Reznorite420
02-13-2004, 01:09 PM
Wondering why I'm in such of NIN-mode all of sudden and why I'm seemingly ramming NIN up everybody's wazoo, that is.
Maybe some of you are wondering why I'm such a NIN nut in the first place as well, so just in case that happens to be true, I'll start there.
Just like most other people who've never listened to NIN before, I used to think it was just some sort of craptacular music for goths and consisted of nothing but incessant moaning, groaning, and yelling. I also thought it appealed to the mainstream (which does in comparison to most other "industrial" groups today), so therefore it was out for me.
To be honest, I didn't really hear of NIN until my seventh-grade year, and that was when my cultural studies teacher (it was required where I went) was explaining one day how many foreigners wouldn't understand the "strange" symbols and logos in America. Lo and behold, what did she use as an example? You guessed it, the NIN logo *points to his sig banner*. The logo popped into my head at that moment, and from then on for the rest of the year I tried to spot the logo anywhere I could so I could discern what kind of people listned to it. First person I saw was one of the "goth" types, and since it was before I understood them, I automatically dubbed it as horrible since it was "modern" music (at the time I hadn't developed a real taste in music and only listened to oldies thanks to my dad raising me the way he did).
About a year or so later I had finally started to listen to modern groups, mostly pop-rock. It was soon after I had moved away from the previous school district I was in above, as well as the time I was closest to ever being a true mainstreamer in my life, thanks to the lifestyle in the school district around me at the time. My new-found fondness of modern rock groups directed my attention to the Celebrity Deathmatch episode featuring the minicard of Puff Daddy vs. Trent Reznor. Despising rap since LONG before seeing that episode, the only choice I had was to root for Trent Reznor (yes, I knew then it was only clay, but why not?). While I was only going for him because he represented "rock", it was somewhat a trigger for me to start listening to NIN.
Come some time around late '98 or early '99, I was on one of my usual visits to my mom's place (before I had moved in with her), and while working around the house I had tuned the radio to San Antonio's local rock station. It was in the middle of Blur's "Song 2" when I turned it on, but I didn't know that at the time. Aftewards it was announced that a double shot of NIN was on the way; they played "Head Like A Hole" and "Terrible Lie". The latter was what caught my interest most. In fact, I had stopped working and took some time to really absorb it's deep and anguished tone (you must understand that I was feeling a bit depressed at this point in my life as well, adapting to a new family and all). What I had heard before was good too, and it would later serve as a catalyst later on.
About another year and a half later on, as a matter of fact. I had gone from that day without thinking much about what I had heard on the radio that day until one summer day in 2000, after I had moved yet again this time with my mom and her roommate, when I was playing a mod for DOOM 2 called Dimensions of Time. The MIDI used for the first level immediately caught my attention, as I had heard that beat and melody before, but what it was exactly I couldn't quite figure out. One thing that did occur to me, however, was that it was one of the songs I'd heard on the radio that day a year almost a year and a half prior. I figured it must've been a NIN track (it actually turned out to be a MIDI of Song 2, but I had no idea at the time), so I searched Napster up and down for NIN tracks and find the right ones...this was in Napster's heydays, mind you.
None of the track titles seemed fitting with that beat I had heard, but I managed to download a few tracks that I thought would be interesting. One of the first ones I downloaded was Head Like A hole, which while it wasn't the specific track I was looking for, it was one of the ones I had heard that same day, so I kept it. I kept two other tracks as well, not because I was looking for them, but I had recognized them from another DOOM 2 mod: a deathmatch set called Dwango5. Those tracks were Terrible Lie and Down In It, so that would make all 3 tracks kept so far from Pretty Hate Machine, coincidentally.
I never did find what I was looking and finally figured that maybe it wasn't a NIN track after all (which we all know now that it wasn't). That didn't change the fact that I simply LOVED the tracks that I kept, and thus I kept admitting that I was a casual NIN fan whenever anybody asked me at school. That was by the end of my sophomore year of high school, just before I had begun to become the NIN nut I've become today.
Summer came along, and I couldn't wait to finally become an upperclassman at school when the semester started. Meanwhile, I had started to take my NIN hunting another step; I knew my mom's roommate had some NIN cds in the house somwhere. I, of course, wanted to find PHM first since it was what I had listened to first. No luck in their bedroom since all I found were Broken, The Downward Spiral, and Further Down The Spiral, not exactly in my interest yet. I soon found a burned copy of PHM in her separate stash in the office. My mom was going to make copies of whatever my sister and I asked for, and I asked if I could have a copy of PHM. My wish was granted. For over the next week I has listened to that CD over and over again, taking an extra special interest in "Sin". Take a listen for yourself and you'll see what I mean. NOW it was safe for me to check out the albums in the bedroom. When my junior year started I was bringing NIN with me to class practically every day.
