lithera | NIN and music and me and Sasquatch

I was in Japan in 1989. I was listening to military radio and that, at the time, pretty much consisted of Michael Jackson and Madonna. I have a large knowledge of late 80s pop because I listened to a lot of it. My first large concert was a New Kids show in Tokyo, which was an amazing experience that I'm still thankful to my parents for getting me tickets to see. I really wish I'd been into someone else but that's who it was and that's one of the few things I could talk to ANY girl about no matter where we were, so I held onto it like the life line it was.

When I came back to Seattle in 1992, there was something of a musical earthquake that was in the midst of happening, though to be fair it had started before I left. When I got back, though, the musical world was completely different than what I had been aware of when I left. It would be fair to say that I had missed the boat and spent a serious amount of brainpower and time trying to catch up. It was hard living in the Seattle area and realizing... I didn't really like grunge. I could fake it well enough and there were a few songs I truly loved but it wasn't really my thing. Nirvana and Pearl Jam and all of them never really resonated with me at all. (Though I later came to love Alice in Chains.)

Enter Nine Inch Nails.

While I had liked and loved music before, nothing had ever reached out and grabbed me at the roots like Pretty Hate Machine did. I admit that I was late to the party on that but I was in exactly the right place at the right time in my life for The Downward Spiral. I honestly don't know if I would have made it through parts of college with my sanity intact without Broken and Fixed. NIN was part of my backwards introduction to a LOT of music I had missed before, Queen to Joy Division. There was a very large portion of years where these words and this music helped me in a way I have a hard time measuring. I've gone some pretty decent lengths to see NIN play and I'm still proud that my first NIN show also allowed me to see David Bowie live.

2009 marks the 20th anniversary of NINs first releases. That makes me blink because surely I can't have been listening to a band for over half my life but I have. Trent has said that he's taking a break from NIN for awhile, which is okay with me. They're going to be playing at Sasquatch, along with Jane's Addiction, this tour being a sort of a bookend to where they started. I'm going to Sasquatch and I'm going to yell and scream and throw myself into the music again. I'm not sure when I'll get the chance to do it again.