TOP 10

AS OF THE MOMENT:


DARK CITY

TEA (GREEN/BLACK)

THE CURE

ON WRITING/STEPHEN KING

PIRATED DVDs

NAGARAYA (BUTTER FLAVOR)

DECENT SLEEP

VERTIGO COMICS

SCARLETT JOHANSSON

SWORD AND SORCERY + SCIENCE FICTION

No space

Today? Nothing worth telling. I just felt like writing something and try to at least instill some life in this blog seeing the last entry was way back in June. And what is it now? September? Lord Almighty. I almost forgot--I'd be celebrating my second year in the company this Wednesday.

Big deal.

I've been alive for 27 years and I don't feel like celebrating it. If you think about it, birthdays aren't supposed to be celebrated or tagged as a reason for merrymaking. It should actually be a time for mourning. It only means you have just advanced another step to that inevitable destination all living things gravitate to the moment they were born. 

Beetlejuice

Reverse Psych 101

That was one hell of a company outing i attended.

This latest excursion was saddled with very high expectations as the previous year's outing was slightly disappointing. much of the complaints were centered on the unpleasant weather. And another big factor for the excitiment was the venue: Grande Island resort in the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority. The thought of spending a day in a small piece of land surrounded by the sea on a summer day conjures visions of prepubescent fantasies of the Blue Lagoon-variety, to swimming to your heart's delight under the blazing sun.

I wish I could say something witty about how the monumental disappointment of the employees threatened to bring the whole island upside down but whatever sense of humor I have left is already spent from trying not to give in to anger and just laugh at our miserable condition. anger takes too much energy and I couldn't afford to be exhausted at that time. Ironically, the purpose of the trip was to get rid of work-induced stress, But that's exactly what most of us got. It was so bad that I actually looked forward for work the coming Monday. Working never seemed so alluring and relaxing compared to that ordeal. I wonder if it was a company ploy so employees would appreciate their work more.

I had to wake up at 3 am because the departure time from Ortigas was 5 am. We left at 630 anyway. But that happens all the time. So I didn't have a problem with that. When we arrived at the island it was already raining and the wind is already picking up speed. So the upper management segregated us in different pavilions because the rooms, they said, were not ready yet. they expected us to check in at 2pm so we had to wait until they said we can go in.

I knew i should have gotten handfuls of those in-bus snacks and saved them for emergency purposes in case some catastrophe involving the food service in the island happens. poor mr. naive that I am, expected to eat lunch upon arrival. Up until lunch was served, some guys and I were still looking around the pavilion for hidden cameras as we were very sure we're being shot by Wow Mali! or some other TV show specializing on practical jokes. We were convinced this was some sort of a sick joke. It was funny alright; we were that close to eating the entire resort staff from sheer starvation.

We couldn't even drink the booze we brought along because of some stupid house rule I didn't bother to know for fear i might pick a fight with an island staff. And a brawl involving a big plate of lechon was averted; a guy almost got smacked while i was oblivious of the commotion belting out a new wave tune in the videoke. And that was about the only saving grace form the entire outing-something we could've had just by crossing the steet right across the office.

Those Rolling R's

Going to bookstores offers a different and amusing respite from my day to day routine. Specially high-end ones like Powerbooks with its browser-friendly lounges and mini coffee shops and nearby record store (Tower Records in Megamall) where most so-called bibliophiles and audiophiles swarm. Most people find the place spectacular because of the amenities and reader-friendly comfort i just mentioned, however those are not the reasons why I find the place so amusing.


My work like any regular office jobs, starts at Ten AM and I leave the office at Six Thirty. Sometimes, when my girlfriend and I decide to meet after hours I loiter around powerbooks to wait for her until 8 pm as she's in the graveyard shift for a call center in Ortigas, where I also work. So I usually spend my waiting time reading something that had its protective plastic cover torn out of it by some overeager browser---which I am also guilty of from time to time especially when it comes to comic books. 

It's usually when i'm already within a quarter of the book/magazine that I am reading when I usually hear it. Anybody would have heard it too, every time one goes there or any other bookstores in some other business center. At first it would be just some random comment about this or that book; or how this author stinks and how the other one is brilliant. Commentaries like that are often voiced out in that unmistakable burgis-just-came-back-from-d-isteyts twang with a hint of boredom as if what the speaker is voicing out is already common knowledge. You'd hear cerebral comments like: "My god! How come there's a lot of books about Hitler?! Don't the publishers know the gravity of their actions?!" to "Hillary Clinton? She's a bitch. But I like her."