The rest, as they say, is history.
But wait! I'm only haflway through! I've explained how I got into NIN...now I need to explain why I'm become so seemingly "obsessive" with it now.
OK, many of you (especially Voltron) know that for a while now I've been rubbing in the release of NIN's latest album due out this year here on the forums. The reason my news came all of a sudden was because since about October of my senior year I was slowly listening to NIN less and less and drifting back to the status of "casual listener" (thank God that didn't actually happen). The news of an upcoming album last October obviously revamped my interest about tenfold, as is evident on the blabbering I kept posting on here.
While it didn't come out by the end of the year as I had hoped, I still had high hopes for it. While I was home for Christmas break I had stopped at Best Buy just for the heck of it not expecting to really buy anything. Humoring myself, I decided to check where the NIN were located, knowing full well that all they would have are PHM, The Fragile, The Downward Spiral, and the And All That Could Have Been live CD. I took a "flip flip flip" through the CDs, sighing with disappointment that there was nothing I didn't already have, until I came to the VERY LAST CD in the stack. It was Halo 9, Closer To God, one I had listened to before but never actually owned. What could I do? I didn't want to pass up the chance that was an almost zillion to one fluke! I bought it immediately.
That purchase was a catlyst for me to quest for every official domestic NIN release so as to complete my collection. What I did for the rest of my break was try to complete that quest. My luckiest find was finding Halo 13 (a very short and hard to find EP) at a used CD store. Then came Halo 17 part 2 via a web site, Halo 3 at Border's, and Halos 6 and 7 through amazon.com. The only one that was within my grasp that I didn't buy was Halo 15 part 1...I instead spent the money on a George Carlin album (STUPID!).
Getting all of those albums in such a short span of time REALLY set me in motion for another quest: to try and find EVERY official release, both foreign and domestic! I've started with the import of Halo 15, since that was never manufactured stateside to begin with anyway. 2 more domestic versions have been added as well, Halo 1 and Halo 12, the latter of which is the only Halo not to be released in CD format but rather VHS, and it's my most recent addition.
So, that takes care of collecting every domestic Halo. It should also explain why I'm being such NIN-aholic right now and fantasizing about Trent Reznor in some ways...it should be known that I'm still trying complete my quest of getting the foreign releases, hence my obsession at this point ;)
I hope I'm not too crazy for you now...
Maybe some of you are wondering why I'm such a NIN nut in the first place as well, so just in case that happens to be true, I'll start there.
Just like most other people who've never listened to NIN before, I used to think it was just some sort of craptacular music for goths and consisted of nothing but incessant moaning, groaning, and yelling. I also thought it appealed to the mainstream (which does in comparison to most other "industrial" groups today), so therefore it was out for me.
To be honest, I didn't really hear of NIN until my seventh-grade year, and that was when my cultural studies teacher (it was required where I went) was explaining one day how many foreigners wouldn't understand the "strange" symbols and logos in America. Lo and behold, what did she use as an example? You guessed it, the NIN logo *points to his sig banner*. The logo popped into my head at that moment, and from then on for the rest of the year I tried to spot the logo anywhere I could so I could discern what kind of people listned to it. First person I saw was one of the "goth" types, and since it was before I understood them, I automatically dubbed it as horrible since it was "modern" music (at the time I hadn't developed a real taste in music and only listened to oldies thanks to my dad raising me the way he did).
About a year or so later I had finally started to listen to modern groups, mostly pop-rock. It was soon after I had moved away from the previous school district I was in above, as well as the time I was closest to ever being a true mainstreamer in my life, thanks to the lifestyle in the school district around me at the time. My new-found fondness of modern rock groups directed my attention to the Celebrity Deathmatch episode featuring the minicard of Puff Daddy vs. Trent Reznor. Despising rap since LONG before seeing that episode, the only choice I had was to root for Trent Reznor (yes, I knew then it was only clay, but why not?). While I was only going for him because he represented "rock", it was somewhat a trigger for me to start listening to NIN.
Come some time around late '98 or early '99, I was on one of my usual visits to my mom's place (before I had moved in with her), and while working around the house I had tuned the radio to San Antonio's local rock station. It was in the middle of Blur's "Song 2" when I turned it on, but I didn't know that at the time. Aftewards it was announced that a double shot of NIN was on the way; they played "Head Like A Hole" and "Terrible Lie". The latter was what caught my interest most. In fact, I had stopped working and took some time to really absorb it's deep and anguished tone (you must understand that I was feeling a bit depressed at this point in my life as well, adapting to a new family and all). What I had heard before was good too, and it would later serve as a catalyst later on.
