(alternate title: Trent Reznor is a musical genius!)

If the devil put on a rock show, what would it look like? (Yes, that's a rhetorical question.)

Yes, like all the good little nin fans, today I journied to Best Buy and picked up my copy of "And All That Could Have Been" on DVD. For about half the price it would have cost to see the show once in person, I obtained a recording which I can watch as many times as I feel like. I chose the DTS version, since DTS theoretically has better sound quality than Dolby Digital. (I haven't noticed much difference between the two encoding formats during my casual viewing experiences, although I have never done anything even resembling a direct side by side comparison in a single sitting.)

Upon arriving home from work, it was all I could do to throw my mail down, open the dvd case, plop in the disc, turn out the lights, and crank up the volume. Insert and drool. Let thine ears be blessed.

A good mix of songs, old and new. Trend and the band played several familiar anthems from the high school era (as far as Bitscape's point of reference is concerned). Terrible Lie. March of the Pigs. Closer (for the woefully uninitiated, it is also known as the "fuck you like an animal" song). Head Like a Hole. Wish. Hurt.

But my favorite song of the bunch. Certainly my favorite off The Fragile. Possible the best NIN song ever (maaaybe): The Great Below.

The audio engineering / mixing gets the Bitscape award for Best Sound on a Music DVD Ever. Hands down. As far as pure aural architecting in the 5.1 channel space goes, nothing else I've heard comes close. Other concert dvds are good, sometimes great. This one is a new benchmark. The sound washes over, across, behind, between the ears. It smacks you in the head with the sharp noise, beats you to the ground with the thudding textures, and then soothes you like a baby in a cradle on the balladic interludes. Marvelous.

The Negative: I'm not sure why this is. There must be some reason, but I can't fathom it. Instead of a single dual layer disc, the show is split across 2 discs, each less than an hour in length. Very odd. The switch is quite abrupt, too. Right in the middle, as the brain is going into reverie amidst the sonic wonder of it all, everything stops, and instructions to insert the second disc pop up on the screen. That's kind of annoying.

I did check the bitrate this last time as I was watching some of the songs again, and noticed that it was pretty much hovering between 9.8 and 10 megabits per second. Maxed out all the way.

Oh yes. Gotta love the little bookmark-shaped transparent insert, with the faint text printed on it. If this ain't inspiring...

Just a glimpse
Just a little reminder
of a time and place we
used to live in

This dvd attemps to
document the
experience of
Nine Inch Nails live,
as we were in the
summer of 2000

We filmed and recorded
most of the dates of
the North American
Fragility 2.0 Tour
with home video cameras
Then assembled,
mixed and edited this
ourselves with our
home computers

In my eyes,
Fragility 2.0
Was a summation of
What we had accomplished up to
That time, so this dvd
serves as a reminder
of achievement
As well as
a departure point

This is almost what
It felt like being there

Trent Reznor

The credits elaborate further. It was all shot with DV cameras, and all the editing was done on Macintosh. (Would you expect anything else from Trent? I wouldn't.) Blah blah blah.

I fear I may be boring the non-NIN-fans who might be reading this page to death. Oh well. On my page, I write what I feel like. Always has been that way, always will be.

I probably shouldn't comment on the 2nd disc's commentary track until I've actually listened to it. However, I can't help but say that I'm slightly disappointed about that part. If there was going to be a commentary track, wouldn't it seem natural that Trent himself should say something on it? Alas, according to the screen, it's just the guy who did the video backgrounds for the tour. Oh well, maybe he'll be interesting. Maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised. I should probably just be thankful that there's a commentary track at all. Heh.

Alright, enough of this babble. It's gone on long enough. I need to go to bed. Maybe do a little reading first, depending on how closely I decide to adhere to my New Year's Resolution tonight. At least I did some good exercising last night, which was good...

Enough typing. Sleep soon.