Susmaryosep.


Sometimes you'd be lucky (or unlucky depending on your point of view) to catch a group of artistes sitting around a large table in the center of the store discussing art and all sorts of pseudo-intellectual masturbatory aides at the top of their lungs. They're not yelling, but they see to it that everyone gets to hear what they say. You can actually feel the self-congratulatory pat in the back everytime someone blurts out a comment or critique about a certain film/book/music. I swear, hearing those exchanges make Roger Ebert seem like an amateur. The way they voice out criticisms in their discussion you'd feel like they'd do a better job than the hapless author they choose to eviscerate in their little soiree. Oh, and the discussion is, of course, in English. with a dash of taglish every now and then for that token coño effect. Because, as you can see, intellectuals in the philippines voice out their opinions in perfect, American english. So there.


Now that's entertainment you can't buy.

The Vermillion Skull Grinned

"...but what about the butterflies...?" --U.P.


"...but what about the snakes...?" --T.L.


*Debate between two professors over the issue of clearing the thick vegetation at the back of their dorm. (UP, Miag-ao)


I heard my former professor back in college is now a resident of the very famous institution in the western part of Mandaluyong. No less than my sister confirmed this as she also belongs to the same college as I did--as well as the professor. I guess fate really does catch up with all of us sooner or later.

I heard a lot of horror stories about Ms. Panama (not her real name) when I was still a freshman; about how she conducted lectures that would make the March Hare and The Mad Hatter proud and her natural predisposition for terrorizing unfortunate students who offended her sensibilities. The way she conducted her classes was based on her template that all students on the quest for knowledge should work hard for it. Ergo, you do all the research that you think is vital for this course: If you're taking English I (basic communication skills), then find any books that's related to the subject, then create a --in her own words--"well organized compilation" of what you learned and submit it at the end of the semester. Bibliographic entries/list of no less than 50 books from the library was required during the first week to see if the students knew what they were looking for. I submitted 50 titles of rock albums just to submit something (using the library at UPV was like killing people for the cause of preserving life). i.e: Corgan, William Jr.,Basic Communication. (1993), Smashing Pumpkins Press. See if she can see that.

The way I saw it, however, was that it was an elaborate excuse not to perform actual lectures every meeting so she could indulge in her sadistic hobby of persecuting students she didn't like. She did check the attendance and asked questions related to the subject every now and then, but not to gauge how much her students (subjects, actually) knew, but to humiliate anyone unfortunate enough to be called who doesn't possess any strand of wit or sophistication to answer in kind. Most of whom were gays, the token promdis (country bumpkins) and token kikays (sassy women). She had no tolerance for homosexuals (gays, lesbians, bis) but I found what really made her furious beyond belief were the kikays. One girl she found wearing makeup in class got a taste of the teacher from hell reputation when she was told to wipe all the colors off her face. Natural beauty, she said, needs no artificiality to conceal it. The promdis, she admonishes without mercy but does it in a seemingly helpful way. Mild sarcasm comes to mind, if there is such a term. 


I remember one time she called a timid-looking girl who was obviously not from any city--she looked panicky and nervous everytime, one suspects she's mumbling every prayer just to be ignored by everyone especially her professor. This time, however, the Gods turned a deaf ear. Everything, from her footwear to the way she tied her hair weren't spared. This, the prof did in a "nice way". Simon Cowell from American Idol seemed polite and considerate in comparison.

Ms. Panama belongs to the old-world conservative thinking I'd like to associate with the movie Pleasantville where everyone was expected to behave a certain way to give the viewers a semblance of a normal and happy life. Either that or the uptight and humorless aristocratic Victorian-era highbrow pompousness one can always see in caricatures (i.e. Tim Burton's Corpse Bride) from all sorts of pop culture references. The total lack of tolerance for others who do not fit into the mold of how anyone is supposed to behave and act jumped at me when I was her student.


Back then I already sensed something was slightly off-kilter. It was just a matter of time when the rigidity becomes too much for everything to break.

Trent Reznor circa 'The Fragile'

I'm a big fan of NIN. Trent Reznor, I believe, is the last man standing of the the last great age of musical revolution: the defunct 'alternative' era of the 90s. No other musician in recent years comes close-except Billy Corgan-to the complexity and delight his sonic soundscapes have provided to listeners. To quote Dave Matthews: "His stuff is like Beethoven. It's awesome". Dave Matthews is a genius.

