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InvitingmeAway
08-20-2013, 02:49 AM
What was the first NIN album you got? And what does it mean to you? For me, my first was With_Teeth. It is one of my favorite albums by NIN because the lyrical content and alternative sound really caught me. Now I am really into the industrial sound! But With_Teeth means a lot to me. Song's like Everyday Is Exactly The Same, All The Love In The World, Only, Beside You In Time and Right Where It Belongs. These song's helped me out a lot in that period (reoccurring period) in my life. Trying to rebuild myself and have a better outlook on things...but everything starts to deteriorate again. So albums like TDS and The Fragile are one's I connect to a lot more now.

gorast
08-20-2013, 02:57 AM
The Slip. #59,227. Early 2009.

I downloaded NIN's entire discography at the beginning of the year, and I was at my local FYE when The Slip caught my eye. I hadn't started frequenting places like ETS at the time, so I was pretty oblivious to its lukewarm reception. And, at that time, I hadn't delved into the catalogue all that deeply, so every album sounded like gold to me. There were two options - 59,227, used, with no sticker pack, and some six digit number, high 100,000s, sealed. I figured I wouldn't have any real use for the stickers, so I grabbed the lower number.

The Slip represented my first real commitment to being a NIN fan - I bought it, in a music store, with my own money. Halo 27 started my collection, and I've snagged nearly every primary Halo since then (except for 15, 20, 22 HD, and 26 LE if I remember correctly). I also liked the notion that my first Halo was the (at the time) last one.

katara
08-20-2013, 02:58 AM
The first NIN album I *heard* was Further Down The Spiral v2 at the time of its release. The first one I bought for myself was Pretty Hate Machine in about 1999/2000. :)

I wasn't totally into it when I first heard it because it was so different to what I had heard before. However, I quickly grew to love the songs, and henceforth went and bought The Fragile after that. If a PHM song is played live now, I go batshit insane.

dzaver
08-20-2013, 03:01 AM
The first song I heard from them was "That's what I get" and the second was "Sin". I couldn't believe my ears :-) I was shocked at how great it is mixed. I was a huge Manson fan at that time and I came to really know NIN through Starfuckers. Then I bought The Fragile which was the first purchase back in 1999. And the favourite album. I remember putting it on for the first time and listening to it three times through - I was blown away. So yeah, NIN love story :D

InvitingmeAway
08-20-2013, 03:05 AM
The first song I heard from them was "That's what I get" and the second was "Sin". I couldn't believe my ears :-) I was shocked at how great it is mixed. I was a huge Manson fan at that time and I came to really know NIN through Starfuckers. Then I bought The Fragile which was the first purchase back in 1999. And the favourite album. I remember putting it on for the first time and listening to it three times through - I was blown away. So yeah, NIN love story :D

Awesome man. I love The Fragile as well. My favorite album actually. Thanks for sharing.

gorast
08-20-2013, 03:05 AM
Awesome man. I love The Fragile as well. My favorite album actually. Thanks for sharing.

You know, it usually takes me a while to warm up to new members, but you're pretty rad so far.

InvitingmeAway
08-20-2013, 03:06 AM
The Slip. #59,227. Early 2009.

I downloaded NIN's entire discography at the beginning of the year, and I was at my local FYE when The Slip caught my eye. I hadn't started frequenting places like ETS at the time, so I was pretty oblivious to its lukewarm reception. And, at that time, I hadn't delved into the catalogue all that deeply, so every album sounded like gold to me. There were two options - 59,227, used, with no sticker pack, and some six digit number, high 100,000s, sealed. I figured I wouldn't have any real use for the stickers, so I grabbed the lower number.

The Slip represented my first real commitment to being a NIN fan - I bought it, in a music store, with my own money. Halo 27 started my collection, and I've snagged nearly every primary Halo since then (except for 15, 20, 22 HD, and 26 LE if I remember correctly). I also liked the notion that my first Halo was the (at the time) last one.
The Slip was my second album. I really enjoy that album as well, thanks for sharing!

InvitingmeAway
08-20-2013, 03:09 AM
You know, it usually takes me a while to warm up to new members, but you're pretty rad so far.

Hey thanks man, you are pretty cool as well. I am just excited to discuss NIN with other NIN fan's.

InvitingmeAway
08-20-2013, 03:13 AM
The first NIN album I *heard* was Further Down The Spiral v2 at the time of its release. The first one I bought for myself was Pretty Hate Machine in about 1999/2000. :)

I wasn't totally into it when I first heard it because it was so different to what I had heard before. However, I quickly grew to love the songs, and henceforth went and bought The Fragile after that. If a PHM song is played live now, I go batshit insane.
PHM is the most accessible to me. But I was really into synth pop at one point, however, Trent really makes it his own on PHM and a lot of the sound's on that record are very unique and intriguing for everyone in general no matter how much you have heard hahaha. Thanks for sharing!

martin_b
08-20-2013, 03:34 AM
The Fragile. 15th November, 1999.

I remember this day. It was a little bit cold and cloudy. I bought it in a local store and started to listen. I remember these first guitar riffs of the "Somewhat Damaged". It was something extraordinary... It was like a third BIG BANG! (*)

Next, it was:
- TDS (February 2000)
- PHM (March 2000)
- Broken (June 2000)
- Fixed (July 2000)
- TFA (January 2001)

(*) The second BIG BANG was in 1996, when Quake (1) video game was published, while the first BIG BANG was about "1,000,000" years ago. ;-)

InvitingmeAway
08-20-2013, 03:38 AM
The Fragile. 15th November, 1999.

I remember this day. It was a little bit cold and cloudy. I bought it in a local store and started to listen. I remember these first guitar riffs of the "Somewhat Damaged". It was something extraordinary... It was like a third BIG BANG! (*)

Next, it was:
- TDS (February 2000)
- PHM (March 2000)
- Broken (June 2000)
- Fixed (July 2000)
- TFA (January 2001)

(*) The second BIG BANG was in 1996, when Quake (1) video game was published, while the first BIG BANG was about "1,000,000" years ago. ;-)
I envy you. I remember listening to With_Teeth as a whole when I first got it. Right Where It Belongs captivated me.

[parasite]
08-20-2013, 03:44 AM
I first bought march of the pigs 9" & cd1 & 2, after a good friend of mine lent me broken and fixed albums, and then I was hooked. it's in my top 5 nin tracks and I remember listening to it full blast, or as loud as I could get it, I'm now wondering if this is why I have tinnitus now? we'd go crazy at those rock nights, when any nin was played and I owe him so much, for introducing me to nin, the cure, depeche mode, front 242, and all the alike,
I had everything up until and including the fragile, then I spilt from my then girlfriend and she ever so nicely sold all the music I owned, every vinyl, cd, tape, vhs (except closure), oh and my mini disc collection too, as you probably can guess I wasn't very happy! as there was a good 12 years of crazy collecting, this all happened in 2002, and just now I've started getting things again,

I still think the downward spiral era was easy for me to get into, as I'm sure this is when my BPD started to kick in slowly then gradually got worse year by year,

Kamelion
08-20-2013, 04:03 AM
The Downward Spiral was my first, right after it came out. A couple of girlfriends had made mix tapes for me (one with stuff from PHM, one with stuff from Broken) so I was hungry for more. Never looked back :).

Ryan
08-20-2013, 04:05 AM
I was into Tool around 2002/2003. Went on amazon and listened to samples of NIN because of the association between Maynard and Trent.

Liked what I heard, ordered PHM and TDS, went from there. I got into NIN right before the old site/forums went down and sort of really got into it when the Bleedthrough stuff was announced.

hobochic
08-20-2013, 04:08 AM
I remember not having a clue of what NIN was while browsing through CD's in record stores in the early 90's, and always noticing Broken by it's simple design. A few months later I noticed the same cover but blue and so I picked both up and preview listened to Fixed in the store with some expensive headphones. I was into punk rock and some hip hop at the time but these two records won me over instantly. It was crystal clear but it sounded like the sound system was gonna blow up; it was polished but still raw; and "the singer" felt like a distant and organic consciousness fighting with and against the wall of digital machines. I was pretty much hooked on NIN since then.

Halo Infinity
08-20-2013, 05:08 AM
The first NIN album I got would have to be The Downward Spiral. I got Broken and The Fragile afterwards. That was around autumn of 2002 in my junior year of high school. I had a friend at the time that got me into Marilyn Manson, and after he saw how much I loved Antichrist Superstar, Mechanical Animals, and Holy Wood, he immediately recommended Nine Inch Nails to me. Broken, The Downward Spiral, and The Fragile were his first three recommendations.

However, I first listened to them on burnt CD-Rs, and I made sure to buy them ASAP after being so stoked with in the first few listens. We don't really speak that much these days, considering how we grew apart after high school, and how he moved to another state, but we're still cool as ever whenever we catch up, and I thank him for getting me into NIN, which is why those albums are in some ways a constant reminder of our friendship in high school.

telee.kom
08-20-2013, 05:11 AM
Year Zero and that awesome colour changing CD. Still one of my best buys ever

thetourist
08-20-2013, 05:27 AM
The Downward Spiral back in the days, a short time after it came out. First song I heard was Head Like A Hole, short after that I heard March of the pigs and then I was hooked. TDS is still my absolute favorite.

SM Rollinger
08-20-2013, 05:45 AM
summer of 1995, local pawn shop, The Downward Spiral. It was just the CD with the jewel case, no booklet or slipcase.

piggy
08-20-2013, 05:47 AM
My first purchase was FDTS in around 1996. At that time I had been listening to my brother's copy of PHM and loving the hell out of it. I spotted FDTS in a Fred Meyer for $5.99 and I bought it based on the fact that it seemed like a good value for the money. I loved it from first listen and it's still my very favorite remix album. This spurred me on to checking out TDS and it wasn't long before I was engulfed in the rest of the NIN catalog that was available in those days.

Ruined
08-20-2013, 05:52 AM
1989, "Down In It" single.

BenAkenobi
08-20-2013, 05:58 AM
2002, And all that could have been (live)

theimage13
08-20-2013, 06:07 AM
Pretty sure it was the copy of TDS that I bought at a garage sale that I'd ridden my bike to. It was the only way to purchase anything with a Parental Advisory label on it without my parents finding out, as there were no music stores I could get to without my parents driving me. (Coincidentally, the initials MJK are scrawled on the disc. I always thought that was funny).

