In 1990 when I discovered Consolidated and Meat Beat Manifesto, Nine Inch Nails didn’t come up. Melodic, entranced by rock star poses, Trent Reznor had no patience for the happiness-in-slavery submission to beats and noise of industrial, which marked him as a star from the beginning—NIN, not Consolidated, were asked to play Lollapalooza in 1991. I’m not a fan—this kind of hysteria makes me question the idea of sex itself, for if you’re heaving and shouting and lisping and drooling so strenuously, you must be more desperate than I need at the moment. But I can’t deny Reznor’s manipulation of self-destructive zones that stop just short of demilitarized zones. His most sustained recording is Broken, when he figured out the connections between Adam Ant and Adam and Eve. I wish I had seen his 1995 tour with David Bowie, with whom he formed a poignant bond: a tour that didn’t deserve its slings, according to the clips I’ve watched.Visit our partner site Humanizing the Vacuum for great lists, commentary and more.
