I saw Nine Inch Nails at the Izod Center in New Jersey Wednesday evening. Roy Bennett has created another striking design for this Lights In The Sky Tour¸ one that rollingstone.com has already called “a 21st-century marriage of old-school showmanship and bleeding-edge technology..." The design is not something you see every day, in a good way. Completely immersing the band in LED screens is just one of the many design elements that blew the audience away. How often have you seen a band play from just a few feet behind a screen with another two screens just a few feet in the background?
There were a couple moments where the audience actually cheered at the video content transitions. A guy sitting next to me said he had already seen the show in Baltimore and was returning for a second show just for the visuals. Then he said, "Why are you here? Big fan?" Little did he know how much I was there for the visuals, too (okay, so I'm also a fan and did purchase a concert tee).
Ran into programmers Cory Fitzgerald and Sean Cagney (both programmers for the tour, but in the audience on this night), as well as designer Patrick Dierson from Artfag. They were hanging around behind FOH in the VIP area.
Be sure to check out my full coverage of the NIN tour in the October issue of Live Design. Steve Jennings' photos will also do the show way more justice than what you see here.