The official Nine Inch Nails website has undergone a pretty significant upgrade that now allows users to create online profiles, communicate with one another in official forums and other such fun website-y stuff … and Trent Reznor wants you to know all about it. Here is a pic of Trent backstage at the Red Rocks venue in Colorado last week possibly putting together his new NIN.com online profile and a message from him about the new site developments:

“Welcome to the beginning of the new nin.com! There’s a lot of new stuff here we’ve been working on for quite some time and MUCH more coming over the next few weeks. We’re aiming to create the ultimate community and resource for all things related to nine inch nails. Be sure to register to create your own profile and take full advantage of what’s here – it’s 100% free and will remain that way.

Once you’ve registered and logged in, you can set up your user profile by clicking on your username in the top right of the page. You’ll also have access to our new live chat rooms and our new forums, which are already active and filled with great content and discussion. Here are some useful forum destinations to get you started:

- Introduce yourself in the Community Forum, and please check this message before posting.
- Read what people have been saying about recent shows (and add your own thoughts if you’ve attended) in the Previous Shows Forum, and talk about future shows in the Upcoming Shows Forum.
- View and share photos and video from the Lights In The Sky Tour in this thread.
- Need help? Check the Tech Support Forum.”

Actually, this latest development isn’t the first time that NIN.com has offered interactivity. Up until a few months ago, the site did offer an online community where users could do all of these same things but it was only available to paying members of The Spiral, the official NIN fanclub. In concert with Trent‘s new found love of giving things away for free (like the new NIN album The Slip which you can download free of charge HERE), he has decided to give away the online interactivity formerly enjoyed solely by NIN fanclub members for free. And this is why Trent Reznor totally rules. I am VERY excited about this Saturday’s NIN show at The Forum in Inglewood, CA (you have no idea!) … it will be the last show of the first leg of the Lights in the Sky Over North America Tour before the band heads down to South America and Mexico. The band will be coming back to the US for the second leg of the tour … I’m already planning which of those shows I’m gonna try and attend. It’s really great being a NIN fan right now :)

PS: THIS is me.

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This past Friday, the official Nine Inch Nails website was updated with a new photo of NIN frontman Trent Reznor pausing backstage on his way to the stage at their tour stop in Philadelphia, PA … check it out:

Hot damn, now this is an awesome picture … whether you’re a NIN fan or not ;) Sarah and I noted that Trent was letting his facial hair grow back when we saw NIN play Toledo, OH last Monday and it looks like he’s been letting it grow since then — oh yes, me likey. Hopefully he’ll have himself a full-on beard by the time I get to see NIN again in Inglewood, CA next weekend.

In other NIN-related news, Pink reader Kent gave me the heads up that Billboard.com has posted a very cool article on the band called 20 Years of Nine Inch Nails in their ongoing Music Milestones feature. I guess I never really realized that since Pretty Hate Machine, NIN‘s debut album, was released in 1988 that this year is the band’s 20th anniversary. Wow. In any event, I think all y’all should read the Billboard feature on NIN HERE … I’m pretty sure that even the most hardcore fans will learn (or be reminded of) a few things about this amazing band.

[Source via Source, thanks Kent]

In what could either be the coolest news ever — or possibly the worst news ever — it is being reported that Trent Reznor has approached HBO with the idea to turn the Nine Inch Nails album and viral marketing “game” Year Zero into a TV series for the cable network. Hmmmm:

Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails has been in talks in with HBO about making a two-season maxi-series out of “Year Zero,” the dark future tale that Reznor has chronicled in his music as well as in a celebrated Alternate Reality Game (ARG) with the same title that was created by 42 Entertainment. “It’s the most exciting thing on the horizon, it’s the thing that when I wake up in the morning it makes me say, ‘God it would be cool if that happened,” Reznor told me this week while sitting backstage before a Nails concert in Toronto. “This is my grand ambition. Will it happen? I don’t know. It was fun sitting and telling [the HBO] guys and watching them shake their head and having writers on board and producers that are in to it. It’s been a fun thing.” “Year Zero” began (as so many things do in the music of NIN) from a place of negative emotion and sonic experimentation. Reznor was increasingly outraged by the geopolitical situation during the Bush years and he wanted to channel that fury into music, but he was loath to drift into the limiting lexicon of protest lyrics. “How could I express what I was feeling in a way that didn’t sound like bitching about George Bush? I mean, you know, I love Neil Young but I didn’t want to listen to that record, really,” he said, referring to the singer-songwriter’s “Living with War.” “My reaction to that kind of record is, ‘We know this. It’s obvious.’ So it started with me trying to write it as a piece of fiction. I was thinking, ‘It could be the worst idea ever in the world but, if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t have to come out.’ I started by writing a kind of world bible about what life would be like around 15 or 20 years from now if things continue on the same path. I spent a few weeks filling it in with the events that could lead to this kind of time and place. Then as an experiment I started writing songs about people in this place and from different points of view.” The problem was the music was compelling and powerful, but it was more about sensation than story. “I had a record that would make sense to me but no one else would ever know what it was because there was no narrative. It’s modular, its a collection of snapshots. These were glimpses of a place. Maybe with liner notes I could communicate some of it, but how do you get liner notes in 2007?” He considered a graphic novel. “That was the route we were going to go with initially. We talked to a different companies about releasing it. But it didn’t feel quite right. We thought about a film, but that has a different timetable and too many people need to say yes. That wouldn’t line up right. then I started thinking about how I could make it really interactive, something you experience rather than something you read.” Reznor remembered reading about 42 Entertainment and their deeply layered ARG for the Steven Spielberg film “A.I.” He met with them and the result was a truly amazing through-the-looking-glass creation on-line, shaped by the 42 team working closely with the rock star and his art director, Rob Sheridan. “It’s ahrd to explain it,” Reznor said, and he’s right. But the best way to get your head around it is through the nifty (and entertaining) case-study presentation that you can find here. Reznor was delighted with the result. “It was probably the most fun thing I’ve done.” Now he wants to finish the story he started and do it across a range of media. “I just pitched it to HBO two weeks ago in L.A. It went great. Ideally, we’re trying to get them to do a two-year limited series. I prefer that over a film. We would have a second ARG tying into the second album and ties into the series and they all happen together with a budget needed to pull that all off. There would be a tour down the road. The record completes the story, the ending that no one knows. I know what happens. I knew when I started it. And it’s not what people think.”

My initial reaction is a positive one … the album and the online viral story that surrounds the album are very compelling, extremely entertaining. The Year Zero “game” had already successfully run its course by the time that the movie Cloverfield hopped on the bandwagon and took the viral feel to the big screen. I can deffo see how a TV series like this could work. I know that Reznor would insist that the series, if it ever comes to be, will be taken seriously. I’m all for it … I just fear that network bigwigs might decide to start messing with the concept too much. In the end, tho, I’d love to see a NIN-inspired TV series on the air.

[Source]

Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor sat down for a little one-on-one with Rolling Stone magazine a few weeks ago in Inglewood, CA (the site of secret NIN rehearsals for their Lights in the Sky tour) to talk about the band’s summer tour plans and the future of the recording industry. Here are a few pics posted on the official NIN Flickr page of the band’s recent live performances in Chicago, IL and Toronto, ON:

Trent Reznor has some modest goals for Nine Inch Nails’ summer tour: “I want you to leave feeling like your head exploded,” he says backstage at the Forum in Inglewood, California, where his band is rehearsing. It’s a fitting goal for a guy who has spent the past year blowing up many of the standard practices of the modern music business. After completing his contract with Interscope Records, Reznor released Ghosts I-IV, a double instrumental record, in packages ranging from a $5 download to a $300 deluxe set. With no advance warning, he followed up in May with The Slip, an album free for download from his Website. Reznor’s giveaway of The Slip went smoothly — more than a million people downloaded it — but he has some misgivings, worrying that he’s contributing to an environment that devalues music and exploits musicians. “People feel it’s their right to get stuff free,” he says. “I don’t agree with it, but I understand it. I think that’s a fight you can’t win. So then how can you treat fans with respect and treat yourself with respect? By experimenting.” Reznor rejected the Radiohead scheme of letting fans decide what to pay for the album. “It gives them too much power,” he says. “I’m not saying that you have to pay for it, but don’t tell me that it’s worth 50 cents.” The Slip is now also available as a CD-DVD package, in a limited edition of 250,000, and it debuted at Number 13 when it was released in July. “People who want something physical at a reasonable price, they can get something that has value to them,” he says. Reznor is talking during a break from rehearsals at the Forum; he’s wearing a black T-shirt and drinking a Diet Hansen’s Soda. While his music is full of howling battles between the id and the superego, offstage he’s calm with a sharp sense of humor. “I’m just an actor playing me,” he jokes. “Puff Daddy and the real me are on a yacht somewhere.” The show’s production was complicated enough to require weeks of rehearsal, which meant Reznor had to wrangle teams of technicians. “I didn’t go to leadership class,” he says. “But I’m having to transform from being an asshole to being a full-on dick.” When problems arise, Reznor doesn’t throw tantrums; he just wields his wit like a knife. “Are the smoke machines here?” he asks the techie manning the light board. “Yes!” shouts the techie. “Why, may I ask, is it completely smoke-free in here, then?” Reznor is joined on this tour by four other musicians: drummer Josh Freese, multi-instrumentalist Alessandro Cortini, bassist Justin Meldal-Johnsen (formerly with Beck) and guitarist Robin Finck, who has returned to NIN after a decade with Guns n’ Roses. Reznor remembers telling a previous guitarist that it didn’t matter how he played “Terrible Lie” as long as he got across the message “Fuck you.” Now, in what Reznor thinks might be a sign of growing older (he’s 43), he prefers to work with musicians who can play their instruments. As an experiment, Reznor gave away a pair of tickets for the tour’s dress rehearsal by hiding an envelope under a rock in Burbank. Using a Google Earth link on his Website, Reznor indicated the tickets’ location with a question mark. Fans quickly found the envelope. “Well, we couldn’t leave that alone,” Reznor says. “We hid another 30, in places from Watts Towers to behind a mirror in a strip-club restroom to a Home Depot.” One envelope was hidden in a graveyard; the location was announced after it had closed for the day: “We wanted to see if anyone would break in, because I would’ve. And someone did.” Reznor contemplated providing the location of Axl Rose’s house and encouraging people to dig in his yard for tickets, “just to see how many people got arrested on his front lawn.” On opening night at Seattle’s Key Arena on July 26th, Reznor delivers on his head-exploding ambitions. After an opening half-hour played under bright white lights, the band is sandwiched between video screens upstage and downstage. The screens create optical illusions, assault the audience with strobes and even deliberately hide the musicians’ images behind a wall of static. The two-hour show careens through Reznor’s catalog, including a set of chilled-out Ghosts material featuring Reznor on marimba. “Hurt” is apocalyptic, and during his savage attack on “March of the Pigs,” Reznor throws his mike stand like a javelin. There are still a few technical glitches, including one point where the show grinds to a halt. “Somebody’s supposed to press a button to turn on the lights,” Reznor tells the crowd. “Things fuck up.” Reznor is girding himself for the rest of the tour, which crisscrosses the U.S. through September before moving on to South America and Mexico. A lot of the Nineties are a blur to Reznor, who was an alcoholic and a heroin addict; he’s been sober since 2001. “I’ve learned how to stay sane on the road,” he says. “One of the great things about being fucked up on the road is that it’s not as boring. There’s a lot of hours in the day. ‘Have I jacked off to that movie yet?’ Yes, I have. Again. Finally, I realized I can get work done — I’ve got three hours before soundcheck, let’s see if I can get a song written in that time.” He still relishes the moment when he hits the stage. “That’s the ultimate — you walk out, and you feel cool. Having good lighting and a cool stage is like having a nice outfit on.” Has he ever wished he had that lighting offstage? Reznor laughs. “Yeah, and have it follow me around, playing ‘Closer’ the whole time.” He beatboxes his song’s famous rhythm and adopts a faux-smug expression: “That’s me.”