I read the Rolling Stone Magazine write-up below back in college. This is the most apt article I have read about the so-called 'destroyer of the industrial music genre' . And the most enjoyable as well.

____________________________________________________________________
The Fragile World Of Trent Reznor Written by Anthony Bozza
Rolling Stone Issue #823 October 14, 1999

Holed up in an old funeral home, the man behind Nine Inch Nails has spent the last four years coping with loss constructing a delicate and brutal masterpiece.

1994 was the year Trent Reznor released The Downward Spiral, an unsettling opus that details one man's descent to near self-destruction. It was also the year Toad the Wet Sprocket had a Top Ten hit, O.J. Simpson was chased on TV and Kurt Cobain committed suicide. It was only five years ago, but pop music has the life span of a Sea Monkey-- maybe even shorter. Consider who shared the bill with nine inch nails at Woodstock '94: Dee-lite, the Spin Doctors, Porno for Pyros, Arrested Development, and Jackyl. "At the Woodstock I did," Reznor recalls, "all you heard about was the Pepsi logo on the fucking bird thing and how it was all about money. Bands were getting shit-canned for doing it for money. Did anybody mention the money this year?"

In the last five years, rock music, according to Trent Reznor, "has taken a big shit." It is a period he's glad to have missed. All the while he's been lying in wait, hidden away like a Brazilian wood tick on the underside of a branch. Sure, he put his hand to a few things: producing the soundtracks to David Lynch's Lost Highway and Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers, co-producing Marilyn Manson's Antichrist Superstar and compiling Closure, a nine inch nails video collection and tour diary. While these projects only made his fans rabid for a nine inch nails album, he remained the Invisible Man. "All I really want to know," lamented a fan recently on a NIN website, "is, when will they tour? I've never seen Trent in real life." Don't worry, Reznor is ready now. It just took some time. First, he needed to disappear. And then he found that reappearing wasn't so easy. Reznor, adept at most things he puts his mind to, had disappeared very, very well.

If you have a few hours, Trent Reznor can tell you what he's done in the second half of the nineties-- a period he jokingly calls his "summer vacation." He has brooded on the cliffs of California, suffering his writer's block at a grand piano. He has lost his grandmother, the woman who raised him after his parents separated, when he was five. He has lost a close friend in Marilyn Manson, on of the two or three people he had allowed into his life. He has spent two years of sixteen-hour days making a double album called The Fragile that far outshines anything he has ever done. He has traded drugs and alcohol for protein shakes and jet-skiing on the Louisiana bayou. He has wondered whether he is capable of sustaining a relationship and raising a family. And he has learned that he wants one.

Many of these changes and revelations have unfolded at Nothing studios, in New Orleans, the former funeral parlor that Reznor bought in 1995, in the midst of the Downward Spiral tour. It is easy to tell when you are approaching Reznor's recording compound: Goth girls start cropping up like speed bumps. Even on a ninety-four-degree day, two vinyl-clad specimens are positioned at the gamy bar across the street, eagle-eyed for signs of life. Nothing Studios has a sand-colored stone facade and darkly tinted windows. It exudes a guarded stillness, like a bank vault. The front door is not original. It is the door that Charles Manson's minions passed through at Sharon Tate's house the night they killed her and four others in 1969. Reznor rented the infamous Hollywood Hills house at 10050 Cielo Drive to record The Downward Spiral in 1993; he took the door with him before the owners razed the place. There are security cameras at every entrance to Nothing. Now that Reznor has finished The Fragile, he may need more of them.

One of Reznor's engineers, a stocky Columbian fellow, answers the door. A wide staircase leads up to a large second-floor room where, presumably, bodies once lay for wakes. Today it is filled with vintage arcade games: Robotron, Tempest, Space Invaders. The first-floor living room boasts a worn-in black leather couch, a large TV, a larger video collection (Twilight Zone episodes, John Waters' entire oeuvre) and the six-foot canvases by artist Russell Miller that were photographed for The Downward Spiral's artwork. Original animation cells from the movie of Pink Floyd's The Wall lines the halls. In the bathroom, a print of the film's famous screaming face is Number 666 of a limited-edition run. A homey kitchen is at the back of the building. Above the stove hangs what could be a picture from Woodstock '99: a frat-looking guy projectile-vomiting while his pleasantly surprised buds look on. No one is sure who took that picture. It just showed up at the studio one day.