But the first NIN material I ever actually had my hands on was...well, it was also TDS. Only it was from the library; my other source of things I could get my hands on without my mom noticing. What a rebel I was.

*cough*

KarenLeslie
08-20-2013, 06:19 AM
PHM, on cassette.

Actually, the first NIN I ever heard was Closer on the radio, around the time TDS came out, and at the time, I HATED it. I remember complaining to my Mom that the song was just shock value, using the F-word to drum up attention. I also heard Hurt a lot on the radio and groaned every time I heard that piano intro. Then one night I was listening to my normal rock station around midnight, and they played Head Like a Hole and I really liked it, which confused me; I thought I knew what NIN was, but HLAH sounded nothing like Closer or Hurt.

So I bought a cassette of PHM, was kind of shocked by how different the album was from what I was expecting, and from there I was hooked. The next NIN purchase for me was Broken, also on cassette; I think my Mom bought it for me as a reward for doing well on a math test. Little did she know!

Dethbryte
08-20-2013, 08:01 AM
I actually bought nearly all of NIN's catalouge on the same day when I finally got my first job in 2004. Yeah, I know.

eversonpoe
08-20-2013, 08:20 AM
i had heard a few NIN songs on the radio (head like a hole, terrible lie, closer, hurt) and liked them enough, but never felt compelled to buy anything.

then the lost highway soundtrack came out when i was 10, and i was a huge smashing pumpkins fan already, so i bought it for "eye" and fell in love with the perfect drug.

two years later, i knew the fragile was coming out (which was a miracle because i still had dial-up internet), and my next door neighbor whose kids i carpooled with happened to be going to target that day and asked if i wanted anything. i very calmly said "the new nine inch nails album" and she said "ok!"

i ended up writing an essay in college about my first experience listening to the album, because it was so surreal. i, sadly, don't remember most of that experience anymore, but it's still my favorite NIN album. it was what made the world finally start making sense to my already clinically depressed 12-year-old self, and i was hooked from there. i started buying every halo i could find at all the local CD stores, and it also began me collecting vinyl (i don't think it was the first record i bought, but it was certainly one of the first).

ninedead
08-20-2013, 08:29 AM
phm on cassette tape(ended up replacing it multiple times after wearing out each copy) changed my life. im a 34 year old nin fanboy and have been since that day. and proud of it hah

UninTY
08-20-2013, 08:36 AM
My first NIN purchase was the Sin single. I remember going crazy trying to find a record store that had it in stock. Eventually drove 45 mins to pick it up. At the time it was the only way to get my hands on "Get Down Make Love". And the rest, as they say, is history. :)

trollmanen
08-20-2013, 08:51 AM
Further Down The Spiral, got it from a friend sometime in late 1995; those Mr. Self Destruct remixes were unreal to me at the time, I'd heard nothing like it. Since then, I've purchased everything on it's release date.

CRIMinal
08-20-2013, 08:54 AM
I believe my first NIN purchase was Broken. I bought it shortly after The Downward Spiral came out. After that I started collecting all of the releases and close to 20 years later and I am still doing it.

tony.parente
08-20-2013, 09:14 AM
Pretty Hate Machine.
...in 2004 haha.

Then I bought With_Teeth when it came out the following year, and it all snowballed from there.

EndlessLoveless
08-20-2013, 09:21 AM
Fixed. And then when I listened and was like WTF, these arent the exact songs, I bought broken. This was before I understood what it was to have a "remix" album and before NIN did them on a regular basis. It was like '93 or '94. Still love fixed though.

InvitingmeAway
08-20-2013, 09:35 AM
I actually bought nearly all of NIN's catalouge on the same day when I finally got my first job in 2004. Yeah, I know.

We buy NIN in bulk;)

Volk
08-20-2013, 09:52 AM
Pretty Hate Machine on cassette.

ltrandazzo
08-20-2013, 10:06 AM
Went to Slackers CDs & Games in March, 2002 to trade in a bunch of old games and whatnot. I decided that I would finally give NIN a shot and bought the deluxe edition of AATCHB & The Fragile. It was perfect listening music since we were getting ready to take a family trip to Chicago over spring break. I listened to everything on the Amtrak ride up and was hooked. I started completing my personal collection of the discography when we came home the next week.

Amaro
08-20-2013, 10:20 AM
The Fragile in 2002, at Sam Goody in the Eden Prairie, Minnesota mall. (Where they filmed Mallrats. :rolleyes:) I had no clue what I was hearing when Somewhat Damaged came on, and then the rest (the title track, Even Deeper, Into The Void and Starfuckers, inc. ringing a bell from then), played on a Phillips boom box. I remember only having heard Hurt and Head Like A Hole (downloaded through KaZaa) from NIN in the days leading up to deciding to get an album. I didn't know they were singles, I only knew they were awesome.

I was pretty down and depressed then, age 14 or 15. I watched The Lord of The Rings: Twin Towers in the mall just before getting it, and I have that movie's ticket stub filed in the same copy of The Fragile, which is now signed by Trent (the album cover, not the movie stub).

I never thought about it till now--just some 3 years after getting into NIN through The Fragile, hours before my second NIN show, I had the opportunity to meet the guy, and he signs what is a most personally dear album of mine.

greyskies13
08-20-2013, 10:23 AM
My first purchase was The Downward Spiral, I was 14, it changed my world.

Shadaloo
08-20-2013, 10:38 AM
Further Down The Spiral. I had seen Closer on MTV and wanted more. I saw that the song was on 'Something something spiral'. So I got it, as it was the first thing I found, but the concept of a remix album was entirely foreign to me - seriously, I had no idea - and I fucking hated it, wondering why the guitar was so repetitive over a six-minute track (I was a young buck who liked Metallica at the time - I thought Eraser (polite) was a joke track or a skit or some sort of weird intermission piece). Then once I found out what it was, I got TDS soon enough, and came back to it a year later with touch more child's maturity (being fourteen at the time) and gained a whole new appreciation for it. Still one of my faves.

_Ruiner
08-20-2013, 10:50 AM
My first NIN purchase was a GA ticket from a scalper under a bridge next to the amphitheater on 6/2/2006. That concert changed me

Mr.Metheus
08-20-2013, 10:51 AM
With Teeth.

The longer story:

When I was in high school I saw the Closer video on MTV a few times and went online to check out NIN's discography. At the time, The Fragile was the newest album and I didn't think my mom would let me buy a CD with a song called "Starfuckers, Inc." on it so I just let it go. A few years later I was at a Korn concert and they played "a new Nine Inch Nails song" that I really liked. A few months later one of my friends got WT and played it for me. THTF sounded familiar so it might have been the one that I had heard. My friend told me that I must have misunderstood because "there's no way that Trent Reznor would let Korn play one of his new songs". But, that's how I remember it. I bought With Teeth and then started working my way through the rest.

I still regret not finding a way to get The Fragile... just think, I could have entirely skipped the Korn phase if I had discovered NIN earlier! :rolleyes:

broevol
08-20-2013, 10:53 AM
PHM on cassette. Would have been around '92....broken and fixed shortly after that.

chroipahtz
08-20-2013, 10:58 AM
Heard Closer on the radio, and it intrigued me, as I remembered it being the first time that any music really "clicked" with me or interested me significantly. Later on I saw the Closer video on MTV and it was at that point I knew I had to find out what the deal was with this band. I asked for The Downward Spiral for Christmas and listened to it quite a bit. This was in 1998 or so, so shortly after that, The Fragile came out. The best years of NIN without all the waiting? Hell yes.

kel
08-20-2013, 11:01 AM
closer cassette single w/live march of the pigs b-side at musicland. 8th grade, 1994. OMG THEY SOLD ME SOMETHING WITH A PARENTAL ADVISORY STICKER.

ChasingTheGhost
08-20-2013, 11:02 AM
I've bought The Downward Spiral and And All That Could Have Been around 2004. I think I was 13.

EndlessLoveless
08-20-2013, 11:03 AM
Related to me earlier post of Fixed...i still prefer the version of wish on fixed. I think its track one (its been a while). But after all those remixed beats, a couple minutes in, when the "album" version finally kicks in, its awesome. The drums sound live, and i love the harmony vocals in the chorus. Good shit man.

Ax Mr. L
08-20-2013, 11:06 AM
My first purchase was TDS and AATCHB in 2004. My cousin introduced me to NIN then, he borrowed PHM and AATCHB to me and I've been listening to them since.

Toadflax
08-20-2013, 11:23 AM
Pretty Hate Machine. Circa 1993. I was 11 years old. My friend had made himself a mixed tape I copied from him that included six songs from PHM. I was hooked and it ended up being probably my second or third CD ever. Pretty sure New Kids On The Block and MC Hammer were the first.

Then a year or two later, at the mall with my mom, I asked her to buy me The Downward Spiral (on cassette). She did, but then when we got home and she read the lyrics, we had to take it back. We exchanged it for Broken on CD.

Don't worry, I eventually got The Downward Spiral again (on CD this time).

Ripe(withdecay)
08-20-2013, 11:54 AM
My first NIN purchase was "Year Zero". I watched the music video for "Survivalism" on MTV2 when it came out and I was hooked. My mom was working at my local K-Mart and I told her to buy it for me. I remember first listening to "Hyperpower!" then "The Beginning Of The End", it was a life changing experience.

imail724
08-20-2013, 11:55 AM
Deluxe Edition of TDS in 2005. I remember when I was buying it at my local record shop, the guy asked me if I wanted to buy the new one (WT at the time) but I said no because I had only heard TDS at that point and still wasn't sure if I was going to be a huge fan. Needless to say I ended up buying WT eventually (3 copies at that).

XenoSentience
08-20-2013, 12:13 PM
My first personal NIN purchase was With_Teeth around when the Only video was getting heavy rotation. I remember my dad being surprised at me finding great enjoyment in a band he had formerly listened to heavily (he had Halos 02-10 as a part of his large CD collection when I was a kid). Having heard some NIN as a kid (finding particular enjoyment in TPD), W_T was pretty easy for me to get into. Some songs, as OP mentioned at the start of the thread, continue to be highly valued to me in NIN's library. Sunspots, EDIETS, RWIB, THTF, Home, etc.

Shit, I even did a powerpoint on THTF in like 9th-10th grade as part of my terrible Computers class.

So yeah, good times.