Okay, how is it possible to not love the man? While I may be marginally interested to find out what movie he’s referring to when he talks about, um, the “jacking”, I think I like it best when I know as little as possible about the man when he’s working behind the scenes. I know it sounds weird, since I love being in everybody’s biz, but on the NIN tip, I like not knowing how things get done behind the scenes. I’m very much looking forward to seeing the band in Toledo, OH in a couple of weeks and then again here in LA a week after that. Man, it is just really great having Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails back on the scene again. Time to dust off my combat boots.

[Source, Source]

Wee! Courtney Love posted a new blogpost on her official My Space profile and this time she levels her attack against Nine Inch Nails frontman, Trent Reznor, whom she reportedly bedded back in the day. As much as the thought of Trent Reznor copulating with Courtney Love sorta repulses me, I cannot deny that the deed was done because even Reznor himself has admitted (with chagrin) that the two rockers did, in fact, do the dirty (and, boy, I bet it was dirty). In any regard, C. Love seems intent on reminding us all of this incident and goes on to rant about all things Reznor and then random 80′s-90′s rock band stuff in her latest post … which you can read in full here (all spelling and grammatical errors are her own):

Thursday, July 24, 2008

fama
Current mood: relaxed

Hey! You were referencing Reznor. You know the guy who was a graphic design major? Heir to a massive fortune on Reznor heaters? The guy who came up with NIN logo, then the band name, then a band? Details once said we had a thing. That’s not news. It was what it was. I didn’t take it too much more seriously than him. I won’t give TMI, but the black terry cloth robes with the bands names embroidered in gold, the cat scratches on my door at night, the endless head holding her and secrets and horror stories, I have never repeated.

He was in his prime and well, fuck me he had that dammed song, “and yooooou can have it all, my empire of shit.” I don’t care. All the sports bar shit just melted for every girl in the house and me too. I admit it- that song was like watching Hamlet and boy did he know it. Girls crying with love for him in a rock star way, the groupies and cocaine usage, that I thought went out with hair bands.

We didn’t have groupies. We had competitive girls in OTHER BANDS. I had competition then. Now, I do not. I suppose because its not an economic or particularly social model that’s very easy to pull off; being class clown until the fucking record comes out. I could’ve put out a perfectly good, even great, record, but it wasn’t enough. I’m sorry. I’m aiming for the moon and the moon I shall have. Even if it sells one copy, I will know in my heart, I did the very, very best, to the best of my ability, to leave a legacy of greatness behind.

Anyway some journo at Details asks him a few months later after a strange parting, and the very emotional death of his beloved dog, but still this doesn’t excuse this comment, “So, Courtney Love, you two hooked up? Is it true she’s pregnant?” His response, “It would have to have been the immaculate conception.” The gross out factor was so huge. OH YEAH, BEEN HERE ! THE GIRL IN SCHOOL ALL THE BOYS WANNA SLEEP WITH, BUT THEN WON’T COP TO IT TO THEIR FRIENDS.