Next to the kitchen is a large metal door with a sizable lock. This is the door to the control room, the room in which Reznor recorded ninety-percent of The Fragile. Inside, tons of gear-- sound processors, guitars, effects pedals, keyboards, computers-- is meticulously arranged. Despite the massive seventy-two-track mixing board and the security monitor above it, the room is warm: rust-colored walls with a wooden floor, candles burning on every surface and beige drapes hiding imaginary windows.

Reznor sits alone in a front office. The carpet and walls are deep blue. He is busy at a buzzing blue Mac. So busy, in fact, that he doesn't notice the odd little lady who has stopped outside his window. She's using its dark reflective surface to comb down her hair.

Reznor's hair is short now; gone are the long black locks he once favored. It is one of the many things he has changed. "I was putting off doing this record for a number of reasons," he says, "some conscious, some subconscious. It's not like I've had this big, long career where I could become tired of this, but I was disillusioned." Reznor is dressed in black jeans and old black combat boots held together with electrical tape. He wears, as always, one of an endless succession of black T-shirts that advertise his fondness for Atari Teenage Riot, the Jim Rose Circus Sideshow, or Nothing Records.

Reznor speaks deliberately and softly, in clear tones. He waits before answering, seemingly composing entire sentences before letting them out into the air. "When we started the Downward Spiral tour," he says, sitting back on a nearby couch, "we were still kind of a small band. At the end of two and a half years of touring, we got off the bus and everything was different. I had money, and I had everyone kissing my ass, and I had friends I didn't know I had-- or thought I did. I saw myself change on tour, because I could. It was like, 'You mean, I can treat you like shit and get everything I'm supposed to? Great!"

Reznor had everything he'd wanted for so long: the means to build an ideal studio, the respect of his peers and free rein from his record label. "What I didn't have," he says, "was spiritual satisfaction." As Reznor does when something bothers or "chews at him," as he calls it, he dived into another project, namely producing the album that gave Marilyn Manson a career, Antichrist Superstar. "That was just like staying on tour, without going anywhere," Reznor says. "The Manson camp party every night; there's something going on all the time. At the time I was in that mind-set already, so that was appealing."

When the circus split town, the inevitable fallout occurred. "The party left except for me," he says with a laugh, "and then I was supposed to do my real work." But Reznor had lost his musical passion. Depressed, he briefly saw a psychiatrist. "Then I decided I didn't want to go anymore," he says. "I turned a corner and I didn't need someone chewing at me to do things I didn't feel were right for me, like medication. I don't want to fuck with that. But that whole procedure made me realize I didn't' like myself anymore and that I had to come to terms with certain things."

Reznor headed to a house in Big Sur, California, for a change of scene. He brought a few musical ideas-- and a lot more emotional baggage. "It just took me time to sit down and change my head and my life around. I had to slap myself in the face: 'If you want to kill yourself, do it, save everybody the fucking hassle. Or get your shit together.'

"I thought Big Sur would be a nice break," he says and smiles. "It was sheer terror. Isolation on the side of a mountain, and hour from the nearest grocery store. I really didn't want to be by myself. I wasn't prepared for it."

Reznor's loneliness was deepened by the loss of his grandmother and his split with Marilyn Manson. The two went from trusted friends to bitter rivals; reportedly, the final straw came when Reznor heard that Manson wanted David Bowie to produce the Antichrist follow-up, Mechanical Animals. "I don't want to get into a 'he said, he said,'" Reznor says about Manson, "but to sum that scene up, I think fame and power distort people's personalities. He and I are two strong personalities that could co-exist for a while, but things changed. I'm not pointing fingers at him, 100 percent, but some lines were crossed that really hurt me when I was down-- real down. He was a best friend, and it was a shitty way to lose him." Reznor looks at the door. "It's hard. It makes you rethink a lot of things you thought were special: Were you blind to them the whole time? How stupid was I? Listen, I don't really want to talk about this-- that's all I want to say. I"ve got to take a piss." And off he goes. It won't be the last time. When our talks turn too personal, Reznor is quick to end them by politely and firmly leaving the room.

Trent Reznor is a network of balanced contradictions-- and all the richer for it. His music can be as abrasive as chainsaws or as melodious as birds-- often in the same four minutes. Until The Fragile, he worked almost exclusively with machines but expertly wrung earthy warmth from their chips and bits. As much as his music screams "Fuck you," it whispers "Love me." It can sound simple, but it is meticulously crafted and complexly programmed. Reznor uncorks chaos but has the intelligence to harness it. As industrial, distorted and thrashing as nine inch nails are, there is an inherent groove to the music that can't be learned-- like Prince, like Sly Stone.