EndlessLoveless
08-20-2013, 12:16 PM
Shit all of you newer nin fans are so lucky... not experiencing the 5+ years wait for new material in between releases...The Fragile was THE most anticipated release of all time for me. And then again for with teeth.

ninsp
08-20-2013, 12:18 PM
Pretty Hate Machine when I was like 5. I couldn't even reach the section it was in. The Circuit City guy had to get it for me. Remember this vividly. No lie

ultimatebdp
08-20-2013, 12:53 PM
My older brother was given PHM on cassette in 1989 and since he was into old metal bands he gave it to me. Shortly afterwards, I got the 3 cd singles for that album (didn't even have a cd player yet) and have bought every album since Broken the day it was released. I still have the black plastic bag that says NIN - the fragile 9/21/99 that came with the midnight release!! Two ex-girlfriends have tried to throw that away over the years. They're gone, yet the bag remains.

AlanMorlock
08-20-2013, 12:54 PM
Years ago I bought Further Down the Spiral by mistake whilst attempting to seek out The Downward Spiral.

ninsp
08-20-2013, 01:29 PM
Does it count that my Mom bought a Lollapalooza ticket while she was pregnant with me and saw NIN in 91 while pregnant?

martin_b
08-20-2013, 02:05 PM
The Fragile. 15th November, 1999.

I remember this day. It was a little bit cold and cloudy. I bought it in a local store and started to listen. I remember these first guitar riffs of the "Somewhat Damaged". It was something extraordinary... It was like a third BIG BANG! (*)

Next, it was:
- TDS (February 2000)
- PHM (March 2000)
- Broken (June 2000)
- Fixed (July 2000)
- TFA (January 2001)

(*) The second BIG BANG was in 1996, when Quake (1) video game was published, while the first BIG BANG was about "1,000,000" years ago. ;-)

Hmmm... Well, to be honest with you, the really first NIN related album (not NIN album) was the soundtrack for Quake. So this was my first NIN related thing I bought. The first NIN album was TF. :-)

opal
08-20-2013, 02:22 PM
1994. HLAH single.

Bought it while I was on vacation in NY, ploughing through EVERY record store I could find there.

Before that, I'd seen the HLAH Video on MTV's Alternative Nation. Couldn't believe my eyes/ears.

From then on, NIN was my favourite band.

OSLIN
08-20-2013, 02:28 PM
My older cousin had TDS sitting in her collection and I picked it up just based on the packaging.
Then I asked if I could borrow it. Soon as Mr. Self Destruct started in, I was sold.
Then I saved up my Christmas money that year, I was 14 turning 15. I bought Broken, PHM, Fixed, Closer to God, Further Down the Spiral all at the mall for about $100.
The rest is history.

snaapz
08-20-2013, 02:42 PM
I'd heard HLAH, Dead Souls, MOTP & Closer a few times... TDS just came out and I was in grade 8. Now in grade 9 (high school). Everyone (the people I liked) was fucking insane for NIN. My friend showed me Closure videos and I knew NIN was different and pushed the limits... but this wasn't simple shock factor.. it was more creative and thought out. I think NIN replaced Nirvana for a lot of people.

I made my first purchase, ended up with Broken. 'Help Me I'm In Hell' hypnotized me immediately. I played the CD daily for a few months, then made a life changing decision. I purchased TDS.

Perhaps I liked NIN so much because I was also into sports at the time. I collected baseball and hockey cards, I liked NIN because (like cards) each item or song was different than the other one. This wasn't AC/DC or Def Leppard...

Now I'm fat and old, I still listen to NIN.

Kamelion
08-20-2013, 02:50 PM
Does it count that my Mom bought a Lollapalooza ticket while she was pregnant with me and saw NIN in 91 while pregnant?

It should. We went to Disneyworld when my wife was pregnant with our youngest child. I still have to remind myself that he wasn't there normally with the rest of us, heh heh...

MrSlfDstruct
08-20-2013, 02:51 PM
First NIN purchase was TDS in the spring of '97, although I had owned The Crow soundtrack since '94 and, at that time, didn't care much for Dead Souls (I was just starting to branch out from what my parents listened to).

I found TDS through my love of Manson at the time, I bought Lost Highway for Apple of Sodom and caught The Perfect Drug after somehow finding out that it was a big deal that NIN had released a new track. That led me to seek out more.

I had never heard Closer, although I was familiar with the famous chorus, and I remember thinking it was not at all what I thought it would sound like. It was at a Blockbuster Music in some mall in Chapel Hill NC that I'm sure is demolished by now. That started a binge and by that summer I had picked up all the Halos save a few harder to find releases, and NIN had eclipsed Manson for me.

After that I realized why it was a big deal when TPD was released. That couple years waiting for The Fragile was a motherfucker, but I'll never forget the VMA's and finally walking into Best Buy on September 21, 1999 and finally seeing a new NIN record on the shelf.

toomanyrifts
08-20-2013, 03:16 PM
[With_Teeth] I loved Only on the radio, and had thought THTF was solid as well, so I bought the whole record. I remember hating YKWYA? cause it had swearing, and The Collector because it was "so boring." First track I actually liked that wasn't a single was "Love Is Not Enough." Oddly, I find LINE to be boring now, and love YKWYA? and the Collector.

Oh, and funny thing: I despise Only live. It just....it's too different live. It's the only song I wish they'd never play live again. I can even put up with the songs played 80571 times like Closer, MOTP and HLAH, but Only....please, so bad live...

Space Suicide
08-20-2013, 03:18 PM
A physical copy of the Every Day Is Exactly The Same Single in August 2006. I know, I know. I'm such a noob to the band.

Khrz
08-20-2013, 03:23 PM
The cassette tape of Broken, back in early 94, late 93. Second hand, so I was furious when I heard a huge weird gap in the middle (or something, don't remember). Later I bought the CD and recorded the tape over with the CD tracks, sans silence. That tape has surely disappeared since then, but well, it's only worth the memories, thanks to that teen me-moron...

tw3rbz
08-20-2013, 06:00 PM
My dad had Broken and I remember taking it from him to listen to and being amazed. Last was the first NIN song I had heard, and from then I refused to listen to anything that wasn't NIN. My dad also later got TDS and I got it from him, but my first purchase was TDTWWA single. The anticipation between TDS and TF was insane. I don't think many can say that was their first NIN purchase

InvitingmeAway
08-20-2013, 06:34 PM
[With_Teeth] I loved Only on the radio, and had thought THTF was solid as well, so I bought the whole record. I remember hating YKWYA? cause it had swearing, and The Collector because it was "so boring." First track I actually liked that wasn't a single was "Love Is Not Enough." Oddly, I find LINE to be boring now, and love YKWYA? and the Collector.

Oh, and funny thing: I despise Only live. It just....it's too different live. It's the only song I wish they'd never play live again. I can even put up with the songs played 80571 times like Closer, MOTP and HLAH, but Only....please, so bad live...
I actually do like it live, and I love The Line Begins To Blur. But I understand it's all opinion and I appreciate you sharing!! With_Teeth is a good starter for people trying to get into NIN.

InvitingmeAway
08-20-2013, 06:37 PM
The cassette tape of Broken, back in early 94, late 93. Second hand, so I was furious when I heard a huge weird gap in the middle (or something, don't remember). Later I bought the CD and recorded the tape over with the CD tracks, sans silence. That tape has surely disappeared since then, but well, it's only worth the memories, thanks to that teen me-moron...
Yeah that's the stuff that makes albums cool!! Like Follow The Leader starts out with silence, you know. But Broken is an album that will really break you into NIN for sure. Thanks for sharing.

True Fallacy
08-20-2013, 06:46 PM
Nine Inch Nails -- The Fragile
Circa 2001

I was a freshman in High School, and the opening notes of "Somewhat Damaged" caught my attention from a friends portable CD player. Proceeded to steal the record from a pot dealer who shorted me on a bag (..sorry Furby), and sat down and listened to it (stoned) that night. I dived into NIN feet first that night, and have never been the same sense. The Fragile is my musical "North Star"; everything I work on or listen to inevitably gets compared to it. It's AMAZING.

**I didn't actually "purchase" it until 10 years later.. And if they finally put it out on vinyl as a reissue, I'll be purchasing it again.

pigpen
08-20-2013, 06:47 PM
My best friend at the time lent me a tape of TDS which he had gotten from his uncle.
I saved up a couple bucks and bought the single for The Perfect Drug, and PHM.. I hated PHM, but LOVED LOVED TPD.

So yeah, that's why my list of favorite nin records always has a place near the top for TPD single.

InvitingmeAway
08-20-2013, 06:49 PM
My best friend at the time lent me a tape of TDS which he had gotten from his uncle.
I saved up a couple bucks and bought the single for The Perfect Drug, and PHM.. I hated PHM, but LOVED LOVED TPD.

So yeah, that's why my list of favorite nin records always has a place near the top for TPD single.
Great song. Thanks for sharing :D

rhet
08-20-2013, 06:54 PM
My parents bought TDS after hearing Closer on the radio and I promptly stole it. Then I asked for a NIN cd for Christmas that year and they got me FDTS which at first pissed me off cause it wasn't the one I wanted (im not sure what i did want) but then I fell in love with it. The first one I actually bought myself was the Perfect Drug Versions which I remember playing over and over for hours at a time on my Walkman hah. I was 12.

Bluepiggy
08-20-2013, 06:55 PM
The first album I heard was pretty hate machine. I remember at 12 years old listening to SICNH, and simply falling in love with the feeling of the song. I honestly could not relate to that emotion at that age. I just knew it was something special. My friend had stole the album from his older sister, so technically I did not buy PHM first. This was around the time right before TDS came out, when it was actually out I got my sister to buy the album for me (I was only 12 at the time and it had a parental advisory sticker and the record stores by me were pretty rigid about that)
Been buying his albums on release day ever since.
I have yet to be disappointed.
Though the first three albums have a special place in my heart, The fragile and Year Zero are my favorites.

sleepless
08-20-2013, 06:56 PM
Further Down the Spiral, on CD, sometime late in 1995. (I was 11 years old.)

I had no idea what I was buying. I must have recognized the name "nine inch nails" from listening to the radio, but I am pretty sure I wouldn't have been able to name a nin song.

I immediately really liked the Rick Rubin remix of Piggy (and had no idea what to do with the rest of the album - it took me years to appreciate it.) Within the next year or so I picked up the entire back-catalog and starting with The Perfect Drug I was buying each release on release day.

