Daily Jam - Ruiner

It's been 26 years since the last time i saw Nine Inch Nails in concert.  Remedying that tonight.  To celebrate, here's what might secretly be the best track on 1994's "The Downward Spiral."  Listen to "Ruiner" below, our Daily Jam.

Daily Jam - Hurt

I'm not one of those people that thinks some artist was born to sing some other artist's song or whatever nonsense.  I just like a good cover, something an artist can make their own while still giving a nod to the original.  Johnny Cash's take on Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt" is one of those.  Listen below, our Daily Jam.

Daily Jam - Terrible Lie

Still insanely busy with work and travel and starting to run out of juice.  So here's one of my favorite Nine Inch Nails songs.  Listen to "Terrible Lie" below, our Daily Jam.

Nine Inch Nails

Trent Reznor's primary musical focus has been on scoring films for the last 15 years, though he does occasionally resurface with new Nine Inch Nails music from time to time.  Now those two aspects combine on the upcoming soundtrack to "Tron: Ares."  Our first taste dropped this morning.  Listen to "As Alive as You Need Me to Be" below and pre-order the album, due in September, here.

Peter Murphy and Trent Reznor

Bauhaus's Peter Murphy has a new album coming our way in May that for now we know next to nothing about.  The one thing that we do know is that it includes new single industrial new wave synth funk tune "Swoon" featuring an assist from Nine Inch Nails front man and Oscar winner Trent Reznor.  Check it out below and pre-order the single here from Metropolis Records (it's officially out tomorrow).

Daily Jam - Eraser

Ending the year with some Nine Inch Nails.  Stay strong in 2025.  Here's "Eraser," our Daily Jam.

Daily Jam - Gave Up (Open My Eyes)

Back in the '90s, Trent Reznor used to name drop UK electronic and industrial group, and Psychic TV offshoot, Coil as an influence.  Returning the favor, Coil released "Recoiled," a collection of Nine Inch Nails songs remixed by the duo.  Check out "Gave Up (Open My Eyes)" below, our Daily Jam.

Daily Jam - At the Heart of It All

This column was originally published in August of 2018.

A whole lot of stuff happened yesterday (yesterday being August 21st as I’m writing this column well before I intend to publish it). It was a lot to take in. A lot of guilty verdicts, guilty pleas, and possible ramifications for a neverending stream of even more stuff to come. But, the inner cynic in me doubts that there’s really much to be happy about or excited for. The inner cynic in me has no expectations for anybody to finally get their comeuppance. The inner cynic in me lost faith in this broken system a long while back. And the inner cynic in me is usually right about that kind of stuff.

So I guess we’ll all just wait and see as everything crumbles around us…turns to dust.

And while I wait, I’ll let some haunting and cinematic music score my mood, soundtrack the encroaching clouds as they black out the light. I’m going to listen to “At the Heart of It All” from Nine Inch Nails’ 1995 remix album Further Down the Spiral. And I’m going to watch the world go grey.

The bleak, 7-minute instrumental was created by Aphex Twin for Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails to use on said remix record, and it sounds like a harbinger of some sorts. A crusty electronic beat pounds and hisses while a loop of an eerie horn section rises and falls, a dead fog laying over a cold and dying valley, like something out of a Cormac McCarthy novel. It sounds like a processional for the end of all things, a final dirge to play our souls to eternity. So, maybe it’s not so much a harbinger of things to come as it is a stark and icy denouement.

I guess that’s where we’re at these days.

Listen below, our Daily Jam.

Daily Jam - A Warm Place

This column was originally published in 2018, and sadly there have been hundreds of school shootings in this country since.

We’re almost two weeks removed from the school shootings in Parkland, Florida at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that left 17 dead and many more injured. And while the wound is still new, still fresh, and still deep, something feels different this time around.

There’s a sea change coming.

