Nine Inch Nails tickets on sale

Trent Reznor has been quite the busy man in 2008. As Nine Inch Nails, he put out the Internet-only instrumental project Ghosts I-IV in March and the eighth proper NIN studio album The Slip in May.
PUBLICITY PHOTO

Though its lights may be presently turned off, John Paul Jones Arena is about to get a lot darker. Industrial rocker Trent Reznor, a.k.a. Nine Inch Nails, will be coming to JPJ on Wednesday, November 5 at 7pm. Tickets for the show go on sale this morning 10am.

One of the most influential musicians of the '90s, Reznor started out as a 23-year-old burgeoning songwriter and keyboardist in Cleveland, frustrated that he couldn't put together a band that played his music the way he imagined it in his head. So, in 1988, he took a cue from Prince, and decided to start playing all the instruments except drums on his songs, and began recording and performing under the name Nine Inch Nails.

It didn't take long for the rest of the music world to take notice. Despite the fact that Reznor had no record deal with a major label and no Top 40 singles, Nine Inch Nails' 1989 debut Pretty Hate Machine's dark yet dance-able music captured the imaginations of a generation of angst-ridden teens who would go on to buy more than 3 million copies. It is the first independent-label album to go platinum in American recording history.

Building on the strength of his debut, Reznor made three key investments with his newfound wealth in the early '90s: he founded his own label, Nothing Records; he signed then unknown shock-rocker Marilyn Manson; and he moved into the house at 10050 Cielo Drive in Los Angeles, the house where members of the Manson Family (no relation to Marilyn) murdered actress Sharon Tate in 1969.

It was at this infamous address where Reznor recorded the Nine Inch Nails album The Downward Spiral. This 1994 album proved to be Nine Inch Nails' mainstream breakthrough reaching #2 on the Billboard albums chart, selling over 7 million copies worldwide, largely on the strength of the disturbing video for the single "Closer," which MTV famously refused to air in its original form. The album also contained the closing track "Hurt," which Johnny Cash covered in 2002 and became a surprise hit just months before his death. In 2003, Rolling Stone would rate The Downward Spiral as the 200th greatest album of all time.

Since this magnum opus, Reznor has continued to be a big seller, despite taking long hiatuses between albums. He scored two consecutive #1 albums with 1999's double-disc The Fragile and 2005's With Teeth. Recently, however Reznor has picked up the pace, putting out three Nine Inch Nails projects in less than two years (six if you count each of the instrumental Ghosts I-IV as an individual album). He's also continued to innovate on the business side of the music industry, selling his last two albums exclusively online, allowing fans to pay what they wished for the music (including $0), and encouraging computer-savvy musicians to remix his music by making it available through Creative Commons, an Internet-based non-profit that makes artistic material available online for any use for free.

Tickets for this show, however, will not be free. They cost between between $27 and $51.50, and they will be available through the JPJ website, or by calling 1-888-JPJ-TIXS.

#

.