Full disclosure. While I am a NIN fan, I've never really been a fan of The Downward Spiral. That's unbelievable to some, and honestly, it's not for the best of reasons. Thanks to a friend's older brother, I found Pretty Hate Machine six months to a year before the Broken E.P. came out, and it was just such a different sound than anything I'd heard before that I was immediately obsessed. Broken's switch to guitar-driven industrial metal confused me, but the band still felt fresh and like it was "mine."
When "Closer" hit the radio two years later and suddenly every jock and cheerleader in school became a super fan, I got salty. Because of this, it took me years to ever give The Downward Spiral a fair listen. Cunty, but what can I say? Seeing a Geo Tracker full of football players ahead of me in a Taco Bell drive-through one Saturday night in 1994, "Closer" blaring while one 'round-the-waste flannelled Quarterback jumped up and down and screaming, "Nails, man! Nail!" just put me off.
After eventually going back later in life to try and reassess, I still found I didn't care too much about TDS. When David Lynch talked lovingly about the album in the March 6th, 1997 issue of Rolling Stone (dedicated to Lost Highway), I tried again.
Nothing (pun intended).
Eventually, I've come around to some of the record. However, both The Downward Spiral and its follow-up, The Fragile, are albums I never feel moved to listen to, and arguably the most famous song off TDS, "Hurt," has always been a particularly sore spot for me. "Hurt" sounds like a cheaper version of "Something I Can Never Have," still a masterpiece in my mind. "Hurt" has always struck me as egregiously sad, with the lyrics often evoking a one-upmanship technique. Sort of a proto-emo Madlib exercise, if you will. I'm not saying I'm right - I realize I am almost definitely wrong; that my bias stems from very much the wrong place; my high school, elitist "I liked that band first" mindset is bullshit. However, I feel how I feel. I continue to try, but nothing really moves the needle.
Until now.
Over the weekend in Chicago, I stopped in a record store and found this in the Bowie section.
I've had a hard time establishing what exactly this performance was. The cover says, "Live Radio Broadcast," however, from the little bit I've seen online, this appears to be a soundboard recording taken from a full live set of the '95 tour, where Bowie and NIN each do a set and overlap on several songs. The thing here is it sounds to me like, on "Hurt" for example, it's Bowie's band doing the song and Trent joining them (which seems to be backed up by the video I posted above). Maybe because of this, I LOVE this version of "Hurt." I mean LOVE. The track listing is spectacular, with the older Bowie songs being reworked with the Outside era's aesthetic; in particular, this makes "Look Back in Anger" and "The Man Who Sold the World" very interesting.
SIDE A:
Hello Spaceboy
Scary Monsters
Look Back in Anger
Wish (NIN)
AndyWarhol
SIDE B:
The Man Who Sold the World
Hurt
Terrible Lie
March of the Pigs
Closer
A word on the track order. Being a bootleg, I'm not sure if the compiler mixed in NIN's performance of "Wish" with an otherwise Bowie-centric side to further give the illusion of a completely unified performance; that was certainly my excited read upon first seeing this in the shop. Either way, I'm super psyched to have this and have already listened to it a number of times since returning home from my weekend in Chicago last night.
Watch:
Sasha Rainbow's Grafted is now on Shudder and, oh man, I cannot recommend this one enough!
I'm already thinking of this as 'this year's The Substance.' Although it's not quite as cinematically bombastic as Coralie Fargeat's film, Grafted is a super fun, super gorey Body Horror Film with a weirdo score by Lachlan Anderson and an outstanding visual aesthetic that visually works the film's metaphors into color palette, setting and design.
Playlist:
Talking Heads - Remain in Light
JD McPherson - Nite Owls
Miranda Sex Garden - Velvetine single
L.A. Witch - Eponymous
Crime Weekly - Rey Rivera (part 1)
Bandsplain - Talking Heads (part 1)
Nick Lowe & Los Straitjackets - Indoor Safari
Talking Heads - More Songs About Buildings and Food
The Cactus Blossoms - Every Time I Think About You
David Bowie - Outside
NIN - Not The Actual Events
The Jesus Lizard - Westside (single)
Bandsplain - Talking Heads (part 2)
Anthrax - I'm the Man EP
Testament - Demonic Refusal (single)
Vanessa Williams - Dreamin' (single)
David Bowie & NIN - Back in Anger
Deafheaven - Magnolia (single)
Deafheaven - Black Brick (single)
Deafheaven - Roads to Judah
David Bowie - Scary Monsters (and Super Freaks)