Originally when I decided that I was going to write about “A Warm Place” from Nine Inch Nails’ 1994 album The Downward Spiral for this column, I thought my focus would be on teenage depression and suicidal thoughts, that veritable stew of adolescent emotion and hormones once bringing me to the edge of the cliff myself when I was 15. I thought I would write about that instrumental, cold and haunting to me in my bedroom anguish, alone in the dark with my thoughts and sounds. And then I thought maybe I would write about how important music was to me at the time, Trent Reznor’s body of work in particular, and how maybe it, along with an amazing group of people I will be eternally grateful to have as my friends, saved my life, and that whole song and dance.

But then I started watching these kids, these survivors and heroes on television, and I began reading their thoughts and tweets, witnessing their bravery, and my whole inner outline just started to feel a little too self-absorbed, a little too vain or conceited. It all felt too mopey and dire, and that’s not where I want my heart to be. It needs to be stronger these days.

Like those kids.

When I was in high school, we weren’t concerned with the possibility that we could all be murdered in our classrooms. Columbine was still a couple of years away and we had (some) good gun laws on the books. And so we were all just stuck up our own assholes the way teenagers are supposed to be. Self-centered narcissists. Me, me, me. There was hardly ever a bigger picture.

Things began to change. Things began to fall apart. There was indeed a bigger picture, and it was terrifying and real. And then over the last two decades as we saw more and more people being gunned down in schools, universities, churches, movie theaters, nightclubs, and concerts, the bodies of children stacking up like so many statistics, our government officials tepid and inactive again and again, condescending and greedy, the same infuriating script playing out over and over again like the worst drama ever penned, a certain degree of fatalism kicked in. It felt like defeat.

I used to say that the gun debate ended in 2012 after Sandy Hook. That was when our elected representatives looked at the bodies of 20 slaughtered 6-year-olds and said okay. That was when I gave up.

But now I see these Florida kids demanding action and refusing to yield. They’re not in shock anymore, they’re angry. And we should be too. No more fatalism. No more defeatism. No more shock. We all need to be fucking pissed off. We all need to be like these awesome kids in Florida. They give me hope for my boys in a time when hope is invaluable.

They are my heroes.

So now, I’m listening to “A Warm Place” in a new context. I’m trying to hear it through hopeful ears instead of despair, and it’s not the dark and somber song I remember. It’s warmer now (no pun intended), still melancholy and reflective, but no longer steeped in desperation. At 15, it felt like the bottom of the abyss, and now at 38 it feels like climbing back out on the other side. No more fatalism. That’s the way I’m going to hear it from here on out (or maybe sometimes as the unintentional rip-off of David Bowie’s “Crystal Japan”*).

*It’s okay. Bowie was cool about it.

Rereading this column now at age 45, and i cried a little because nothing fundamentally changed.

Daily Jam - Supernaut

Way back in 2015, my wife and I moved into a new house, an event that comes with its own seemingly endless series of headaches, chores, and surprises. And while I was expecting that, the nature of the beast as they say, packing and unpacking boxes of stuff, old and new alike, you realize just how much shit you have. And so I got rid of some stuff, trips to Goodwill, trips to Ebay, trips to the curb, trips to the garbage. I did well. But then I got to the box with years of old mixtapes in it, and that progress came screeching to a halt. Of course I had to go through and listen to all of them.

The cassettes, predominantly from junior high and high school with a couple of stragglers from 6th grade and college (yes I am that old) thrown in, were a hodgepodge of random pop songs, some great and some embarrassingly awful (a little too much Korn honestly), but they act as a time capsule, like an audio yearbook from my teenage days. Sadly, there were not really any tapes from my grade school years as I tended to reuse the cassettes, recording and re-recording over them again and again, so there were no relics from the Reagan Era to sift through. But the now 30-something year old mixes were still a fun listen.

A few things learned from gleaning through my old mixtapes:

1. I was clearly searching for some kind of identity through the music I listened to.

2. Then, as now, taste is completely subjective.

3. Some sort of groundwork for my continued listening tastes was being set back then.

4. I really, really, really like “Supernaut” by 1000 Homo DJ’s.

The Black Sabbath cover appeared on not one, not two, not three, but four different cassettes. It was on all of my mixtapes. It was on everyone’s mixtape.

