The day before the Minneapolis 35W bridge collapsed, my dad and I were driving up north to Lake Superior. At the time, I was still driving my Acura, which was equipped with a DVD-Audio player and surround sound--a very cool feature. Anyway, I always kept a wallet of DVD-A discs in the car, so I handed it to my dad and asked him what he'd like to listen to. The disc he stopped on was Nine Inch Nail's "With Teeth".
Now, if you know anything about me, you know that I was raised in a fairly conservative, religious household. Nine Inch Nails was not on the playlist during my childhood, and it certainly wouldn't be on the playlist if I lived with my parents now. Anyway, I had to explain to my dad that it was definitely not his kind of music, and that he'd likely be offended by it. He looked a bit perplexed, but he accepted my explanation and looked for something else. We ended up listening to The Beatles.
Fast forward to last week. My dad and I were at the Best Buy near his home, doing a little post-Christmas shopping. We split up and were looking at CDs. I rounded a corner and he was standing in the "N" section. He held up a CD and asked me what I thought of it. It was the deluxe edition of Nine Inch Nails' "The Downward Spiral".
I proceeded to point out to him the parental advisory logo on that CD and almost every other NIN CD--a fact he'd missed--as well as how NIN's music was pretty angry, noisy and aggressive. Definitely not his taste. I also reminded him of our car ride up north a couple years earlier, and how he had also stopped on a NIN disc then, too, and asked him what his deal was with NIN. He replied that he had forgotten about the ride up north, and that there was just something about that name that he found interesting, and that it made him want to check out the disc. He also told me that he knew what the "NIN" abbreviation was, but that it had taken him a long time to figure out.
After I reiterated the parental advisory label issue, he agreed it was probably not up his alley, and we left the store without any new NIN purchases. Strange, though, how that name had been catching his attention for years.
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wisdom in 140 characters or less
Saturday, January 2, 2010
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That's funny. I've heard interviews with Trent Reznor about how he came up with the name, Nine Inch Nails, and he said it picked it specifically for the NIN logo. I really think it's one of the best logo's/designs any band's ever come up with. It's almost like a brand or something.
ReplyDeleteJust for kicks, though, you should have popped in Heresy and cranked it up. I don't think he'd forget that experience enough to accidentally stumble into the NIN section at Best Buy again any time soon.