Reznor's lyrics, he says, come from his gut. They are culled from journal entries and are intensely personal yet tell us little of him. He engages in microscopic self-editing and self-analysis, but he will be the first to tell you he runs from his problems. Above all, Reznor is driven, a man possessed of a vision only he can fully see. He is the type who is most inspired when his back is against the wall.

"I came to realize," says Alan Moulder, producer of Smashing Pumpkins' Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, engineer for My Bloody Valentine and engineer/co-producer of The Fragile, "that the best thing to tell Trent is that you don't think a song is working. If he thinks something's beating him, he won't stop until he's beaten it." Moulder should know. He spent two years with Reznor on this album, watching it grow from unfocused instrumental snippets into a two-hour sonic journey-- serving as a collaborator as much as a producer.

The two began with the bits Reznor had compiled, some ideas from Big Sur, most from afterward. "I wanted to let what felt right come out without allowing myself to think about where it was going," Reznor says. "That's also what made the record difficult." The experiments were uninvited; no clock was running. Reznor, who is classically trained on piano and well-versed in synth, found himself drawn to guitars. "It's typical of him," Moulder says. "You know people saying 'Rock is dead.' Everybody else is hanging guitars up, and he decided to do a guitar record with solos and everything. He's as good as anybody I've worked with at conveying emotion with his playing. He's always looking for an angle you'd never think of taking."

"I'm pretty studied in keyboard instruments," Reznor says, "but I don't understand the guitar very well. There's an imperfection to it that helped me get a more emotional connection to the music: You strum it with your hand or bang it; it can go out of tune; certain notes buzz. Not to get super literal, but it gives the album a more fragile feel."

As the volume of material grew, the pair devised a grid of influences to keep track of things. There were category headings like Tom Waits, Bone Machine; Organic Funk; and Atari Teenage Riot. It was a way to set sonic goals. "Nothing was ever suggested and not done," Moulder says. "The unwritten rule was, 'We'll try everything.' We'd spend a day getting a load of cardboard boxers and a metal barrel. We'd mike them up and he'd play on them. The marching sound on 'Pilgrimage' is actually bits of stuff in a box being shaken."

At the end of a year's time, Reznor had nothing but "an abstract blob" of a record. He hadn't started the album with a story line, as he had The Downward Spiral. Now he needed someone to find one. Reznor and Moulder sent for Bob Ezrin, producer of The Wall, a constant Reznor touchstone. Ezrin, who has worked with everyone from Alice Cooper to Berlin, flew to New Orleans for one week and powered through three of four different sequences until he nailed it. "The most important thing about a continuous listening experience," Ezrin says, living up to his seventies rock legacy, "is defining the four corners of the album first-- the beginnings and endings of the first and second acts-- while staying true to the journey. It was important to fail two or three times. The last failure opened so many doors that it fell into place in a mater of hours."

There is a journey at the center of The Fragile, one laden with dreamlike (and nightmarish) imagery and unexpected twists. It begins ominously and ends uncertainly, with a sense that space has been traveled but no destination reached. The ocean is a recurring theme-- sinking beneath it, rising from it, looking to it for something or someone. Overall, it is an album to keep a psychiatrist (or an armchair one) pretty busy: Is this a quest for self-discovery? A map of the subconscious? A diary of a co-dependent relationship? It could be all of them, and it could be none of them.

After he completes an album, long before it is on sale, Trent Reznor gives a copy to each of his parents. Considering the subject matter-- suicide, sex, bondage-- it must be squirmy. "It's always a little awkward," he says. "You know, like, 'I'm OK, I'm OK. Don't worry about it.'" This album is different. "It's more about a sense of purity of morality and a preservation of that. It's about the search. And you don't arrive at a nice tidy conclusion."

The wind is pinning Trent Reznor's hair down and lifting his black t-shirt almost over his head. He is sitting in the front of a forty-foot powerboat, skipping over the waves off Nassau, in the Bahamas. After five days of nonstop rehearsals here, he and his band are heading for a day off on a private island where the boat's captain will cook up grouper stew and spiced rice for the band, crew, and road managers. Reznor is gnarled into the same posture he assumes onstage: shoulders rolled forward, arm gripping a bar in front of him. But he is smiling, laughing and gleefully looking around as the boat repeatedly jumps out of the water. Behind him, keyboard player-programmer Charlie Clouser and guitarist Robin Finck clown around, letting the wind catch their lips and distort their faces.

