Nine Inch Nails at Prudential Center

CMJ hit the New York City area this week, and an abundance of shows, panels, screenings, showcases and industry parties flooded our town. Artists and businessmen of all sorts flocked through, representing all kinds of music, ideas and levels of success. All of them almost certainly had one thing in common: none of them could compare to the show that Nine Inch Nails brought to the Barclays Center and the Prudential Center this week. For all the talents that might have been performing nearby, there was only one genius playing in the city this week.

25 years into one of the most innovative careers in rock music, Trent Reznor, who is as much Nine Inch Nails as Prince Rogers Nelson is Prince, could have filled the arena with a microphone and a karaoke machine. Yet Reznor brings the passion and perfectionism that marks his best studio work onto the stage. Each song got a different light and LED treatment, with mesmerizing patterns guiding us through much of NIN's terrific new album, Hesitation Marks. A blue screen silhouetted the band for "Find My Way," magnifying Reznor's two-handed microphone tricks and guitarist Robin Finck's guitar god strutting. Strobe lights underscored the intensity of "Copy of A" and "Somewhat Damaged," perfectly supplementing a band that made the most abrasive dance music known to humanity.

Of course anyone with the right budget could afford a light show, but Reznor takes it to another level. For another band, it would have been distracting, either bogging down the pacing or an obvious distraction from inferior songs. Artists like Tool and Rob Zombie have extraordinary light shows, but both employ them at the cost of spontaneity, playing identical shows each night to stay in line with the mechanics. But Nine Inch Nails played a rock show, changing up the setlist, swinging their instruments and blowing through every song with a forcefulness that no machine could match. A pair of female backup singers, including Lisa Fischer from the Rolling Stones, gave NIN's music an R&B swing that worked shockingly well, revealing Reznor's funk sensibilities in the new "Satellite" and the underrated "Into the Void," wherein when Reznor traded stanzas with Fischer like an industrial Mick Jagger and Merry Clayton. At 48, Reznor is still unearthing his talents as an arranger.

But even if he weren't the composer, programmer and producer of every Nine Inch Nails record, Reznor would have been a rock star. Grappling the microphone and hurtling himself toward the crowd, he's a ferocious lead singer, bellowing stories of pain and hatred that transcend the adolescence that he wrote them in. Whether or not he's outgrown the lyrics to "Wish" or "March of the Pigs," Reznor understands that those feelings still matter to a lot of people, and he expresses them beautifully enough for us to keep coming back. By the time he finished "Head Like a Hole," with blazing searchlights dying down for a huge LED screen with the NIN logo, there was no doubt that Reznor's talents as a performer are in a league with his studio wizardry.

For the encore, Reznor introduced the band (it was his first banter of the evening) and treated us to a few more songs, including "Echoplex" and Hesitation Marks standout "While I'm Still Here," the latter including the first-ever saxophone on an NIN record. But best of all were "I'm Afraid of Americans" and the closing song "Hurt," two drastically different compositions that gave two legendary artists (David Bowie and Johnny Cash, respectively) late career comebacks. One could take it as a pat on Reznor's back, or even a reminder that he doesn't need any guest songwriters or producers as he nears 50. Those of us in attendance saw that, like Cash and Bowie, Reznor deserves to be held in the highest regard for the way he's reshaped modern music.

Openers Godspeed You Black Emperor played just one song, the perfectly-named "Behemoth," a droning, 45-minute song that has not yet appeared on an album. Their performance may not have won them any new fans, but it was an appropriate gesture for a band that recently made a mockery of their Polaris Prize and once trashed Radiohead for being "owned...by a gigantic multinational corporation."

Depeche Mode at Barclays Center

Perhaps the biggest contradiction about Depeche Mode is that they're popular. 33 years into their increasingly storied career, the synthpop heroes are selling out arenas all over the world, playing songs that should have been killed by grunge, g-funk, techno, emo or really anything that has gone platinum since 1992. But here they are, fawned over by everyone from the Deftones to the Arcade Fire to Shakira, releasing solid new music and packing the $60 nosebleeds section (trust me). "Personal Jesus" has been covered by Johnny Cash and sampled by Hilary Duff's producers. So why the Mode, and not The Human League or Erasure?



Judging from last Friday's show, it's Dave Gahan. I'd undervalued his role in the band, and you might too, if you only know Depeche Mode from their albums. He's credited as writing exactly zero of their great songs and plays nary an instrument. In the liner notes and music videos, he's always handsome, stoic-looking and groomed, the spokesman for these gloomy goth cowboys purely on the fact that he has the deepest voice and darkest eyes. But in person, he's a transcendent figure, a seemingly effortless everyman who can express alienation and despair from tight black leather pants and a shirtless vest, the latter of which only made it through a few songs before getting stripped off. Perfectly chiseled at 51, he looked more Robert Downey, Jr. than Robert Smith, even if he emoted like the latter.

