" . . . it's hard to believe it comes down to this"

"WELCOME TO http://REMIX.NIN.COM.
Hello there, we've noticed you're using Internet Explorer 6. This site has not yet been optimized for IE6, so it's not going to look very good, and you may have problems using it. We highly recommend that you upgrade to Internet Explorer 7, or better yet, download Firefox - a far superior FREE web browser that will give you a better experience on this and almost every other website. Go to www.mozilla.com to download it, or continue here with IE6 at your own risk."

Sigh.

Trent I love you but all this techno geek stuff—hidden web sites aside--is exhausting me because I have a real job. Not saying that you don't of course because, well, you're a Highly Innovative Artist (TM).

I've been with nin (in the fan sense of course) since 1990. First time I saw them (Trent & hired guns of the moment) was at the Masquerade Club. A friend of mine was in grad school (weren't we all?) and living in the Atlanta & Album 88 was the source for the non-lame music of the day. This is where he discovered nin in late '89.

That’s how it started, via cassette tape on the way down to Gulf Shores--Spring Break at the Atlanta friend’s mom's condo. We were driving down together to meet the rest of the post-high school crew, when we hit Radio Deadland. Having exhausted our own tunes, we stopped at a mall in the last town of civilization before the long stretch of nothing to the shore.

Standing in Camelot Records, my pal comes up and hands me Pretty Hate Machine.

"You like Echo & the Bunnymen, Bauhaus, The Cure, right?"
"I like anything that isn't Jacko or Paula Abdul."
"Then you'll like this."

My friend was only 1/2 right.

Hearing it for the first time, windows rolled down, the prospect of no class, just beer, sand, and my best friends, hearing PHM for the first time was like. . .

Getting Ziggy Stardust because a friend in middle school's Dad had brought it to her from a business trip, but she didn't like it b/c it was "weird," so she passed it on to me.

When I discovered Welcome to my Nightmare was what KISS was ripping off.

When I first heard Let It Bleed, bought for 50 cents, marked down from a dollar at a garage sale, scratchy but powerful, “The Midnight Rambler” throbbing in my speakers.

Pretty Hate Machine wasn't a crush. Like these others, it was The Real Thing.

So flash forward to post-grad school, the tenure track job, bought a house, got more responsibilities at work, friends are getting married, having babies, I'm thinking about my 401K and resolving growing conflicts at work, and maybe these are all the reasons why I'm too damned exhausted at the moment to download MP3s and even new versions of Explorer or Firefox just to get to my music, find a tour date, that I suspect will hit my state, oh, yeah, right, smack in the middle of a week of work meetings in August.

I respect Trent's desire for evolution, innovation, and yes, relevance. And yes, I still believe, but it's tinged with sadness.

Now my best friend, she tells me something I don’t want to hear. She’s been my partner in nin concerts since that September '90 club date when maybe 150 people had come out to hear a skinny Trent with dreadlocks!

That night I asked a huge biker guy to get me to the front of the stage, one of the only times I have plied feminine wiles in a concert setting. And he did, shoving me though the crowd to the front, where I wrapped my arms around a wooden horse near the stage and gladly felt the spray of sweat off the band and got bruises from the crowd shoving against me. My best friend lost bracelets that night, and her shoes.

So when I emailed concert dates to her last week, she said she wasn't sure she cared anymore. I know she wasn’t a fan of Year Zero, despite my urging her to “give it another chance,” and she is skeptical of the just-released instrumental Ghosts I-IV, I know these things, but damn--a nin concert nearby, and we don't go?

Maybe her increasingly complicated life has gotten in the way too.

Maybe responsibilities do have a way of draining off our energy.

So this is what nostalgia feels like.