Despite the small amount of education I had, I was always in very social environments. The fact is, I was an outsider, but I was also enormously popular and that stays with you. I never ever picked on any scapegoat or outsider. I never thought I’d play scapegoat mostly because of who, in fact 99% because of who, I married. It was just alpha on alpha. It made all the sense in the world, but the world hadn’t taken on indie rock values and with that rendition of “Dr Feelgood” tonight- the inner Crue I thought someone had spiked my drink with god’s evil acid. I had my platinum and Kurt’s platinum records, arrived at the studio and was using them as shields to ward off the evil, but it went on for, oh, 15 minutes. Boys will be boys and fantasize about the rainbow and the Crue and shit like that. Not having lived with it, not having worked at Star strip without Axl buying me a boob job, pulling double shifts on days we didn’t rehearse, so we could have amps and rehearsal 5 days a week at the very least, eight hour ones, whether I’d done a full shift or not.

Three girls at Star Strip had pink Corvettes Axl bought them. And the Crue; Nikki is a smart guy and Tommy’s nice, but that doesn’t make them a band I can even deal with. It was horrific for a freaky girl in LA and her freaky band, but that became what made us rather huge; a great great, now retired, rock journalist. Arguably the very very best rock journos of all time, Lester Bangs, David Fricke, Crisxtagu and his body shape taste, which I respect and Robert Hilburn, who made me. I sent him the lyrics and he’s a lyric guy. Playing at 6:30 for 20 minutes at The Whiskey A Go Go, no bozo lame some pay to play bullshit with hair metal bands, many of whom contained later: “grungers,” “punkers,” etc.

Hilburn wrote a classic Hilburn massive calendar piece. So, the metal guys would be like, “Let’s go see that freak girl, and her band of freaks.” I love being a freak. As I said, I’ve always gotten along well with others and been pretty popular. So I had NO problem projecting Valkyrie Bitch Goddess. Why not me? I had the words for it. Not yet the drummer, and no offense to drummers past, who I have loved, but for once I have the drummer of them all and even he likes playing Doctor bloody Feelgood. Six, you win. Accckkkkkkk, I was literally rolling on the floor screaming “Make it stop!” Bad acid, I tells ya.

Anyway, in a Spin interview, I stated the truth. Frankly. he started it.

“Reznor blah blah?” “He shouldn’t call his band Nine Inch Nails when he has a three inch one.” Well that was THAT and the shit hit the fan. I was referencing his song Mr. Self Destruct. I NEVER had a feud with KURT. Christ, the guy was my best friend on his earth and worth every penny of the crucifixion(s).

I hope you’ve paid your money to see a cripple dance and now’s your chance, baby, now’s your chance, but as we all know this endless blogging and “FAMA,” the Latin derivative of “fame,” meaning gossip. Look up Virgil’s poem on Dido fucking Aetna (sic) in a cave. The word comes from “rumors.” Skip to Ovid now, after Christ ,and the word has changed into a quality, that does not involve great works or achievements or honor. It just involves getting as much as you can. It’s a dense, dense book; The Frenzy of Renown.” It is very academic, I am going to read it now.

That was, sort of , he sort of? He’s still pissed I called my band Hole. I never said size, shape, etc. I never said “cabbage rose hole” or “tea rose hole.” In any case vajayjay was only one connotation of that band’s name. It was truly from the Euripides’ Medea, but it got the job done. It was a chance and a risk to name the band that, as Babes in Toyland were going to go full throttle. We were gonna call ourselves “swampussy,” but what if, what if, what ifs kept coming. What if, what? There was no way that model of band was, as much as I love them, going to go mainstream. In any case, I had to take the chance with that name, but that’s not the point. The point is Reznor got PISSED. HEY, HE STARTED IT.

Having been pretty popular my whole life and not used to this class clown karma, that I’m chanting to mitigate, but seems to occur every bloody time I blog. I may as well just stop amusing anyone and stick to what I know; books, nature, eBay at 5 am. I do not like feuds, but money’s money, then feuds occur. Sex is sex and I suppose if you impugn my sexuality and the month of intensity and insane secrets we shared with each other, because you’re feeling I’m not “popular” or pretty enough for our “image” and you have a weakness, sorry I didn’t turn the other cheek. Not.