They aren't the same crazed crypt keepers who left a trail of smashed keyboards across the country four years ago. They will be quick to tell you they've changed-- and that they needed to. It wasn't just Reznor who tried to live up to the tour's name: The Self-Destruction Tour. Finck also had to find his way back to earth. After spending a lost year in New Orleans, he joined Cirque de Soleil for a year as its guitarist. "It was exactly what I needed -- a 180-degree, polar opposite change," he says. Finck then spent time working with Guns n' Roses, a project he may return to after the upcoming nine inch nails tour. "I was with Axl for a little over two years," he says, "and se recorded dozens of songs together. I'm really proud of what we did as a band. I'm anxious to see how it's completed." Well, will it be? "Oh, yes," Finck says, grinning. "You may depend on it."

Nine inch nails are in the Bahamas for three reasons: to prepare for the MTV Video Music Awards-- their first public appearance in almost four years-- to make The Fragile road-ready for a tour that will take up much of next year and to vacation while doing it. Before setting down to work, they frolicked for a few days: swimming with Bahamian Reef sharks, jet-skiing and snorkeling. "The music sounds better than it did at the height of when we had our shit together before," Reznor says. "Our drummer, Jerome Dillon, is really changing the sound." Dillon was one of the many who tried to land former drummer Chris Vrenna's spot. Vrenna- who left on bad terms two years ago- was the only person aside from Reznor's manager who had been around since Day One. "When Chris left the band," Reznor says, "part of me was relieved. I miss him as a friend a lot. But it was freeing on the musical level."

Nine inch nails have taken over Compass Point Studios, the facility that Chris Blackwell built in the late seventies to record Bob Marley, for whom he couldn't get an American work visa. In the woody main room where Marley recorded Survival, Exodus and Kaya, the band has set up its gear. A second control room serves as Trent's office, while the attached studio had been converted into a gym. Reznor's Nautilus and stationary bike have been shipped from New Orleans. Nearby is a table full of vitamins, protein powders and-- aha, Reznor's real secret: a bottle of Mega Creative Fuel.

When the band members settle in for rehearsal the night before our boat trip, their chemistry is tangible. In conversation, Reznor is shy and thoughtful. Put him in front of a mike and all of that changes. His body tenses, his arms flex as he holds the mike above and in front of him, rocking it back and orth. The band fiercely attacks older songs like "Suck," "Terrible Lie," "March of the Pigs" and "Down in It" like it's been at it for months. When it falls on "Reptile," hot air streams rhythmically from the stack of speakers in the small room. There are only three of us in this audience, but the band members are kinetic, playing with closed eyes, bouncing up and down, as lost in it act they would be for 3,000. ("Rocking in bare feet is not cool," Reznor says afterward. "Toe-stubbing is a problem.")

The MTV Video Music Awards will mark Reznor's second television appearance-- his first was Dance Party U.S.A. Yes, back in the early days, before his debut album, Pretty Hate Machine, was even released (attention, VH1 producers) Trent Reznor lip-synced on the raised platform of that low-rent Solid Gold show. "I told this publicist that I wanted to do it, completely out of my ass," he says. "Next thing I know, we're booked. It was like mall people doing these crazy Hairspray dances. Terrible. And, at the time, we had this keyboard player who was a fucking idiot. When we were talking about what to wear on the show, he said, 'I'm thinking about a sword.' I'm thinking, 'Is that some sort of cummerbund?' He meant a real sword. He's probably dead by now. There's no way someone hasn't taken him out."

Reznor guards the NIN mystique zealously. He has never played Saturday Night Live, never sat on Politically Incorrect. It hasn't been for lack of offers. "I've worked hard at keeping nine inch nails precious," Reznor says. "Everything I do is secondary to the music. It's pretty easy, once you let your guard down, for someone to say, 'Hey, want this Prada jacket?' Next thing you know, you're some jive dude; Carmen Electra is on your lap and you're a rock guy that's full of shit." That said, Reznor is looking forward to joining us, live and worldwide, on MTV. "I like the challenges of flirting with the mainstream with nine inch nails. I think we can do it honestly," he says. "You know, let Fred Durst surf a piece of plywood right up my ass."