Fist Fuck
08-20-2013, 07:16 PM
And All That Could Have Been (CD) in 2004. I was either 13 or 14 and I just wanted to get the CD with the most songs on it (that logic...). I loved it. I had already been a Manson fan for a few years and after reading his autobiography for the second time I thought to myself: "I really should check out this band Nine Inch Nails" so I bought the live CD, and right after that The Fragile while I was still waiting for the recently announced With Teeth album. Good times.

Carbon Soul
08-20-2013, 07:26 PM
First NIN album I listened to was Things Falling Apart, which was just a random purchase to burn up a gift card. After consulting with a friend ("dude, that's just a remix album"), they pointed me to The Downward Spiral, The Fragile, and With Teeth (which had just leaked that week). Going through the entire NIN discography after that was one of the best music experiences I've had. TFA wound up being one of the best purchases I've made.

Winter Is Coming
08-20-2013, 07:35 PM
First just wanna say that this might be my first ever post that isn t in the random questions thread or the tour journals sub forum And that includes the old forum. Been a lurker mostly since just prior to WT coming out iirc.


Ill kinda tell my whole nin history because my first purchase doesn't feel all that significant. My only exposure to nin that remember pre-2002 or 2003 were the videos for TPD, at the time I remember liking the video as much as, if not more than the song. The other was WITT which I loathed. I guarantee every time it was played on Muchmusic I complained that they weren't playing Korn. Btw Much is like MTV in Canada, in more ways than one, in that they both used to actually play music videos and now mainly show reality tv with pregnant 16 year olds.

First time I ever really "heard" nin was during a convo about music with a friend, I get the feeling we were talking about Manson or maybe Orgy, when he asked if I'd ever heard of them. He put in the Right disc of the fragile and I've been hooked ever since. into the Void is one of my all time faves to this day, maybe even #1.

The weird part is that I didn't rush out and buy a bunch of nin records. I borrowed then burned The Fragile. Pretty sure I did the same with TDS. First nin cd I bought was definitely Broken. Used record shop here in Calgary. Never forget putting it in the car with my dad and being so letdown at first. Took a few listens before I began to appreciate it.

Actually with the exception of my first listen to TF, I'm not sure if I've ever liked either the first single or the first listen to any subsequent release that I listened to. I've learned by now to give it a while before coming to judgement. Remember I hated PhM. Opposite reason of Broken, which I didn't like at first because it was too heavy, PHM sounded so dated to me. So 80s. Didn't really like THTF or Survivalism at first either. remember being so letdown the first time I heard All the Love in the World. Wasn't a fan of came back haunted either, at first.

Now I pretty much love all of it and would say that nin has been my favourite band since that first time I listened to TF.

Tl;dr broken and I thought it sucked. But now I think it's awesome.

Leviathant
08-20-2013, 08:10 PM
I was going through my dad's CDs when I was maybe 14 (so, 1994), and he had the Head Like a Hole Maxi-Single. I got completely sucked into the Down In It and Terrible Lie remixes. NIN was blowing up but I was completely oblivious because MTV sux, radio sux. I bought Pretty Hate Machine and would listen to it on repeat while I slept, it was so good. Sanctified and Something I Can Never Have were probably my favorite moments on the album, but on the whole, it had this depth that other music just didn't have. The other bands I listened to at the time were The Offspring (Greenday sux) and The Art of Noise (thanks again for the interesting CD collection, dad). I really loved the differences between the different versions of HLAH, TL, and DII.

Months later, a friend of mine dubbed a copy of a tape he had with other NIN songs on it - March of the Pigs, Closer, Piggy, Dead Souls, and maybe Hurt. I remember very distinctly going to the mall with friends, and I asked my dad if I could bum some cash from him. He gave me $20, which was just enough money for The Downward Spiral. And suddenly, no other music mattered. Nothing sounded like this. Not even close. I woke up to the fact that Nine Inch Nails was actually blowing up, Hurt was in heavy rotation on MTV and in their commercials all the time. I bought Closer to God and Further Down the Spiral, subscribed to alt.music.nin, and you might say things escalated from there.

ryanmcfly
08-20-2013, 08:17 PM
My aunt tried to get me into NIN when With Teeth came out back in 2005. I was 12 around that time. I liked The Hand that Feeds and Head Like a Hole, the rest was boring. So I never really got into them until later. Fast forward to the beginning of April 2007. I was browsing the music dvd section of Barnes and Nobles I think, and I came across Beside You in Time. I was curious, so I made my parents buy it for me. I went home and was blown away by how amazing it was. The next week Year Zero came out, so I got it with the Survivalism shirt and I was hooked. So Beside You in Time is very near and dear to me. I even have the cover as my phone case.

tricil
08-20-2013, 08:20 PM
It was TDS, in 1994, I was 11.

It was in Lechmere in Syracuse, NY - I carefully removed the parental advisory sticker from under the shrinkwrap and got my parents to buy it for me promising no bad words. Being 11, I was on my way to a sleep over at my friends' house and I left the opened CD in the car - they read the lyrics and refused to let me listen to it!

But I found out where they hid it and listened to it everyday after school and before they got home for a year before they let me just have it (and bought further down the spiral on the day of release).

binaryhermit
08-20-2013, 08:21 PM
I think mine was With Teeth, right when it came out.

EarthsLastNight
08-20-2013, 08:25 PM
I actually had known about NIN for quite a long time (Closer on the radio, Se7en opening titles, other singles), but in 2005 I downloaded With Teeth off the internet after hearing the WT singles on KROQ. I listened to WT going to and from a college summer school class that I needed to take. Beside You In Time was an IMMEDIATE stand out. I remember driving to school as the sun was coming up with that song eerily playing. I was hooked. I stumbled across the NIN hotline, these boards, and the HUGE amount of back catalog that NIN had to offer. My first official purchase came only a month after listening to my pirated WT, and it was The Downward Spiral. But I was addicted by then and soon gobbled up most of the CD library (including singles) within a year. Believe me, discovering that I actually liked NIN, seeing them at the Hollywood Bowl, and buying their entire discography within 6 months was an intense time, many of my friends laughing at my sudden NIN addiction.

Very cool topic, by the way. Memories!

howdidislipinto
08-20-2013, 08:25 PM
(Warning: contains Canadianisms.)

I was 13 or 14, and Much Music was about to play the new NIN video circa 1997, The Perfect Drug. I'd seen people wearing NIN t-shirts, and I think I probably assumed they were more metal-ish. Changed the channel. A few days later I actually watched it, and I was the perfect age for those visuals and that weird-as-fuck sounding song to captivate me. (Looking back it's one of my least favourite NIN songs, but still holds a sentimental place in my heart.)

Of course, money was sparse and not to be spent on soundtracks that could potentially suck other than the one song you liked, so I borrowed The Downward Spiral from my friend. Immediately begged my dad to get it for me. We went to HMV and it was $17.99 and speaking knowledgeably I said, "It won't be cheaper anywhere else! It's in a really fancy case!" He insisted, and we agonizingly walked halfway down the mall to Music World (I think? so many now non-existent chains!) where it was $14.99, and while he of course mocked my earlier overeagerness, he bought it for me. First halo. Close to twenty years ago now. Wow.

Though I didn't have to wait the full five years, I did become a NIN fan right when Trent vanished to create The Fragile, so it still FELT like a really long two years until I lined up outside the HMV Superstore in downtown Toronto at the Nine Inch Nails midnight release sale, which is probably my most memorable NIN purchase even though at that point there had been many in between. Tracking down halos pre-internets was so much fun. And you never knew what hidden gems you might find on any given purchase, since it was pre-downloading and it's not like there were many reviews out there for non-album halos. I miss that.

(I missed that there were a few Canadianisms a couple of posts above me. Yay for other Much Music NIN converts, haha.)

dvdglss
08-20-2013, 08:27 PM
Broken in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, 1996. Why that one, i think because the song titles spoke to me. It's tough being an American foreigner in a different country for middle school. Especially in the diplomatic corps. You're essentially an outcast from the get go, Abroad and at "home" (USA).

So the pissed off feel of the record helped just deal with everyday life.

enen
08-20-2013, 08:31 PM
Friend lent me Broken that he got for Christmas '92 from his older brother and I dropped by the record store the next day and bought the tape. Wish is a track that is unlike no other to me. Still get a rush from hearing that song even today. Also recall being so confused that the main tracks were just on one side of the cassette... used the rewind button a ton.

AnaTorpedo
08-20-2013, 08:32 PM
I was in like 3rd or 4th grade and I saw the Closer video on MTV at the laundromat and was immediately like "WHAT IS THIS OMG MY SOUL!!!!" So I begged my parents to buy me the album. My parents bought me pretty hate machine but I had to go steal downward spiral from this highschool guy in my very small school. He also later got me into KMFDM and Skinny Puppy and Type O Negative and Ministry which was very very cool because we were in a tiny town in northern michigan and you had to special order all that stuff from the local music store. I remember immediately being drawn to Terrible Lie because we had just stopped going to church so that one really resonated haha. Looking back I can't believe my parents let me listen to NIN at that age. I mean, I wasn't even 10! And I also don't know what it says about me that NIN was the first band I heard that really talked about all the stuff I was feeling and made me realize I wasn't alone. Almost 20yrs later and they are still one of my favorite bands and I honestly don't think I would have turned out as happy as I am now without them....

Malechite
08-20-2013, 08:34 PM
I guess technically, I first purchased TDS from the BMG music club I was in, in high school. It was 1995 or 1996 I think... I didn't like it. I was 14, and I just didn't get it. I sold it to a friend for $7... a year later I heard The Perfect Drug on the radio, and somehow my musical tastes evolved in the last year. I re-bought TDS, then bought PHM, and Broken together, and sort of went on a NIN binge... I have been a fan ever since. Ended up getting singles, and closure, etc....leading up to one of the most exciting NIN eras for me. The lead up to the release of The Fragile.

My favorite NIN purchase experience happened right around then. I used to frequent a music shop in Dubuque, IA called "Moondog Music" ... Now, I was definitely on the internet at this time, and I got all my news from nin.net (Seems Like Salvation) but I didn't keep up with NIN news back then like we do now, so I had no idea there was a single coming out this soon. I'm browsing around the store, and I am about to leave when I spot the TDTWWA single on the counter in front of the register. I had NO IDEA this was coming so soon. (it had just came out that day) it was like, $3 so I picked it up and took it home and listened to TDTWWA so many times. Just something about that experience, ninetynine, and all of the marketing leading up to The Fragile release made a pretty big impression, and I remember it vividly 14 years later.