About another year and a half later on, as a matter of fact. I had gone from that day without thinking much about what I had heard on the radio that day until one summer day in 2000, after I had moved yet again this time with my mom and her roommate, when I was playing a mod for DOOM 2 called Dimensions of Time. The MIDI used for the first level immediately caught my attention, as I had heard that beat and melody before, but what it was exactly I couldn't quite figure out. One thing that did occur to me, however, was that it was one of the songs I'd heard on the radio that day a year almost a year and a half prior. I figured it must've been a NIN track (it actually turned out to be a MIDI of Song 2, but I had no idea at the time), so I searched Napster up and down for NIN tracks and find the right ones...this was in Napster's heydays, mind you.
None of the track titles seemed fitting with that beat I had heard, but I managed to download a few tracks that I thought would be interesting. One of the first ones I downloaded was Head Like A hole, which while it wasn't the specific track I was looking for, it was one of the ones I had heard that same day, so I kept it. I kept two other tracks as well, not because I was looking for them, but I had recognized them from another DOOM 2 mod: a deathmatch set called Dwango5. Those tracks were Terrible Lie and Down In It, so that would make all 3 tracks kept so far from Pretty Hate Machine, coincidentally.
I never did find what I was looking and finally figured that maybe it wasn't a NIN track after all (which we all know now that it wasn't). That didn't change the fact that I simply LOVED the tracks that I kept, and thus I kept admitting that I was a casual NIN fan whenever anybody asked me at school. That was by the end of my sophomore year of high school, just before I had begun to become the NIN nut I've become today.
Summer came along, and I couldn't wait to finally become an upperclassman at school when the semester started. Meanwhile, I had started to take my NIN hunting another step; I knew my mom's roommate had some NIN cds in the house somwhere. I, of course, wanted to find PHM first since it was what I had listened to first. No luck in their bedroom since all I found were Broken, The Downward Spiral, and Further Down The Spiral, not exactly in my interest yet. I soon found a burned copy of PHM in her separate stash in the office. My mom was going to make copies of whatever my sister and I asked for, and I asked if I could have a copy of PHM. My wish was granted. For over the next week I has listened to that CD over and over again, taking an extra special interest in "Sin". Take a listen for yourself and you'll see what I mean. NOW it was safe for me to check out the albums in the bedroom. When my junior year started I was bringing NIN with me to class practically every day.
The rest, as they say, is history.
But wait! I'm only haflway through! I've explained how I got into NIN...now I need to explain why I'm become so seemingly "obsessive" with it now.
OK, many of you (especially Voltron) know that for a while now I've been rubbing in the release of NIN's latest album due out this year here on the forums. The reason my news came all of a sudden was because since about October of my senior year I was slowly listening to NIN less and less and drifting back to the status of "casual listener" (thank God that didn't actually happen). The news of an upcoming album last October obviously revamped my interest about tenfold, as is evident on the blabbering I kept posting on here.
While it didn't come out by the end of the year as I had hoped, I still had high hopes for it. While I was home for Christmas break I had stopped at Best Buy just for the heck of it not expecting to really buy anything. Humoring myself, I decided to check where the NIN were located, knowing full well that all they would have are PHM, The Fragile, The Downward Spiral, and the And All That Could Have Been live CD. I took a "flip flip flip" through the CDs, sighing with disappointment that there was nothing I didn't already have, until I came to the VERY LAST CD in the stack. It was Halo 9, Closer To God, one I had listened to before but never actually owned. What could I do? I didn't want to pass up the chance that was an almost zillion to one fluke! I bought it immediately.
That purchase was a catlyst for me to quest for every official domestic NIN release so as to complete my collection. What I did for the rest of my break was try to complete that quest. My luckiest find was finding Halo 13 (a very short and hard to find EP) at a used CD store. Then came Halo 17 part 2 via a web site, Halo 3 at Border's, and Halos 6 and 7 through amazon.com. The only one that was within my grasp that I didn't buy was Halo 15 part 1...I instead spent the money on a George Carlin album (STUPID!).
Getting all of those albums in such a short span of time REALLY set me in motion for another quest: to try and find EVERY official release, both foreign and domestic! I've started with the import of Halo 15, since that was never manufactured stateside to begin with anyway. 2 more domestic versions have been added as well, Halo 1 and Halo 12, the latter of which is the only Halo not to be released in CD format but rather VHS, and it's my most recent addition.
So, that takes care of collecting every domestic Halo. It should also explain why I'm being such NIN-aholic right now and fantasizing about Trent Reznor in some ways...it should be known that I'm still trying complete my quest of getting the foreign releases, hence my obsession at this point ;)
I hope I'm not too crazy for you now...