Reznor is frank about today's clownish rock climate. "If your turn on MTV right now," he says, grimacing as if a foul smell has found him, "I bet Kid Rock is on there, judging something, giving something away with sumo wrestlers and his pants are on backward. But that doesn't seem inappropriate for what he's trying to do." Reznor was recording during Woodstock '99, but had it tuned in on TV. "It struck me as some of the worst shit I'd ever seen," he says. "It was a dismal synopsis of everything that's bad in music right now. The incredible lack of importance seemed to jump off the screen at me. But it did make certain bands really stand out. I thought Rage Against the Machine looked like the second coming of Christ."

After the night's rehearsal, Dillon, Finck and Lohner have a beer while lounging around the pool. They recall the injuries sustained during the last nine inch nails tour (broken fingers, bruised ribs, a severely lacerated head). Reznor returns from the studio. "Is this the all-male pool party?" he asks, his chocolate-milk Weimaraner, Daisy, in tow. He says good night and is gone.

The next day, on the private island, Reznor is the first off the boat, and he's soon exploring every inch of what is basically a large sandbar with palm trees, bordered by sharp rocks. It has been colonized by hermit crabs that caravan over the sand and up the trees. "This one's in charge," he says, pointing out a fist-sized shell. "Pick it up; they don't bite," he goads one of his sound engineers. He does and it does. "Did that hurt?" Reznor asks with a sly grin.

Reznor moves to a stone stairway that descends into the water. Below it the ocean is deep blue and tranquil. It is very different from Big Sur. "You'd walk down this rickety ladder to this not-very-pretty beach scene: crashing waves, moss-covered rocks, weird ocean life. It was scary," he recalls. "It summed up a lot of things. Like, 'I should be enjoying this, but I'm not.' It's a very spiritual, very cleansing place. But all that my antennae were picking up were the bad parts." As hard as that time was, it served Reznor well. "Daydreaming, just sitting out there became a catalyst," he says. "It's a force that crops up in some of the albums' lyrics." And it's a force that seems to have washed away some of The Downward Spiral's suicidal tendencies. "I had a little flirtation with the bottom," she says, "and I don't want to be there. After Downward Spiral ran its course, I wound up at a pretty desolate place. It's one thing to flirt with suicide when you're writing, it's another when you arrive there. It's not as funny or romantic as a notion."

The same goes for nihilism. "I'm still anti-organized religion," he says. "I still think that's a crock of shit. But in my head, that spilled over into an utter-chaos outlook: 'I don't need anything, I don't need anyone, and I don't need to believe there's any reason to anything.' It was a pretty self-centered approach. I was lonely and had a bleak outlook on everything. I think people have an inherent need for belonging, or feel they are a part of something."

Reznor talks about working with other people in the studio and being closer to people outside his career. "There's a shitload of things I've given up to do this," he says. "I look at friends from other eras of my life who are now married, paying off condos. They have that rock of stability and normality that maybe they wish they didn't have. It's like, 'Fuck you've got a lot in that life.'"

He often wants that life, too, but thinks he'll need to end this one first. "When I do something, it's total immersion. I don't allow anything to get in the way," he says. "I know what my life now can bring, and it's great things-- but there's a shallowness to it. I've been saying for a long time that I wanted to raise a kid." He tosses a rock absent-mindedly into the waves., "I'd want to wait until I wanted to dedicate a lot of time to a family. It's not right this second."

Trent Reznor has other plans. He wants to start a new band, one that he's not in. "I want to do everything I do for nine inch nails and produce it, but not sing," he says. "What I liked about producing Manson was that I could help make the music better and not have any pressure on me." Calling all divas: He has people collecting tapes and is looking for a female singer. "It has to be the right thing-- genreless and raceless, but soulful.... Not nine inch nails with a girl singing." He also plans to tackle more scoring. "It sounds kind of jive, but I like the idea of getting deeper into music, minus the constraints of pop music and being an icon." Hopefully, this will leave Reznor more time to make friends, of which he has few. "I don't really have many friends," he says. "When christmas comes every year, I get a little bummed out because if I'm not in a relationship, I don't have anywhere to go."