Side note: I also bought The Fragile vinyl at the same record shop for like $30 and it has been my most rewarding musical purchase, and my favorite physical piece of music that I own.

vezzi2024
08-20-2013, 08:57 PM
When I was in 5th grade, my a-hole friends and I used to completely make fun of this kid that sat on the back of the bus with the broken era "n" t-shirt. I mean, we really embarassed the kid, even though he was older. Then one day he gave me a copy of "further down the spiral", and I never gave it back to him. I would just listen to "at the heart of it all" all day on my discman, and I was hooked. Then I signed up for BMG and just bought everything NIN available. I have been ridiculously obsessed ever since, purchasing everything Trent releases, going to over 25 concerts, and rarely listen to anything other than nine inch nails, Trent Reznor projects, or something Trent has turned us to. I really feel bad for the dude we used to make fun of on the bus, because he pretty much gave me one of the most important things in my life.
-Thanks buddy, sorry for being a douche.

fuchal
08-20-2013, 08:58 PM
My first was The Fragile. It took me years to fully get into and appreciate it. I moved on from there.

shin2chi
08-20-2013, 09:07 PM
My first NIN album was PHM in 2004, I was a high school student and some band recommended it. I wasn't a fan, found the album(PHM) intriguing though. Then NIN came to South Korea for the first time in 2007. That gig really turned me into the fan who I am now. I was really touched by them for coming to such a small country and it was an amazing experience to see their live. I began collecting HALOs since then, and I'm so fucking proud of being a NIN fan.

Malechite
08-20-2013, 09:12 PM
When I was in 5th grade, my a-hole friends and I used to completely make fun of this kid that sat on the back of the bus with the broken era "n" t-shirt. I mean, we really embarassed the kid, even though he was older. Then one day he gave me a copy of "further down the spiral", and I never gave it back to him. I really feel bad for the dude we used to make fun of on the bus, because he pretty much gave me one of the most important things in my life.
-Thanks buddy, sorry for being a douche.

@vezzi2024 Look him up on facebook or something and thank him. seriously.

ltrandazzo
08-20-2013, 09:17 PM
When I was in 5th grade, my a-hole friends and I used to completely make fun of this kid that sat on the back of the bus with the broken era "n" t-shirt. I mean, we really embarassed the kid, even though he was older. Then one day he gave me a copy of "further down the spiral", and I never gave it back to him. I would just listen to "at the heart of it all" all day on my discman, and I was hooked. Then I signed up for BMG and just bought everything NIN available. I have been ridiculously obsessed ever since, purchasing everything Trent releases, going to over 25 concerts, and rarely listen to anything other than nine inch nails, Trent Reznor projects, or something Trent has turned us to. I really feel bad for the dude we used to make fun of on the bus, because he pretty much gave me one of the most important things in my life.
-Thanks buddy, sorry for being a douche.

Seriously dude, what Malechite said. If it's possible, anyway. You might end up making his day/week/month/etc. to know that.

Bachy
08-20-2013, 09:23 PM
Strange enough, the first album I purchased, if I'm remembering correctly was the Pretty Hate Machine remaster.

I got into NIN January of 2008.

I was still just getting the feel for the material when Ghosts and The Slip were released.

I want to say the first songs I heard (excluding "Closer" and "The Hand That Feeds") were the AATCHB version of "Head Like a Hole" and "Right Where It Belongs." The latter is what really got my attention since my initial impression of NIN thanks to the aforementioned tracks I had already heard was of this heavy hitting melange of metal and techno/electronic music. I had no idea there was this soft, hauntingly beautiful side to NIN. Listening to "Right Where It Belongs," I just got . . . chills. I still do to this day, the moment the crowd chimes in prior to the final chorus. I don't know, it just struck a nerve with me.

I then went on to download almost any song I could find on LimeWire.

Then March rolled around and Ghosts came out (Free download).

Then "Discipline" (free download as well).

Then The Slip (you get the idea).

Then, well, this is technically my first NIN purchase. A ticket to see the LITS show in Columbus in November.

I knew no one else that was into NIN at the time (still don't) so I made the 400+ mile drive from NIU alone and saw one of the greatest shows of my life.

thevoid99
08-20-2013, 09:24 PM
I don't have a very good memory at all but I do remember that the first NIN record I bought was a cassette version of The Downward Spiral. Then the cassette versions of Broken and then Pretty Hate Machine. All of it in 1994. Then I got into CDs where the first NIN CD I bought was Fixed as it was the first remix album I ever bought. Then Further Down the Spiral in 2 different version and the albums on CD. In late 1995, I got the first of a 2-disc set of Closer to God at a record store in New York City when I was visiting the place with my family to meet my mom's favorite cousin. Then I bought all of the singles from '95 to '97 and anything I can find that related to Nothing Records. I sort of stopped in '98 while I was waiting for The Fragile and I've bought everything in that period in chronological order though it was a bitch to find the 3 WITT singles in 2000 alone. After AATCHB and the DVDs. I stopped again. Then came With Teeth and I only got the single for The Hand That Feeds and Every Day is the Same and I've only purchased albums on CDs since then as the singles became harder and harder to find.

Fragilicity
08-20-2013, 09:29 PM
My first NIN purchase came in 1996 I believe. Quake had come out and I used to go over a friend's house after school to play, loved the music that was on the game. We found out it was NIN and I went to the CD store as soon as I had $10 for mowing my neighbors yard. The album I wanted to buy was TDS but I couldn't afford it with tax so I found an awesome looking CD with Broken on the front. Bought it, loved it. From there it was PHM, TDS, The Fragile and in sequence ever since.

demgoth
08-20-2013, 09:43 PM
First NIN purchases for me were a used copy of The Downward Spiral and a new copy of The Day The World Went Away single right around my 12th birthday in 1999 (August 25th). Pretty much blew my mind at the time, and I would listen to both discs all the way through back to back, every day for a while. Then The Fragile when that came out, same deal and I eventually picked up PHM and Broken. After purchasing and watching the hell out of the AATCHB Live DVD I kinda went on a NIN hiatus I guess, not for any reason in particular. I didn't really get heavily into them again until the end of my freshman year of college, after With Teeth was out for about a year already. I finally saw them live in June 2006 at Jones Beach which was a killer first show to go to I thought, although I was a little mad about missing out on the WT club tour and arena tour, especially their last show at MSG (with QOTSA and DFA1979 nonetheless). Then I became a full-fledged NIN addict and bought every halo, as much vinyl as possible, and went to 11 more shows between August 2008 and my last in September 09 at the Hollywood Palladium. Little bit of a tangent here but can't wait to see them again, Sept. 1st in Philly and hopefully at least 6 Tension shows that I have tickets for already (Boston, Brooklyn, Newark, DC, and Vegas x2)! I say hopefully because life might get in the way of one or two of them but c'est la vie.

richardp
08-20-2013, 09:49 PM
Nothing fancy for me. I was already a Manson fan but hadn't dabbled too far into NIN yet until I saw the WITT video on MTV2's Return of The Rock in fall 1999. Rode my bike to the Best Buy down the street from me and bought The Fragile, and then within the next two weeks ended up buying The Downward Spiral which led me to Closure in which I pretty much was floored by everything on those tapes. The rest is history I guess.

k258
08-20-2013, 09:54 PM
Back in 2005, I was 46 years old and between jobs. I had fallen way behind in music, having spent the prior couple of decades on work and home. Now I had the time to try to catch up. Our local independent radio station had a list of the 100 Best Albums of All Time (as of 2000) on their website. I looked at the top ten and listened to snippets on Amazon. Nirvana, Radiohead, Pearl Jam, Rage, Nine Inch Nails (twice!) - all names I knew, but music I really didn't. I picked a few from the list that sounded good to me - including PHM and TDS, and ordered CDs from Half.com. PHM arrived first. I popped it into my car CD player and rode around with it for about a week. Hmm. Catchy. Good beat. Startlingly intimate. I looked at the insert. "Nine Inch Nails is Trent Reznor." How pretentious, I thought. I felt almost embarrassed about feeling attracted to this music. TDS arrived next. In short order, I devoured everything I could find. Just in time for the release of W_T and the subsequent tour. In November of 2005, I saw my first NIN show - my first concert of any kind in a long, long time - in Madison Square Garden, from way in the back, in seats. The following week, I saw them in Toronto in Spiral seats. The next night, in Montreal, I was at the rail. To date, I've been to 38 shows, as many at the rail as possible. An incredible ride.

I kind of hate being a fan in general, it's humiliating, in a way. I'm used to being a provider, not a consumer. And I really am pretty cynical about most things. But I really love being a fan, too. Like I said, an incredible ride.

InvitingmeAway
08-20-2013, 09:57 PM
My first NIN purchase came in 1996 I believe. Quake had come out and I used to go over a friend's house after school to play, loved the music that was on the game. We found out it was NIN and I went to the CD store as soon as I had $10 for mowing my neighbors yard. The album I wanted to buy was TDS but I couldn't afford it with tax so I found an awesome looking CD with Broken on the front. Bought it, loved it. From there it was PHM, TDS, The Fragile and in sequence ever since. Great way to get introduced to NIN!! Thanks for sharing!

FULLMETAL
08-20-2013, 10:00 PM
Back in high school, a good friend of mine gave me the HLAH maxi-single as a gift. He thought I'd be into this band since I liked PWEI and Art of Noise. I didn't know who NIN were at the time, but as soon as I got home to play it - I could not believe what I was hearing. That weekend, I went into Turtles Records & Tapes and bought Pretty Hate Machine on CD (in a longbox). I remember playing it really loud when my parents weren't home.

Within months, I picked up Sin & PHM on vinyl at Alternative Records and I remember going to Vinyl Fever and Peaches Records (Tampa, FL) looking for 12" singles & imports. Slowly, a collection was being born yet it would be another year before I discovered Goldmine magazine and the treasures within.

Yet despite this growing fandom, I was oblivious to the fact they had come through the area on a couple of tours. I wouldn't see them live until Lollapalooza in 1991.

