After playing two dates in Florida and one in Georgia, surprises to the setlist include songs that haven't been performed live in 14+ years, songs that have never been played before, and a surprise on-stage collaboration with Saul Williams. Among the songs that make me wish I could make it to more than one show this tour, NIN have played Now I'm Nothing, I'm Afraid of Americans, Metal, Piggy (Nothing Can Stop Me Now), I Do Not Want This, Gone Still, Lights in the Sky, Physical, Heresy, The Downward Spiral... this is not a tour to be missed. Saul showed up to sing along on Survivalism lastnight before going into a live rendition of Banged & Blown Through from Niggy Tardust.There's also some great merch available this time around, with the two most talked about items being the onsie (start 'em young) and a NIN messenger bag. There are a number of photos of the merch booth over at Echoing the Sound, the photo from the left being taken from a post by Febronia on nin.com. Oh, hey, here's a really big picture of the merch booth by grattage, who goes on to mention that
"the poster is $15 and is on really thick paper. You can't roll it too tight without running the risk of bending the paper and they don't have tubes or rubber bands to give you. I'd recommend getting the poster at the end of the night and hope they don't run out. It measures 18"x24"."
Another online community has cropped up recently and has been trying to organize audio and video from the new tour - Reflecting in the Chrome.
Also of note: Peter L wrote in with details about his experience at the show - and noted that "when I [picked up] the tickets, the NIN.com rep said that all pre-sale ticket holders could attend the sound check," something he wished he'd known about before because he'd already made pre-show plans. He also noted that "there was special VIP parking for pre-sale ticket holders that was much closer to the amphitheater than the regular parking."
And as usual, don't forget the picture and video galleries at nin.com, where folks have been tagging their YouTube and Flickr photos from the appropriate shows and they've been aggregated and accumulated.
I guess "fangasm" would be a good way to sum up this tour so far. Thanks to everyone who wrote in!