Like the top tier rock stars of his time, Gahan finds the magnetism in his loneliness and expresses it, channeling his Songs of Faith and Devotion into Music for the Masses, or vice versa. He can prance or swing his mic stand like a less self-conscious Bono, somehow without undermining the agony of "Barrel of a Gun" or "Black Celebration." A heated take on "A Question of Time" matched the frantic anxiousness of Joy Division, only moments before Gahan giddily let the arena sing most of "Enjoy the Silence." Lest we forget we were in the presence of a showbiz pro, he prowled almost every square foot of the stage, playing to even the worst seats in the house and bringing us to our feet.

Although Gahan is undeniably the band's star performer, it was not a solo show. Even on their most programmed songs the band sounded fierce, whether ripping into the industrial tones of "I Feel You" with the restlessness of a modern metal band, reimagining the first verse of "Personal Jesus" as a blues dirge (Delta Machine, indeed) or bouncing through "Just Can't Get Enough" as if they hadn't been playing it since 1981. Martin Gore, the band's main songwriter and primary instrumentalist, proved himself an affecting frontman when he took the microphone for the chilling "But Not Tonight" and "Home." Had he never met Gahan, Gore would have been a fine lead singer for Depeche Mode, and they would still have found success. But they probably wouldn't have sold out the Barclays Center.

James Hetfield, "Don't You Think This Outlaw Bit Has Done Got Out of Hand"

James Hetfield turns 50 today, and I'm sure that you won't have to go far to find online tributes to him and his remarkable career. There are an abundance of killer Metallica songs to celebrate with, but today I'm honoring him with the only solo song he ever released, a cover of Waylon Jennings' "Don't You Think This Outlaw Bit Has Done Got Out of Hand" for the tribute album I've Always Been Crazy. When I write solo, I actually mean solo--this is James playing all of the instruments.



As some point in the next half of his career, I'm guessing that James will do a classic rock or outlaw country record. That baritone would be better serviced by something like "Simple Man" than "Metal Militia" in 20 years. At best, he could pull off a Hetfieldized equivalent of Johnny Cash's records with Rick Rubin.

Case in point: "Don't You Think This Outlaw Bit Has Done Got Out of Hand." James nails the unwieldy chorus, and provides everything that one could hope for in a cover song--a tribute to the original, with the cover artist's own stamp on it. Hetfield turns the singsongy tune into hard-charging country metal, a few years before David Allan Coe and 3/4 of Pantera tried it on Rebel Meets Rebel. I also like Hetfield's Waylon selection. It takes major cojones for a metal god to not just cover a country song, but to pick one with a message about not being as badass as your listeners perceive you to be would be unfathomable for any other thrash metal musician. Nowhere on record is James' lack of self-consciousness better displayed. He makes blending rock and country sound almost as effortless as Elvis did.

Happy birthday, James Hetfield. Still smashing through the boundaries.

Life on the Mississippi

Margaret is writing a book that has taken her on a few research visits to the South. We've talked a few times about the best songs about life below the Dixon, and she's directed me to some noteworthy songs about Mississippi, from an old blues anthology to Afroman. You can probably tell where this is headed.



Life on the Mississippi

1. Mississippi Fred McDowell, "Baby Please Don't Go"
2. Bob Dylan, "Mississippi"
3. Lynyrd Skynyrd, "Mississippi Kid"
4. King's X, "Mississippi Moon"
5. The Grateful Dead, "Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodleoo"
6. Charley Patton, "Mississippi Boweavil Blues"
7. Kid Rock, "Jackson, Mississippi"
8. Robert Johnson, "Travelling Riverside Blues"
9. Mountain, "Mississippi Queen"
10. Nina Simone, "Mississippi Goddam"
11. Jerry Lee Lewis, "Miss the Mississippi and You"
12. Johnny Cash & June Carter, "Jackson"
13. R. L. Burnside, "Goin' Down South"
14. ZZ Top, "My Head's in Mississippi"

Mississippi is rooted so deeply in the blues that it can't help but come out in rock n' roll. "Baby Please Don't Go" has been covered by everyone, and I'll admit that I thought Led Zeppelin wrote "Travelling Riverside Blues" until high school. But Mississippi's influence crosses over to all sorts of genres and sentiments--the Cashes' charmingly bitter "Jackson," Nina Simone's heated "Mississippi Goddam" and Mountain's lascivious cowbell classic should all be a part of everyone's songbook. Though in an ideal world, that book would also include R. L. Burnside's haunting early recordings and King's X's lonesome "Mississippi Moon."