InvitingmeAway
08-20-2013, 10:03 PM
Back in 2005, I was 46 years old and between jobs. I had fallen way behind in music, having spent the prior couple of decades on work and home. Now I had the time to try to catch up. Our local independent radio station had a list of the 100 Best Albums of All Time (as of 2000) on their website. I looked at the top ten and listened to snippets on Amazon. Nirvana, Radiohead, Pearl Jam, Rage, Nine Inch Nails (twice!) - all names I knew, but music I really didn't. I picked a few from the list that sounded good to me - including PHM and TDS, and ordered CDs from Half.com. PHM arrived first. I popped it into my car CD player and rode around with it for about a week. Hmm. Catchy. Good beat. Startlingly intimate. I looked at the insert. "Nine Inch Nails is Trent Reznor." How pretentious, I thought. I felt almost embarrassed about feeling attracted to this music. TDS arrived next. In short order, I devoured everything I could find. Just in time for the release of W_T and the subsequent tour. In November of 2005, I saw my first NIN show - my first concert of any kind in a long, long time - in Madison Square Garden, from way in the back, in seats. The following week, I saw them in Toronto in Spiral seats. The next night, in Montreal, I was at the rail. To date, I've been to 38 shows, as many at the rail as possible. An incredible ride. I kind of hate being a fan in general, it's humiliating, in a way. I'm used to being a provider, not a consumer. And I really am pretty cynical about most things. But I really love being a fan, too. Like I said, an incredible ride. That's something else man. You just let it all sink in like that and had a great experience!! Really cool, thanks for sharing. I expect you to catch them at the Tension tour

InvitingmeAway
08-20-2013, 10:06 PM
Back in high school, a good friend of mine gave me the HLAH maxi-single as a gift. He thought I'd be into this band since I liked PWEI and Art of Noise. I didn't know who NIN were at the time, but as soon as I got home to play it - I could not believe what I was hearing. That weekend, I went into Turtles Records & Tapes and bought Pretty Hate Machine on CD (in a longbox). I remember playing it really loud when my parents weren't home. Within months, I picked up Sin & PHM on vinyl at Alternative Records and I remember going to Vinyl Fever and Peaches Records (Tampa, FL) looking for 12" singles & imports. Slowly, a collection was being born yet it would be another year before I discovered Goldmine magazine and the treasures within. Yet despite this growing fandom, I was oblivious to the fact they had come through the area on a couple of tours. I wouldn't see them live until Lollapalooza in 1991. I wish I had the chance to listen to them from the beginning! Thanks for sharing

InvitingmeAway
08-20-2013, 10:09 PM
I actually had known about NIN for quite a long time (Closer on the radio, Se7en opening titles, other singles), but in 2005 I downloaded With Teeth off the internet after hearing the WT singles on KROQ. I listened to WT going to and from a college summer school class that I needed to take. Beside You In Time was an IMMEDIATE stand out. I remember driving to school as the sun was coming up with that song eerily playing. I was hooked. I stumbled across the NIN hotline, these boards, and the HUGE amount of back catalog that NIN had to offer. My first official purchase came only a month after listening to my pirated WT, and it was The Downward Spiral. But I was addicted by then and soon gobbled up most of the CD library (including singles) within a year. Believe me, discovering that I actually liked NIN, seeing them at the Hollywood Bowl, and buying their entire discography within 6 months was an intense time, many of my friends laughing at my sudden NIN addiction. Very cool topic, by the way. Memories! Thanks, and thanks for sharing

Shnoorum
08-20-2013, 10:10 PM
Before knowing anything about NIN, I assumed they were some Led Zeppelinish sounding band. Then I saw the video for A Perfect Drug and Closer and realised that was not quite the case. I then set out to buy one of their albums. I only got into music as a whole afew years before this and found their CD's bloody well confusing and frustrating. I knew nothing of remixes or anything like that so I was wondering why their songs kept appearing on more than one album. The first album of theirs I actually bought was Things Falling Apart. I don't really know what the general consensus of that particular remix album is when it comes to the NIN fanbase but I loved it then and I still do now. Probably not the best first pick for someone who didn't understand remixes as it really did confuse the fuck out of me but atleast I enjoyed it

bgalbraith
08-20-2013, 10:13 PM
The Fragile, 1999

I had previously been aware of NIN as the band that did Closer and was involved with Quake. Then there was the Edward Gorey inspired video for The Perfect Drug which immediately drew me in, but I never bought anything NIN-related at the time nor bothered to explore beyond the bits I'd encountered.

When I was a freshman in college I was struggling with major depression. I saw the NIN logo on a double CD album in my university bookstore while randomly browsing the music bin and decided to give it a shot. It was amazing. I connected with that music on such a fundamental level emotionally. I ended up just playing Left over and over again, not even bothering to swap discs to see what was on Right. To this day The Fragile still has the power to evoke strong emotional reactions from me. Those eight opening notes on Somewhat Damaged...

matt925
08-20-2013, 10:27 PM
The Fragile, probably around 2002-2003.

I had known of nin since closer came out and always casually liked them, but had never really given them a chance and gotten an album. I was a huge hip hop head through high school and beyond (still am, to a degree). Anyway at the time I was listening to more "dark" music and as cliche as it is I was a pretty depressed dude. I kept thinking back to them and ordered a used copy of the fragile off amazon.

Mind. Blown.

Bought every past release and became obsessed. Joined ets shortly after, mainly just lurked, during the bleed through days. I was so freaking excited in those days leading up to with teeth. Finally got the chance to see them for the first time at uc davis during the warm up shows in 2005. One of the best experiences of my life. Seen them 10 times since (should've been 12 but he got sick during those last wave goodbye shows and I had to return to the Bay Area).

Needless to say I'm in a different place in my life now and am a pretty happy, well adjusted person. But nine inch nails will always be my favorite artist and the fragile will always be my favorite album.

Cant wait for staples center (and hesitation marks)!

Denim Chicken
08-20-2013, 10:39 PM
It's been cool reading through all of these. Mine was The Fragile in 99. I was almost 13. At the time I was getting over listening to bands like matchbox 20, wallflowers and all of the other 90s pop rock bands. I began to listen to korn, zombie and more alternative. I had known about nin from closer (the video freaked me out as a kid) and head like a hole. I liked it, listened to it on the radio, recorded them to a cassette but that was the extent of it. Until I saw this


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=az-tVQ9HlTw

I was mesmerized. I didn't really even understand it at the time, but I knew it was awesome, and it felt right and this was what music should be like. I got the fragile and was blown away. I couldn't stop listening to it. It was like nothing I had heard. I needed to hear more. I got my mom to order phm, broken and tds from bmg and waited and waited and they finally came and I was hooked. That fragile album cover went through a lot, took a beating, was later signed by Trent and now resides here

http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2808/9557909447_55f97c5f51_n.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/30182335@N02/9557909447/)


So almost 14 years since the fragile, 14 halos later, 23 shows later and its been an incredible ride and I can't fucking wait for this new album and tour.

somethingelse
08-20-2013, 10:49 PM
The first NIN song I heard was Dead Souls while watching The Crow in 1996 and it was the only reason I purchased the sound track for the movie. Around 2001 I would travel to visit my sister who lived about 100 kms (62 miles) away. Her SO at the time had a rather envious CD collection and among them was The Downward Spiral. I gave it a few listens and A Warm Place, Piggy, TDS and Hurt were the songs I really liked at the time. A year later I was at a music store and I picked up The Fragile on sale. For various reasons No, You Don't was the stand out track for me and over time the list of tracks that I listened to regularly grew. I don't think I can name a specific date on when NIN became one of my favourite bands, it just sort of happened over time.

goingincirclez
08-20-2013, 10:53 PM
Heh, in retrospect my answer is kind of ironic in light of the "Everything" wailing, but here goes:

Early 1994 (was it Jan or February), as a shamed latecomer to the alternative scene, I was listening to Q101 when they excitedly debuted a song called "March of the Pigs" from some band with a goofy name I never heard of. It might even have been played for the cage match, I don't recall. But I do remember being utterly repulsed: that discordant syncopated drumming and bashing, and the shouting? WTF? This was supposed to be music? Where was the melody? At what did the guy have against pigs, even symbolism seemed like a stretch? I honestly thought it was a joke, and the DJ slipped a new track from a forthcoming Dr. Demento anthology as a stunt.

At first I would change the station when MotP came on... but there were of course times when it was inconvenient to do so, and I eventually fell in line to accept it as a very interesting diversion... and the song's sense of untethered rage finally started to resonate with something deep within. Still, I wasn't a fan.


Some months later though, I caught the end of a song with a synth breakdown and a piano coda and layering like nothing I had ever heard. I kept my ears perked to catch it and... huh? It's that same band who made the pigs song? WhutDaFuuuu..... omg, this is incredible. My first solid listen and I could not believe the complexity and build and layering, the funky beats, the unhinged aggression... I wished the lyrics weren't so vulgar but goddamn it that music seared into my head's memory bank like nothing else.

The unfortunate thing was I caught this just before a family trip, but hadn't heard it enough to fully commit to memory. I was tortured the whole weekend trying to recall all the portions and layering, until I finally found my cousin's walkman and snuck away for a while, trying to find a Kalamazoo station that might have the right playlist (you fucking whippersnappers don't know how good you have it today!) and praying I might catch it... tirelessly bouncing from 2 and then 3 likely candidates until HOLY SHIT THERE'S THAT HEARTBEAT and I immediately cued the brain recorder for realz...

After returning to Chicago, first thing I did after school was detour on the bus to Best Buy, buy TDS on CD, and walk the 2 miles from there on home while reading the lyrics and soaking in the art, trying to imagine what the music might be like. The two songs I'd heard were so very... different from everything else, and each other...

When I finally got home and could listen, it was an instant watershed moment in music dscovery and life. I immediately connected with that album, and suddenly the pigs made sense.

Within 2 months I had built a collection of the entire back catalog including variations. Through all its incarnations and reinventions, NIN has remained my favorite band. It's melodramatic but I'm not ashamed to admit, through the late 90's TDS (and TF) probably saved my life more than once. I've grown out of that angst, thankfully... and I've been fortunate to see some hot-ticket shows (Fragility 2.0, Chicago Congress '05, Atlantic City '08). As a father of two I unabashedly wield NIN stickers on the family minivan. The Fragile remains my favorite album, but there's not a bad one in the discography. As long as Trent creates soundscapes and writes songs, somehow they still resonate with my own path through life, whatever its current station of call. And for that I'll always be thankful.