1000 Homo DJ’s was a Ministry side project in the late 80’s/early 90’s, one of many that Al Jourgensen lent his scuzzy, screeching talents to. Consisting of a slew of industrial and electronic artists, the band put out two EP’s, the latter of which featured the Sabbath cover, originally recorded with Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor on vocals, though that version would eventually be scrapped due to licensing issues between record labels. Jourgensen would later re-record the vocals for the release. Legend has it, partying with each other led to these various industrial super group recording sessions with whomever was drunkest manning the drums. That’s probably way too awesome and amazing to actually be true, but I’m not one to call foul on music myth building. It should be true. It needs to be true.

I need to put this on a new mixtape.

Listen below, our Daily Jam.

Daily Jam - Memorabilia

It's Sunday.  Let's listen to Nine Inch Nails cover Soft Cell.  Here's "Memorabilia," our Daily Jam.

Daily Jam - Reptile

I was pretty obsessed with Nine Inch Nails' "The Downward Spiral" when i was a teenager.  It dropped right at that age when you make attachments to art and music that can last for the rest of your life (15).  Anyway, it's almost 29 years later, and i still think it's a perfect album, and i still go back to it all the time.  Here's "Reptile," our Daily Jam.

Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross

I was unaware that Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross were providing the score for Luca Guadagnino's new vampire/love story/road movie "Bones and All," but here we are.  These two knock it out of the park on every single film score they make, and there's no reason to think this one will be any different.  Check out "(You Made It Feel Like) Home" below and download the whole soundtrack here from The Null Corporation.

Danny Elfman & Trent Reznor

Film score composer and former Oingo Boinger Danny Elfman has teamed with fellow film score composer and Nine Inch Nails front man Trent Reznor for a new single called "Native Intelligence."  This follows the duo's collaboration "True" from last year.  Elfman has a new record heading our way this summer, and i can only assume this is not the last time these two will meet.  Check out the track below and get it here from Anti- Records.

Danny Elfman and Trent Reznor

Earlier this year Danny Elfman released his first solo album of non-soundtrack music in over 30 years.  And now the artist has taken one of the tracks from that record, "True," and re-recorded with an assist from Trent Reznor.  It's pretty rad.  Check it out below and download the tune here from Anti- Records.

HEALTH + NIN

Last year, LA noisemakers HEALTH released "Disco 4: Part 1," an album that featured a slew of collaborative works with a myriad of different artists.  It seems that Part 2 may be gearing up with today's release of "Isn't Everyone," a killer, moody jam featuring Nine Inch Nails.  I've got to admit, as NIN fanatic in my teens, it's nice to hear Trent's voice again.  Check it out below.

Daily Jam - Gave Up

Boy was i into Nine Inch Nails when i was a teenager.  Here's "Gave Up," our Daily Jam.

Daily Jam - March of the Pigs

I think this song still hits as hard now as it did 26 years ago.  Here's Nine Inch Nails' "March of the Pigs," our Daily Jam.

Tobacco with Trent Reznor

Lo-fi and twisted electronic artist and producer (and Black Moth Super Rainbow member) Tom Fec releases his solo jams as Tobacco, and we have a new album, "Hot Wet & Sassy," heading our way in October.  Our latest taste is the Trent Reznor assisted "Babysitter."  Reznor's vocals are blurred and distorted together with Fec's to create a veritable ghost in the machine, and are almost unrecognizable.  Check the song out below and pre-order the album here from Ghostly International.

Daily Jam - We're in This Together

"The Fragile" was one of the record releases i was probably the most excited for, it and Radiohead's "Kid A" being maybe the only times i went to a record store at midnight for the special release.  And it's still a solid listen today, maybe not as revered as the earlier albums, but a flawed masterpiece in its own way.  Here's "We're in This Together," our Daily Jam.

And wear your goddamn mask.