Other than Bob Dylan and ZZ Top, not many American rockers have been able to translate the blues into their music in a way that's both respectful and distinct. I couldn't bring myself to include "Black Water" or North Mississippi Allstars, which felt like the equivalent of picking the Black Crowes' "Hard to Handle" over Otis Redding's. But hey, some people might say that about choosing Mississippi Fred McDowell over Big Joe Williams.

Meow Mix

Shortly after I met Erica, we put together a playlist of our favorite cat songs (my contribution to the mix was called Cat Power, hers was Kool 4 Cats.) Now that she's leaving New York, I've whittled the playlist down to one going away mix for the road.



Meow Mix

1. Elton John, "Honky Cat"
2. The Presidents of the United States of America, "Kitty"
3. The Pogues, "Wild Cats of Kilkenny"
4. The Vaselines, "Monsterpussy"
5. The Coasters, "Three Cool Cats"
6. Muddy Waters, "Crosseyed Cat"
7. Squeeze, "Cool for Cats"
8. Joe Jackson, "We The Cats (Shall Hep Ya)"
9. The Rolling Stones, "Stray Cat Blues"
10. Johnny Cash, "Mean Eyed Cat"
11. The Kinks, "Phenomenal Cat"
12. Trout Fishing in America, "The Cat Came Back"
13. David Bowie, "Cat People (Putting Out Fire)"
14. Janet Jackson, "Black Cat"
15. Pantera, "Cat Scratch Fever"
16. Grateful Dead, "China Cat Sunflower"
17. The Cure, "The Love Cats"
18. Little Willie John, "Leave My Kitten Alone"
19. PJ Harvey, "Cat on the Walk"
20. Stray Cats, "Stray Cat Strut"
21. Scatman Crothers and Phil Harris, "Ev'rybody Wants to be a Cat"
22. R.E.M., "Star Me Kitten"
23. Primus, "Tommy the Cat"

Better than Cats the musical and almost as good as Local H's Pack Up the Cats.

Not all of these songs are technically about cats, one might argue, but all of them pay tribute to the coolness of the feline, whether it's Elton John's hillbilly vagabond, Mick Jagger's back-clawing stray or something that Jerry Garcia ate. There's an especially big presence from '40s and '50s-style swingers, of course, where all that anybody ever wants to be is a cat, and the oft-reworked "The Cat Came Back" reveals that cat songs even predate the swingers. I picked Trout Fishing in America's version for being sweetly traditional and modern, and also because they got their band name from Richard Brautigan.

Many of these songs have been passed down for decades. Ry Cooder and the Beatles both have great versions of "Three Cool Cats," but I ended up going with the original, the Coasters' beloved b-side to "Charlie Brown." Johnny Cash first recorded "Mean Eyed Cat" in the 1950s, but didn't perfect it until he met Rick Rubin 40 years later. Pantera's smoldering run through "Cat Scratch Fever" makes me forget who wrote it. "Star Me Kitten" was once recorded with William S. Burroughs, but even the most fanatical Naked Lunch scholar can tell you that Michael Stipe was the better singer.

Finally, a few of you might remember that I made an all-dogs mix a few months back. Only three artists made it to both mixes--Johnny Cash, David Bowie and the guy who does the voice of "Tommy the Cat."

13 Songs to Ring in 2013

Other than 666, no number is more metal than 13. Its bad luck powers are revealed in musical tributes from several respected metal bands, many of whom have stumbled in mediocre musical salutes to Jason Voorhees' signature number. Better to honor the new year with a drink at the Lucky 13 Saloon than a slog through Cruelty and the Beast.

Few songwriters have survived the 13 curse, and even fewer have done so with a reasonable amount of decibels. Here's a brief audio history of 13.

1. Anvil, "This is Thirteen"

Interestingly, this is where Anvil's luck started to change--thirteen albums into their career, when a coinciding documentary gave them by far the biggest success of their lives. All their talk of wizardry and superstition couldn't hold a candle to watching them get lost and broke in Europe.



2. Anthrax, "13"

What the hell is this? Basically a short exercise for Anthrax's rhythm section, and a reminder that Anthrax were the first good thrash metal band to be intentionally silly on record.