And to think, my very first impression of NIN was, literally, a verbalized "What the hell is this crap?"

electromagnetic
08-20-2013, 10:54 PM
PHM, played the shit out of that album along with Disintegration, what a pair for all my teenage woes. Next up was Broken, record stores used to have little stations you could play the CD before you bought it, I really took a chance on that one because frankly I didn't understand it and I thought, despite the posters all over the store claiming it was nine inch nails, that somehow I was being tricked. Infact when i saw Fixed, I just bought it thinking the last record needed some fixing :-). I actually adore those albums now. Few years later, now in junior college, MOTP debuts on KROQ and you bet your ass I recorded that shit on tape and listened to it a hundred times. Then I saw my first show in Hollywood, Trent came running onto the stage blurting out the first lines of a Terrible Lie and I've pretty much bought whatever the fuck that man sells me ever since. I'll be wearing the FUCK/FIND/ETC ME t-shirt to the Broomfield CO show, right next to where I now work!

howdidislipinto
08-20-2013, 11:20 PM
A lot of people are mentioning the TDTWWA single -- remember how fucking awesome that thing was after that long wait? I think it was $2.99, and the title track was so epic -- then the Quiet version just as amazing for the opposite reason. And Starfuckers, which no matter how we all may feel about now, was crazy fun to hear at the time. What an amazing tease in those pre-leak, pre-stream days.

myrdd79
08-20-2013, 11:33 PM
The Fragile, 1999 release day. Deliberately didn't go to uni that day so I could head into town and pick up a copy straight away (my campus neighbour loaned me PHM a few months earlier and I fell in love with it). Came back to my campus ('dorm' for those in US), cranked CD player up, and was blown away by the opening of Somewhat Damaged. Following that I purchased PHM, and then worked my way back up towards The Fragile. Took awhile since I was a poor uni student and was limited to finding something nin every now and then in the second hand stores. Sadly in 2003 I had all my CDs stolen and never replaced them (I had ripped the CDs to mp3s, so couldn't justify repurchasing). But I still have all releases since then in physical form, and splurged and got the signed vinyl version of TGWTDT. Thing of beauty that is.

thefragile_jake
08-21-2013, 12:04 AM
The Downward Spiral on CD in the spring of 2001.

I was getting into different music at the time and trying to open up my ears to harsher more aggressive stuff. A lot of people I knew were into either Rob Zombie or Korn and none of that stuff resonated with me. I remember watching a lot of MTV rewind and countdown shows and anytime they showcased Trent Reznor or Nine Inch Nails, the music and vibe NIN gave off just felt like something really exciting. I saw the video for Closer around that time too and it just totally took me to another world. Maybe it was the teenage angst I was feeling and how artistic and taboo the video was...but I was mesmerized by it. I loved it.

I bought TDS at a local record store early 2001 and it just changed the way I experienced music. It didn't feel like a set of songs....the record felt like an experience. It was a challenging, dense and disturbing album but my ears had never been exposed to something that had such an overall impact on me.

mr9inchnail
08-21-2013, 12:28 AM
First time I ever heard NIN was at my cousin's house (1995ish?). He had dubbed a copy of Broken on cassette. Once I heard it I had to have it. He made me a copy and I'm pretty sure I wore that tape out. One day I finally decided to look in to more of NIN's work. I ordered Pretty Hate Machine and The Downward Spiral. I was so excited when they both finally arrived. I put Pretty Hate Machine in to my CD player and once the music started I was like "WTF is this?" I skipped through most of the songs and thought to myself "This cannot be the same band this has to be a mistake". I ejected Pretty Hate Machine from my CD player and continued to put The Downward Spiral in. I had the same WTF experience as I did with PHM as I was skipping through the songs. How could all these albums be so different from each other? I absolutely hated both of them at first listen but I am certainly glad I eventually gave them a chance. They are both two of my favorite albums of all time. I have pretty much every official halo and a few bootlegs. When I first purchased The Fragile. I couldn't make it passed the first song. I must have played that songs 20 times before I made it to track 2. LOL. Still one of my favorite tracks by NIN and it was also the first song they played the first time I saw them live. I knew it was going to be an amazing night!

Anyway, my experience with PHM and TDS is exactly why I don't like to judge anything TR does without a fair listen and that, for me, won't happen until I have the entire album in my hands.

Mip
08-21-2013, 12:49 AM
In 1994 I was sitting and waiting to see Metallica perform on Woodstock festival on TV. Suddenly this band Nine Inch Nails came on stage and my tv almost exploded!!! I loved the chaos and the beauty in the songs. Short after I went out and bought TDS and have been a massive fan since.

Oh I must ad. I remember sitting and waiting for the return of NIN with The Fragile on the MTV Awards. I recorded that on VHS and watched so many times. I absolutely love that performence!!! Magic.

martin_b
08-21-2013, 01:13 AM
I still have the black plastic bag that says NIN - the fragile 9/21/99 that came with the midnight release!!

How does it look like? I have never seen it.

butter_hole
08-21-2013, 01:16 AM
A friend of mine loved the band and never shut up about them. I remember hearing March of the Pigs on in another friends car and wishing it would be turned off, because "ugh, would you shut up about Nine Inch Nails already". He was a fan of the band but on a more surface level, looking back. I remember he had the lyrics to Hurt written out and hung on his wall and I thought that was just the lamest thing ever (I still do.)But, sanity prevailed and eventually I was sucked in, probably early 2007. I used to take these classes at high school called Computer Studies, which were absolute time wasters, freely-surf-the-net-don't-worry-about-work kinda classes. I had managed to get the entirety of the NIN discography onto my old iPod by then, probably from above mentioned friend. I distinctly remember listening to Reptile and reading ninwiki and getting a little glimmer of obsession in my heart during one of those classes. I'm pretty sure the first time I ever looked at echoingthesound was a few days after the URL was found on that t-shirt. Three or four ETS bans, a few funny moments messing with TR online, hundreds of dollars in merch and CDs and vinyl, a trade with an English girl I've never met for TR's signature, an introduction to the idea that you can be your own one man band with a computer and the rest is history.

I don't really talk to that friend any more but I'm far bigger a fan than he ever was and I have him to thank. I'm sorry I told you to turn off March of the Pigs, man.

jhkoning
08-21-2013, 01:39 AM
The Downward Spiral - sometime during 1995, then I went backwards & purchased everything since as soon as I was able.

hani
08-21-2013, 04:04 AM
first I bought With Teeth in 2006, after seeing Only on MTV, which was my first real exposure to NIN (previously I only knew Closer, and not very well - I heard it once or twice somewhere, but if you'd ask me, I couldn't tell you what it was) and I loved it. then I had my electro years, during which Daft Punk were my #1, and I stopped listening to harder stuff for some time, but when Discipline came out, I instantly loved it (isn't this weird - the guy who loves NIN thanks to Only and Discipline? you must all hate me right now) and I bought The Slip some time later (I live in Poland, so I'm #150,092), and later I took out some cash and ordered PHM remaster, Broken, TDS, Fragile, and YZ - at the same time. now they all shine on my CD shelf. I have to make some room for HM.

GavinCollins420
08-21-2013, 04:32 AM
I first heard NIN when the ARG was going on and Survivalism was leaked/found. The ARG sucked me in big time, and I just had to hear what these NIN guys were all about. So every week when I got paid I'd go to the CD shop and buy a new NIN album. The first was With Teeth which I instantly loved, and then I bought BYIT on release day which totally blew me away. I heard March of the Pigs, Terrible Lie, Head Like a Hole, Closer etc for the first time. I was hooked. BYIT was the catalyst that made me decide "I need everything these guys have ever done, now."

bowler_hat
08-21-2013, 06:30 AM
I got Pretty Hate Machine at some point in 1990/91 after seeing Head Like a Hole on some late night MTV show here in the UK. It was safe to say I was blown away. I was 16 years old. I quickly added to it with the HLAH remix CD (UK version). I got as many of my friends into NIN as I could. The amazing thing is that most of them still are! They may not listen to NIN every day but they are always quick to see them live. I still get thanked 20 years later for getting them into NIN!

My favourite album is The Fragile. I bought it on the release day in 1999. Some tracks I loved straight away, others took a while to grow (isn't that the case with all NIN albums?!)

-tj
08-21-2013, 08:11 AM
phm on cassette.

k258
08-21-2013, 08:21 AM
That's something else man. You just let it all sink in like that and had a great experience!! Really cool, thanks for sharing. I expect you to catch them at the Tension tour
I was at Lollapalooza and have tickets to 2 Tension shows. So far...

r1chard0
08-21-2013, 08:44 AM
Having seen one of the original TDS t shirts and thinking it looked pretty cool it dawned on me since I'd bought it I should probably listen to the record before I wore it..

henryeatscereal
08-21-2013, 11:26 AM
First purchase: "The Downward Spiral" on CD (around December of 1995), my second one was "Further Down the Spiral" on CD too (US Edition).

PS: Oh along "The Downward Spiral" i also bought a "NOW that's what a call music" comp, they both made my day! :P

kevinbeetle
08-21-2013, 12:09 PM
it was either pretty hate machine or broken sometime between '92 and '93, or the downward sprial in the spring of '94. those were my college years. i dont remember much about them.

andre78
08-21-2013, 12:31 PM
Reading most of the comments here I feel so old, cause I just realized I first got into the band 20-plus years ago...

I first discovered NIN somewhere in 1991. By then, MTV had just arrived here in Brazil in October 1990 and it had this daily midnight show called Lado B ( "B Side", our version of MTV US Alternative Nation ) that played videos from lots of different artists, from Bauhaus to PIL up to Pixies and The Residents. Can't precise when, but when I first saw that very strange video with guys being hanged up by cassete tapes, plus the catchy hook, I couldn't blink being afraid of missing the name of that band at the end of the HLAH video. When I saw that those were the so called Nine Inch Nails, a band that I've read in some magazine being attached to this "industrial trend" led by Ministry, I went looking for their record in my local import records store. Couldn't find it and it would take some weeks to import it - besides it was pretty expensive to import only one album at the time ( like, ten times more than the record would cost in the US ). And I knew that only one song from the music video. So I left it hanging for some time, at least until some family members could bring the record from the US or I had the money to import. In the meantime, MTV Brazil showed the video ( and "Down In It" ) a few more times, along with Lollapalooza 1991 interviews. Next time I saw something from the band was only at the end of 1992, on the import records store's showcase: they had just received the Broken record. AND... they also had PHM! Of course I bought them both and became amazed: first with the songs, which were so different from everything I was hearing by then ( as a huge fan of Faith No More and Jane's Addiction, and a few heavy metal acts ) but it also had this electronic 80's feel, like New Order and Depeche Mode, that felt so familiar... I still remember how the bass and effects on "Sanctified" exploded in my stereo. And Broken had this loud, clear guitar sound that I never heard anywhere before. Plus, the Broken cd package was very, very cool.

