Video Of The Week: Nine Inch Nails

As a tribute to Trent Reznor's 50th birthday tomorrow, I decided to feature Nine Inch Nails this week, and to do so with a straightforward video showing nothing but the live band (circa 2005) performing in a practice facility, filmed by Reznor and Rob Sheridan using old VHS cameras and a rundown of the pan-and-scan technique that created pixelization and distortion when rendered to digital.

In this form, NIN consisted of Reznor on vocals (and keyboards and guitar as well, depending on the song), Aaron North on lead/feedback guitars, Jeordie White (a.k.a. Twiggy Ramirez from Marilyn Manson, who has also played with Melissa Auf Der Maur, A Perfect Circle, and members of QOTSA in the Desert Sessions), Jerome Dillon on drums, and Alessandro Cortini (of SONOIO and blinfoldfreak fame) on keyboards and sound effects.

This song, The Hand That Feeds, is a staple of their live shows and a fan favourite, and while it's a decent guitar riff and has all the electronics you'd expect from a NIN track, it isn't as groundbreaking as a lot of their other songs, in my opinion. I'll listen to it when they play it at a show, but I won't be as thrilled as if they'd played The Perfect Drug or Dead Souls (a Joy Division cover).

Video Of The Week: EMF

Sure, I prefer their darker stuff, the more ''80s-alternative'' sound found in songs like Lies, but I've been feeling down enough lately that a good pick-me-up was warranted.

Three reunions later and just 10 of 23 years off in band history which is like most bands who don't take hiatuses, EMF are still at it, usually performing on the summer festival circuit in Europe.This is their most-known and ''popiest'' hit, Unbelievable, but all three of their records kick ass.

Video Of The Week: Rob Zombie

At first, I wasn't sure how to take this song. I still don't.

Rob Zombie isn't the most cover-oriented singer, and his attempt at industrializing The Ramones was uneven, to say the least. But I thought he could do well with Grand Funk Railroad's We're An American Band, which he kind of does.

Except it doesn't really sound like Rob Zombie - apart from the gravelly vocals. It's heavy rock, far from the industrial/electronics-heavy material he excels at, and it kind of falls a bit flat, a bit like a Kid Rock cover...

The video doesn't help, either, a compilation of a live performance and behind-the-scenes tour footage with a ton of boobage, it looks like the beginning of one of his horror movies where a family of Southern-state in-breds will take advantage of the anonymity of a weekend-long music festival shock-full of drunken teenagers to go on a rape-and-killing spree.

I'll give it a few more listens, but it could be my least favourite Zombie track so far, though it does capture some of the energy of his live shows. Or maybe I really have grown cynical with age.

Video Of The Week: Nine Inch Nails

This had all the promise and the making of an instant classic, of a timeless piece of art: Trent Reznor resurrecting Nine Inch Nails, returning to a sound more electronic, harking back to prior to The Downward Spiral, closer to the Fixed/Broken EPs, and an artsy black-and-white video directed by none other than David Lynch, one of the most daring, unique, visionary American film directors of the past quarter-century; the pair had previously collaborated on Lynch's amazing Lost Highway, as NIN wrote two songs for the film (The Perfect Drug and the end credits' Driver Down), and Reznor producing the film's soundtrack.

What we're left with is (relatively) standard experimental film fare, vaguely inspired by Luis Buñuel's and Salvador Dali's Un Chien Andalou (the eyes), at other times reminiscent of the works of Kenneth Anger (the subversive and repetitive subject matter), Norman McLaren (the animation, the scratching of the lens), René Clair, Stan Brackhage, Fernand Léger (the repetitive found images of an odd dance/ballet), and maybe even Georges Méliès (the moon-face).

I wouldn't call it ''cliché'', but it's not all that original, either.

But I decided to give it a few days, a few listens.

And this, despite its obvious references to a film grad and screenwriter such as myself, remains the best video I've seen in a (short) while. And to anyone without the experience to see where the inspiration comes from, this could open their eyes to a whole new world of (better) films out there. Which is also great.