3. Black Flag, "Room 13"

"Keep me alive!" screams 20-year-old Henry Rollins, making that effort sound like a struggle for the last time in his career. "I need to hang on!" is the part that everyone remembers.



4. Cradle of Filth, "Thirteen Autumns and a Widow"

Cruelty and the Beast is often regarded as COF's peak, but even Cradle's best songs are better remembered than reheard. Throw it in the mix for the 13-year-old in all of us.



5. Danizg, "Thirteen"

Written by Danzig originally for Johnny Cash's best studio album, American Recordings. He didn't release his own version until years later on 6:66 Satan's Child. Cash's folky reading and Danzig's goth-blues version both hold up, although it's abundantly clear whom was doing the other one a favor.



6. Megadeth, "Thirteen"

By album number 13, there was no defense of Dave Mustaine's political or social positions, but also no doubt of his chops or longevity.



7. Mercyful Fate, "Thirteen Invitations"

Mercyful Fate's influence on metal was flourishing when they reunited for 1993's In the Shadows. The result suggested that they'd ignored the last ten years of black metal.



8. Motörhead, "Cat Scratch Fever"

"First time that I got it I was thirteen years old," Lemmy amends the lyric in Motörhead's take on Nugent's staple. "Ours knocked his out of the fucking loop--of course, nobody remembers ours," wrote Lemmy in his autobiography. He's half-right.



9. Pantera, "13 Steps to Nowhere"

Anselmo was a good sport to sacrifice his lyrics to a song where all anyone can pay attention to is the drumming. A lesser guitarist than Dimebag would be trampled, but even he knows better than to stand in the way of one of Vinnie Paul's greatest intros.



10. The Pixies, "No. 13 Baby"

Frank Black honors a girl with a special tattoo, who at least had the sense to get it somewhere she can cover up for job interviews.



11. Social Distortion, "Bad Luck"

"Thirteen's my lucky number," laments cowpunk hero Mike Ness in this gem from Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell, years before another country crossover would make the same claim. Hey Taylor, is it too late for your to pick a tourmate for next year?



12. Suicidal Tendencies, "Emotion No. 13"

Lights...Camera...Revolution! completed ST's first transition from hardcore to metal, with hits like "You Can't Bring Me Down" and "Send Me Your Money," plus thrashing deep cuts like this one. If "Emotion No. 13" had been released today, it would have taken the e-word back from Chris Carrabba.



13. Venom, "13"

Not bad, actually, out of context with the 300 other Venom songs that sound exactly like it.

I Like to Move It Move It

One of my roommates is moving out this month.

I Like to Move It Move It

1. Metallica, "Wherever I May Roam"
2. Bad Brains, "Sailin' On"
3. Sleater-Kiney, "One More Hour"
4. David Bowie, "Move On"
5. Mississippi Fred McDowell, "You Got to Move"
6. The Allman Brothers Band, "Midnight Rider"
7. The Kinks, "I Gotta Move"
8. Johnny Cash & Merle Haggard, "I'm Leavin' Now"
9. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, "When I First Came to Town"
10. The Pogues, "The Wild Rover"
11. Guns N' Roses, "Move to the City"
12. Bob Dylan, "Walkin' Down the Line"
13. R. L. Burnside, "Walkin' Blues"
14. Bill Monroe, "Gotta Travel On"
15. Iggy Pop, "Home"
16. Willie Nelson, "On the Road Again"
17. Tom Petty, "Time to Move On"
18. Tom Waits, "On the Road"
19. Pearl Jam, "Drifting"
20. Joni Mitchell, "Urge for Going"
21. Lynyrd Skynyrd, "Free Bird"

 I Like to Move It Move It was culled from a group of songs that I like to give friends when they're in the process of finding a new home, something that 90% of all New Yorkers are doing at any given time. Rovers, wanderers, nomads, vagabonds, call them what you will--each of them get my favorite Bad Brains song, Cash & Haggard's final team-up and a few particularly solitary blues cuts.

As with most of the characters in these songs, the tunes themselves are mostly loners and outcasts. David Bowie and Nick Cave, both of whom know a thing or two about moving on, supply underrated songs from their most underrated albums. The Pogues' version of "The Wild Rover," Pearl Jam's (Vedder's, really) "Drifting" and Joni's "Urge for Going" are all lovely b-sides. The Bob Dylan and Tom Waits songs were both unearthed from rarities box sets. The Metallica song is their least-loved hit from The Black Album, yet it's my favorite.

Then again, there's "Free Bird" to account for. Hearing it again, I can remember how it earned its reputation as the closer to end all closers. Still, this is the first and last time that I'm ever putting it on a mix CD.