Where he usually goes is home: Mercer, Pennsylvania, a small rural town far out in Amish country. He plays music and talks computers with his dad, visits with his younger sister, her husband and two kids, and returns to the house where he was raised to see his granddad. Everyone is within twenty miles of one another. Though Reznor's parents have been separated since he was five, they get along well. "I used to just think it was a little shitbag town I couldn't wait to get away from," he says. "That motivated me a lot to succeed and dew me to things like sci-fi and horror movies and Kiss. Anything at all that wasn't like Mercer, Pennsylvania." Reznor has begun to accept and even embrace his roots. "Now I realize there is a quaintness to Mercer that's kinda cool," he says, then smiles and throws a sidelong glance. "Still, I don't think I'm moving back there." Reznor has joined Eydie Gorme and Tony Butula, of sixties pop group the Lettermen, in the ranks of famous Mercerians. For the sake of the town square, let's hope they don't commemorate him with a statue. "I'd be the first one to spray-paint it," Reznor says. "I'd put tits on it."

Midway through his thirties, Reznor finds that the majority of his friends are younger, and he doesn't feel different-- for the most part. "Thirty-four," he marvels. "Suddenly the balls lower a little bit. I only feel weird when I look at someone else my own age and think, 'Fuck, they're old.'" Reznor will not be rocking when he's fifty. "I've thought about artists like Tom Petty," he says, "who seem to have been around forever and still make passionate music. I never get the sense he's putting on an act for a generation he doesn't belong to." The dark void of the generation gap is already something Reznor has gazed into. "We did a show in New York," he recalls, "and we brought Adam Ant onstage. We're like, 'Fuck, yeah, Adam Ant, ' and the audience is looking up at us like, 'Who the fuck is that guy?' They're all fifteen. I'm thinking, 'Oh, I forgot. I'm older than you."

Reznor pokes a Paleolithic-looking creature clinging to a rock. It doesn't budge. "Do you mind if we take a break for a while?" He asks, eagerly looking at the people goofing around on the beach. "I want to go hang out with everybody for a bit." He walks back toward the group. Wait-- where is he going? He walks past them, to the water. He stares out at the setting sun for a few minutes, letting the ocean lap his feet. Then he turns around and faces everyone. He doesn't look happy, he doesn't look sad. And he doesn't move to join them.

DIDs

I just finished reading the Rolling Stone top 500 records of all time. It inspired me to write something in a similar fashion. So if you'll excuse me I'd like to submit 10 best (for me as of now at least) albums I'd take into a desert island should I be forced there in exile.

The Stone Roses

- one of the most innovative and revolutionary bands of all time. A very important and, above all, enjoyable record.

Dig Your Own Hole, The Chemical Brothers

- a rock record disguised as an electronica act. The infectious beats steer this brilliant recording from the boring realm most techno acts often get stuck in after two tracks. electronica at its finest.

Kind Of Blue, Miles Davis

- my first exposure to this album was from my father. I remember I was still in kindergarten when I first heard it and thought it was pretty lame compared to Michael Jackson. Listening to it again after several years made me rethink that comparison.

Siamese Dream, Smashing Pumpkins

- billy corgan is one of the greatest songwriters I know. This album, in my opinion, can give Nirvana’s NEVERMIND a run for the money as the album that defined the 90s and Gen X- a generation I’m proud to be part of.

The Downward Spiral, Nine Inch Nails

- a very dark, but pretty album. Trent Reznor’s ear for interesting beats make this a very catchy record perfect for those rainy days when you’d like to lock yourself up inside a dark room, strap in the headphone, and wallow in misery. A perfect concept album.

Violator, Depeche Mode

- one of the best groups to have come out the 80s and reinvent themselves successfully from a synthpop boyband to a rock-oriented experimental unit. Everytime I put this on I feel like a little kid again. Nostalgia is always good.

Appetite For Destruction, Guns N’ Roses

- the attitude and arrogance came through as genuine and scathing enough to make a permanent mark on the consciousness of music listeners everywhere. GNR’s finest hour.

Garbage

- aggressive, futuristic-sounding amalgam of electronica, grunge, and pop. I never tire of Shirley Manson cooing about “tearing my world apart”. One of the coolest albums there is.

Automatic, The Jesus And Mary Chain

- a lot of people claim “Psychocandy” was the masterpiece. Of course. I’m all for pop sounding and danceable melodies though. And this album has plenty of it. Sunny and melodic all throughout even if the subject being talked about is anything but.

Jar Of Flies, Alice In Chains

- dark and cold sounding EP that proves just how good this band actually is. too bad about Layne Staley, though. he has, in my opinion, the best singing voice in all the seattle bands and we'll never get to hear it again.