And the song itself fits in the NIN pantheon. Very well. It's not as political as Head Like A Hole, not as obviously subversive as Closer (though that song is now a staple at strip clubs and sporting events...), not as heavy as March Of The Pigs nor as angry as Starfuckers, Inc., not as ''inclusive of all the ingredients that make up Nine Inch Nails'' as The Perfect Drug, but it's one of the better songs released this year so far. It grows on you.

And I'd rather have Nine Inch Nails doing the rounds, performing on talk shows, touring, grabbing your attention (and dollars) than modern-day futilities such as Macklemore, Bruno Mars and Will.I.am, or past success revivalists like Chicago and Bon Jovi.



I'll be purchasing the new album, Hesitation Marks, the day of its release - on September 3rd - as I have done since 1992 because, well, NIN is a great band project.

The Return Of Nine Inch Nails

Step right up. March. Push. Crawl right up on your knees.

That's right - Nine Inch Nails is back, with a brand-new line-up, comprised of Adrian Belew of King Crimson among others. Eric Avery of Jane's Addiction fame was slated to join, but had to back down, although long-time member Robin Fincke is back in the fold.

I guess Trent Reznor had some rage and anger left in him after failing to win his second Oscar for the Girl With The Dragon Tattoo soundtrack...

I've seen them live 5 times, and it was always a great show. I missed the last two tours, which were extremely different from anything they'd done before, and for the 1994-2000 period it did seem like it was getting too theatrical, rehearsed, and choreographed, but the energy and the great songs were still there.

With renewed passion and a revamped line-up, I wouldn't be surprised if their upcoming tour was the best live experience of the past 10 and next 5 years.

Video Of The Week: Men Without Hats

You can dance if you want to, you can leave your friends behind, 'cause your friends don't dance and if your friends don't dance, well, they're no friends of mine. Or maybe they are, I don't know, I'm not much of a dancer anymore...

Long gone are the days of my breakdancing youth...

I chose this Men Without Hats song for a simple reason: I'll be playing it on Sunday at the Sake Of The Songs benefit show for the Mile-End Mission - which really needs the proceeds these days, what with the minus-30 weather and all - along with a song by Sarah McLachlan (Hold On) and one by Richard Desjardins (Pis J'ai Couché Dans Mon Char).

The evening's theme is ''Canadian Folk'', and while I mostly respect it with the other two artists, I'm stretching it quite a bit with this song - but they expect me to cross certain lines at these shows anyway; there are enough straightforward folkies playing the event anyway, they kind of need me as a mood breaker/comic relief.

I'll likely have the video playing in my head while I'm belting it out, too, and will imagine little people all around me. Maybe.

Video Of The Week: KMFDM

KMFDM started out in Germany, in 1984, mostly as a performance arts project because the term ''industrial music'' didn't exist yet; as a matter of fact, to this day, they still consider their sound as "The Ultra-Heavy Beat".

Extensive touring, meeting other bands and a bunch of label executives eventually led them to settle in Chicago with other like-minded musicians  such as Ministry, Pig, Front 242, My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult and Revolting Cocks. Musicians from all of these bands would often collaborate amongst themselves, much to the dismay of their respective labels, who had to legally authorize such ''transfers'' and ''guest appearances''...

I, for one, was introduced to the band via the TV show Beavis & Butt-head in the summer of 1994, which I mostly spent in Florida (we didn't get MTV in Montréal at the time), via this video, from the Angst album, A Drug Against War. I was immediately blown away by the animation, 60s-comics, art deco, japanimation all rolled into one, with guns and scantily-clad women.

I was also surprised that nthe band would reference their name constantly, even more so than rappers, throughout the song. When I came back to Montréal, I made it my mission to own all their CDs - full-lengths and singles. Eventually, when I landed my dream job at the used record-andbook shop L'Échange, I managed to complete the collection, learning these were staples of the band - all of their releases featured the same artwork as that video, and all of the songs named them constantly. Over time it became a bit of a drag - and deterrent - but in this song, I still feel like it works.

Video Of The Week: Atari Teenage Riot

Six months ago already since I last made Atari Teenage Riot my Video Of The Week...

This time, I'm featuring a video that was banned from most TV stations for being... too violent. The same TV stations that give away free tickets to The Avengers or Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer...