I never have told anyone one word of what he told me on those nights about his childhood, nor would I ever. So that was a semi feud with the Brit. He’s just too obsessed is what Neal Strauss says. I’m not at all obsessed, disturbed and freaked that I went there, but I don’t much think about it except when I hear news that he’s trying like hell to get BBC2 to fund, or they already have funded, the 6 part series of the Abbey which, as Straussey puts it, is just an “Obsession piece. You win. He loses.” When you put a not-at-all funny show on the air, just to take the piss out of me, and then go around my tertiary secondary or first circle of friends with your dark using energy, I will not go out of my way to hurt you, but I will protect the people I love. Make sense?

Okay, on with the rock.

So I wont be back for a while. I have a sign on my computer, “DO NOT BLOG. EMBARRASSES CHILD. LACK OF GRAMMATICAL CORRECTNESS AND SPELLING MAKES ONE LOOK ON DRUGS FOR SOME REASON. DON’T START THINKING “BUT… BUT… BURROUGHS.” IT’S A MYSPACE BLOG. DON’T DO IT!”

So, THAT SIGN goes up tonight. I’ll check in with y’all about music, but there’s nothing served by defensive blogging. I was shaken by the AMEX statements and where they met on the time line and that Ryan says he made that over a weekend? Is he nuts? I think it started June 19th. I have a first class series of about 6 musicians, and hangers on, tix on an AMEX, that was applied for online and paid down with money in accounts I could not access and had no idea was there. (Could not access due to forged powers of attorney) So, yes it has taken a long time to get to forensics and these guys still wanna come after me for slander, when I have them by the scrotum, with four refinances with phony signatures that they pocket, and Lexus’s for the wives, Mercedes for them, opening bank accounts and wire transferring all over the earth, etc. etc. ad nauseam

I won’t bore you with it. I just find it funny that they are so delusional. Let’s go, man, let’s go. Can of worms time. Let the snakes out. Yay! That’s all I can say. The worst is yet to come, but after that, its just smooth fucking sailing and me being very frugal and performing as much human revolution as I can, really mitigating and changing my karma.

I care more for my kid than anything or anyone. I just want her happy and well taken care of, and to make her proud.

Thanks
XOXO Courtney

Um … wha??? As confusing as this new blogpost is, I must confess that it very well may be the most coherent thing that Courtney Love has written, like, ever. I’m not sure what spurned C. Love to write this particular Reznor-inspired post (and spurned she seems, don’t you detect a note of sour grapes?) but I can totally appreciate her efforts. Mebbe she’s a bit miffed that Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails have enjoyed much success in the past few months are kicking off a new tour (entitled Lights in the Sky) while she is relegated to being stuck behind her computer, reading poems by Virgil all by her lonesome (yeah, that Virgil bit is a kinda hard to swallow but I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt). I sincerely hope that Courtney disregards that note she put on her computer to warn her off of blogging … I, very much, enjoy reading her My Space blogposts. Reznor and NIN will be bizzy touring (they kick off their first official show tonight in Vancouver, BC) so what else does she have to do? I want more!!!

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Trent Reznor updated the official Nine Inch Nails website with a couple photos of the physical copies of the new NIN album The Slip. As you should be well aware, The Slip is available for free download HERE (it will always be available for free download) but physical copies have been made for the rabid NIN fans (like me) who want to own a hard copy. The domestic version of the album will be released in numbered limited edition and Trent is showing off the first and last numbered copies of the album:

I can’t wait to get my copy. I’ve already received confirmation from Amazon that my copy of The Slip is on its way. I’m fairly certain I won’t be getting either of these two copies of the album but I’m geeked to be getting a limited edition version of the album (international copies of the disc will be unnumbered, non limited edition). NIN hit the road for their Lights in the Sky tour next month … and I can’t wait for that either! More NIN, Trent … gimme more!

[Source]