they did, and she said that was because they were performing au natural, just as Mancow had said they were. And we laughed.

Then I got in the real line to get a t-shirt, and bought the one with the tour dates on the back.

I tried to get a cab outside the theatre, but there weren't very many, so I ended up taking the CTA home in the exact opposite way I had taken to get there.

An hour or so later when I got home, I stripped, threw my clothing in the hamper, and took a fucking shower.

And, in case you were wondering, my shoulders, upper arms and the top of my back all have bruises and little broken blood vessels all over them from being crushed alive. Ah, they joys of pressure and friction-based injury.

They really don't look that bad, though. Nothing like the battle scars of yore.

Yore & Yon.

What's in your head?