If you've ever worked in a cubicle, and have ever thought there could be something wrong with the world, and don't think you quite qualify to become Neo (from The Matrix), this could be the video for you.

Video Of The Week: Atari Teenage Riot

Atari Teenage Riot is one of the most important musical acts out there. Not only are they involved politically - in the case of this video, supporting Wikileaks and actually raising money for the site - but I once left my apartment at 6AM with their Burn Berlin Burn CD on repeat to annoy my downstairs neighbour who'd be incredibly loud until ungodly hours... and when I got back home, he was moving out.

A Christmas Miracle, if you will.

Video Of The Week: Soundgazer

A friend of a friend, Voytek Iwasiuk from Toronto, has a musical project called Soundgazer. It's danceable industrial, the song in this video - Stay The Same - gives a pretty good idea of what you should expect, although it's certainly the catchiest.

The video is chock-full of decent (if over-used in the genre) ideas if you can get past the (typically Canadian) low production value. There are a few shots I would have worked on longer and made tighter, and I could also do without the pretend drum and guitar playing, but it makes for ok TV. The band's name is also pretty generic, and after Soundgarden, having so many letters in common with another band reeks of having little imagination, kind of like if someone named their band Pearl Jabsters, Black Sabbatical, Radioheed-And-Cambria or Mudhorny.

On the other hand, give these guys a year and half the budget of a Nine Inch Nails record or a Marilyn Manson video and I'm sure they could come out with something that would be, if not mind-blowing, then at least excellent. One would think.

Video Of The Week: Men Without Hats

Sure, they can dance if they want to, they can leave their friends behind, 'cause their friends don't dance and if they don't dance, well, they're no friends of mine. And Pop Goes The World.

But as the 1980s were coming to a close, Men Without Hats were vying for something a little harsher in their sound, and they couldn't quite put their fingers on what, exactly, as technology hadn't reached the capabilities they needed: they wanted to move into more electronic territory, somewhere closer to Nine Inch Nails.

And when they realized couldn't, they instead reverted back into straightforward rock, at a time where boy-band pop was all the rage. They decided to swim against the mainstream. And in 1990, they released Sideways, whose title track is this week's Video of The Week. Listen to the riff: that's a full year before Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit, which supposedly ''killed pop'' and ''changed the world of music'' by putting the ''emphasis back on the artists as songwriters''.

Guess what?: to this day, Kurt Cobain is dead, neither of the remaining two band members own the rights to their songs, and Ivan, as the writer and publisher of Safety Dance and the rest of his material, gets paid every time his songs are used anywhere, and considering The Simpsons use them a lot and are in syndication all around the world, he gets pretty much $50 every time he breathes while Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic don't even have the right to release the rest of Nirvana's unreleased songs and get that chapter of their life over with.

I call it ''karma''.

Video of the Week: EMF

I've been pondering how to go about this one for a few weeks already (despite this feature only having had two entries, I always knew what the first 4 videos would be)... I could either have one post with my two favourite music videos of all time, or give each one their own post, their own week; but if I were to do that, which one would come first?

Well, I'm giving each one their own week, and I'm starting with the one who has the best colours - even though this particular YouTube grab doesn't really do it justice. It's about one guy playing in the ocean, and another playing in the sand, but the landscapes and the song are breathtaking.

The song is 'It's You (That Leaves Me Dry)', the band is EMF. Yes, that EMF, the ones you though were one-hit onders ('Unbelievable', staple of 1990 and dancefloors ever since), but who, actually, have released 3 amazing albums that can only be classified as 'alternative' - not in a 'grunge-rock' type of way, but more in a 'groundbreaking, genre-melding, ahead-of-its-time' way. The watered-down version of this band was Jesus Jones; its legacy is Nine Inch Nails.

The band is from the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire, U.K. They are currently on their second hiatus - the first one occured in 2002 when member Zac Foley died of a drug overdose. They had formed in 1989 and performed a emre 4 concerts before signing a deal with EMI Records without even having recorded a demo - but after forcing EMI's A&R man to jump in a river to prove that he really wanted them.

Here it is, the video with the nicest colours - two years before Soundgarden's Black Hole Sun, two years after Unbelievable and Lies had made them stars... EMF, It's You.