Thread: Nine Inch Nails
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Old 07.27.2016, 10:10 AM   #55
Severian
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Peterpuff
Interesting way to phrase it. I never thought about the music I discovered around that time as a "replacement," but it's kind of true that's what a lot of it was. I just remember it being such an enjoyable open-minded time in music with so many genres starting to blend and pull from one another, (or maybe that is just how my impressionable teen mind felt about it all at the time). I went apeshit for Beck at the time too. I remember listening to the Loser single (which had about 5 or so songs) over and over long before Mellow Gold even released, just losing my shit over the combination of everything I was falling in love with at the time. That early Soul Sucking Jerk just had such a good groove. All these new styles and types of music combined into the freakish little CD, just, so damn good. It wet my appetite like no other. Other than In Utero, I think Mellow Gold was one of the first albums I just could not wait for it's release.

I mean, hell, it was that post Kurt exploration that led me to Sonic Youth. I hate to have to say I am one of those kids from that time, but I am (/raises hand as one of Pepper's "naive grunge kid followers"). Reading Nirvana's bios completely led me to check SY out, especially after seeing 100% on late-night MTV.

Back on main topic though...I know this might sound odd, but as a graphical person, NIN was one of the first bands that peaked my interest in "branding" as well. I just thought the logo was one of the coolest things ever, and my obsession with their branding and image was almost as strong as my enjoyment of their music.

SAME!

 


Once again, I can completely relate. I didn't get really into Beck until I heard the "Where It's At" single though. I loved Mellow Gold, but some part of me was convinced he was going to be a novelty. I think the first hint that this wasn't the case was when I heard "Soul Sucking Jerk" and "Pay No Mind" for the first time (yeah, I got into Beck post-Loser... shrug), but when that ridiculous video for "Where it's at" premiered, I was just hooked. It was another killer single, infectious as hell, but I could hear bits and pieces of other artists I was growing to love at the time (Beastie Boys, Blur, Tom Waits) and when Odelay came out I was just blown away. I listened to that album more than anything else that year I think.

Anyway, yeah, about the branding thing, I totally TOTALLY get that. I actually hate the whole idea of branding, but I love really good logos, and I love great band names, and I love it when artists use signifiers that span their career. I remember being kind of fascinated by the whole "Halo 1... Halo 2" business. And by fonts and logos for the Nothing. It made me feel a bit like I was living in the 1960s, witnessing that lovely Beatles typeface pop up on those records, and seeing the birth of Apple Records (another example of great, simple, elegant branding).

I went a bit mad for it in fact. I had plenty of NIN shirts, but instead of getting the more flashy ones that depicted the Downward Spiral sea shell, or the weird vertebrae on the PHM cover, I always went for the understated ones, with either a simple lower case "n" (a la Broken) or the boxed in NIN acronym on a solid background. Half the time the logo was so small or muted or subtle that I'm sure people just thought I was wearing a plain shirt. But I've always preferred neat, classy branding to flashy, over the top shit. Maybe it made me feel like I was part of a secret club... a country spanning sub-culture of techy, bespectacled nerdos who were all in on the same joke. Because even though NIN became quite huge in the '90s, they were still a bit weird for the average kid I high school to get into. Yeah, teens of all varieties would sing along with "Closer", but a lot of them would also mumble about the song being "perverted." And Trent was not immune to the homophobic insults that Marilyn Manson eventually found himself on the receiving end of. What with the black mini-skirts, the occasional lace-up boots, the eye-liner that he rocked during the TDS tour. But I knew I was with like-minded individuals when someone said "nice shirt" ... because in order to even know it was a NIN shirt (grey logo on black, usually in small typeface), it would almost have to be a fellow NIN appreciator. Or so I told myself.

It really was a winning logo. I read as much as I could about Trent and NIN back in the day, and in one unofficial biography (not sure if there's an official one yet, but at the time this was all I could get my hands on) and reading about Trent coming up with the name. There were all these phalic meaning people were trying to attach to it, or S&M related messages, but turns out it didn't mean a goddamn thing. He just liked the way it looked on paper, liked how clean the acronym looked. Thought it was kind of elemental, which it was/is. It's like the Batman shield of rock logos. Everyone knows what it means, fan or not, old or young, 1987 to 2016. So yeah, it was a quietly, subtly brilliant marketing decision... there seemed to be all these deeper meanings in the words he chose, and the Halo business. The logo, at the end of the day, almost looks like a single cryptographic character. Something NIN had in common with my other electronic hero of that era, Richard D. James, and the multi-platform use of the Aphex Twin logo.

Re: How to Destroy Angels - I never got into it. Which is weird. I mean, I bought the QUAKE video game JUST because Trent did the "soundtrack." I didn't give two shits about playing the thing, and only did so to hear the sounds he came up with. So you'd think I wouldn't be able to resist a Trent collab, even in my thirties. But I didn't care for the singles I heard, and I didn't like the associations the project was getting (Spotify and such will have you believe it's an A Perfect Circle-esque project... which it may have been to some extent, but APC was so terrible — they actually opened for NIN when I saw them your behind the Fragile, and oi, what a fucking shitfest — and as much as I do enjoy NIN and Trent's collabs with Atticus Ross, I just didn't particularly enjoy the sound or premise of this group.

If it had ended up sounding like the "Immigrant Song" cover he and Ross did with Karen O for The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, I would have been all for it, because that kicked unholy ass. But to my ears at the time, it seemed to have more in common with... I don't know... Evanescence or some shit.

Admittedly, I haven't heard a note of HTDA in years now, so maybe it deserves another listen.
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