And that's it: became a huge fan.

I still have both discs up until today and love them, though TDS and The Fragile end up becoming my favorites.

gorast
08-21-2013, 01:45 PM
My favorite stories are the ones like andre78's, the ones from waaaay back. It still boggles my mind to think that people thought Trent actually sold out with Closer. Or Broken, for that matter.

Lew
08-21-2013, 02:44 PM
i bought pretty hate machine on CASSETTE. then broken on cassette. my second broken purchase was cd.
they used to play hlah and dii at a club i went to as a teenager. we loved dancing to these songs. we had no idea who the band was. (if my old brain is still working that would have been 1988). (fwiw: the dj at this little club we went to was amazing. he played amazing stuff and we requested the songs by chorus repeating rather than title or band name. oh man, i am so old.)
then one day my best friend took me for a drive and played sicnh for me. (words cannot do justice to the emotional impact that song had at that time.) then the whole of pretty hate machine.
and that was the beginning of a 25 year musical love. :)
other than sfi, i have never really disliked a nin song. i have laughed at some, oh yes, but always find elements to the song that prove time and money invested in nin has never ever been wasted.
what a ride, y'all.
woo hoo.

untoldlb
08-21-2013, 03:16 PM
http://images.bidorbuy.co.za/user_images/901/1208901_111104152846_Tape_-_Natural_Born_Killers_1.jpg
94 Natural Born Killers OST K7 -
i was a teenage and i loved the movie, my girlfriend bought the OST on CD.
I was more in thrash-metal / death-metal music, but i felt in love with "Something i can never have", it was the exact opposite of the extreme music i was listening at this time. So i bought the K7, and had listen to it on repeat with my walkman.
Then i bought Pretty Hate Machine and TDS, i'm always here 19 years later.

Ray1971
08-21-2013, 03:45 PM
A friend of mine played the fragile for me to listen to and I was instantly hooked. Went out the next day and bought everything NIN had out at the time. Ever since I have always pre ordered the cds. For me the downward spiral and the fragile are my favorites but I have enjoyed every release and play them whenever I am hosting a party. To most of my friends I am known as the "Nine Inch Nail Guy" but I have to give credit to my friend Rick for the initial introduction to NIN. Thanks Rick!

DigitalChaos
08-21-2013, 04:30 PM
Let's see.... It was summer of 1995. I was in between 7th and 8th grade. I was at band camp! fuck yea! I was a drummer and there was a girl who was in the group. For some reason, she was interested in me and was pretty forward about it (probably the only way to get through to me). Suddenly I had my first girlfriend. We hung out a lot through the week or so that the camp took place. She was super into NIN and we were listening to a bunch of it over the days. I had heard NIN on the radio a few times and enjoyed it, but this ended up spiking my interest. I don't remember if I picked up PHM or TDS first, but I grabbed both shortly after. I think those were my first CDs. Before that I had picked up a single tape (cause I didn't have the money for a CD) of GreenDay's Dookie (suck it @Leviathant (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=1) ).

I was pretty into NIN after that but never ended up seeing them live until the With Teeth era. That was actually prompted by my girlfriend at the time (now wife) really wanting to go.


so... um... girls. they turned me into this!

Hitman2110
08-22-2013, 12:41 AM
The Fragile. I was in middle school at the time and was watching MTV one early morning (this is back when they were still playing music videos). We're In This Together came on and I had no idea what to make of it. By the end of the song, I realized it was one of the best pieces of music I had ever heard. I ran to Best Buy and picked up the album the first weekend it came out (I was in total shock to discover it was two discs and more expensive, but I didn't care, I was ready to pay for it). After playing the song 12,000 times, I listened to the rest of the album and became a NIN fan for life.

ManBurning
08-22-2013, 01:06 AM
First album I bought... Hmm... I want to say The Downward Spiral, but it could have even been Pretty Hate Machine... nah, it must have been TDS.

It was 1998, I was 15. Friend got a subscription to Columbia House from a magazine (you may remember that, get 10 CD's for 1 cent deal?) It was a total scam, as they made you buy like 3 or 5 CD's at regular price and the price they were charging per CD was like $30 each, so... wasn't really getting 10 CD's for a cent. Anyway...

It was spring break, 1998. Friend introduced our group of friends to TDS because he ordered the 10 CD's from Columbia house and I think he only got TDS because he thought "dead souls" was on it, because he really liked the movie "The Crow". Yes, now it's all coming back to me - His name was Rob, and he didn't like the CD (TDS) because he wanted Dead Souls on it, and it wasn't on it. So he gave the CD away to another mutual friend of mine. We would spend alot of time at this guys house and he would play TDS alot. And I remember hearing songs like Piggy and March of te Pigs and thought they were so odd, but cool.

Ended up going out not too long after that and buying the album for myself.

That wasn't my very *FIRST* exposure to NIN though, that was probably in 1995-1996 when I was like 12 or 13 and I used to watch music videos on this channel called MuchMusic (for people who live in Canada), and they used to have something every Saturday morning called "The MuchMusic countdown" after I would spend all morning watching saturday morning cartoons, my next step would be to flip to the countdown to spend the rest of the morning watching / listening to music videos. I know Closer was on there, but I didn't really think anything of it (I was mainly into stuff like Foo Fighters, Smashing Pumpkins, Beck, generic alternative rock), I guess Closer was too far out there for me at the time, hahaha.

Year ot two later I saw the video for "The Perfect Drug" appear on the much music countdown, and I thought it was a very cool/twisted/interesting video. I never ever bothered to seek out much about the band though, and the video didn't stay long on the countdown. The countdown was relativly mainstream for really popular stuff. NIN stuff never made it very high up on this "video countdown". The countdown consisted of 30 spots and about 2-4 new videos would premier every week, and depending how popular they got (like requests to play the songs) the videos would rise on the countdown to try and get number 1. NIN would usually last a couple weeks get to maybe number 20 or so and then just fall off, hahaha.

piggy
08-22-2013, 08:06 AM
How does it look like? I have never seen it.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-w9ifG1cFFl4/UQB3iHYvFsI/AAAAAAAAALE/ApfYa_iBkXY/s1600/photo%283%29.JPG
I got one with my copy of TF, too. If I remember correctly, the other side has a white NIN logo on it.

martin_b
08-22-2013, 09:08 AM
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-w9ifG1cFFl4/UQB3iHYvFsI/AAAAAAAAALE/ApfYa_iBkXY/s1600/photo%283%29.JPG
I got one with my copy of TF, too. If I remember correctly, the other side has a white NIN logo on it.

Looks great! Thanks for sharing.

Leahy
08-26-2013, 09:07 PM
The Downward Spiral around 2000, it changed everything that I knew about music.

marodi
08-26-2013, 09:13 PM
TDS in 1994, right after Woodstock.

Nomad.hatter
08-26-2013, 09:25 PM
Some time in grade 8 I was randomly going through a friend's CD collection on the school bus and saw two CDs with images of blurry flowers on them, one said "Left", the other "Right". Popped "Right" into my discman, listened to the first six songs, and decided I liked it, and got the name of the album and band. Couldn't get the chorus from Starfuckers out of my head.

Living in the Middle East at the time, finding NIN in my local music store wasn't going to happen, and the internet wasn't a thing where I was living at the time. Anyway, went on vacation 6 months later and walked into a music store, and there were two NIN albums to pick from - Broken and TDS. Broken only had 6 songs based on the track listing on the back, and I wasn't going to spend a month's worth of allowance on 6 songs, so I went with TDS, which actually didn't have a track listing.

The first time I heard the chorus from Closer is still a vivid memory. My 15 year old self was pretty shocked haha.

Off topic - does anyone ever remember seeing an MTV Asia commercial with Closer playing in the background? It had an Indian priest of some sort in an orange robe doing various poses on a bed of nails.

RGM81
08-26-2013, 10:39 PM
The Fragile. A friend of mine was into NIN and introduced me to Somewhat Damaged. Hooked. Instantly. Just the raw ferocity of such a song was amazing. Didn't take long to fill in the back catalogue and then of course he went and disappeared for a few years.

Ekysse
08-28-2013, 09:58 AM
Two steps for me.

First, Spring 2007, I've seen the trailer of 300, loved the music but forgot to look after it.

Second, Summer 2008, looking at the movie Wanted, I'm catched up by Everyday is exactly the same, look for the credits to find out who did this.
Then, I quickly discovered With Teeth and the other records, from the last to the oldest one. I still remember the first time I saw Closer on Youtube, didn't hear it before, I was completely stucked.

So, in the end, I downloaded first The Slip (free available if I remember well) but I bought With Teeth and The Fragile CDs at Virgin in the same period. I'd liked to buy PHM and TDS too but my bank would't have agreed. Bought digital Pretty Hate Machine and pre-ordered Hesitation Marks.

Always a schock when discovering a new track... Even the ones I know well can surprise me. Even the rares tracks I don't like so much are full of interest.

PS : I've seen NIN at Rock en Seine festival this 24/08/2013, amazing show, and they played Find my Way. Pure poetry.

kitz
08-28-2013, 12:49 PM
My first was Year Zero, becasue I was told the cd changes its colour if you put it into a cd player. Then I had to buy the rest of the main releases becasue one is never enough.

Butterscotch
08-28-2013, 12:58 PM
The first NIN album I bought was TDS. I liked it so much that I bought the rest of the albums one by one when I had the money, and I'm now in the process of collecting the singles and remix albums.

Joshua Lami
08-28-2013, 01:54 PM
Well, I had heard Closer, and knew it was from an album called The Downward Spiral. But I had never bought the album.

I went into a K-mart one day with my allowance (I might have been 11) and saw Nine Inch Nails - Further Down The Spiral. So I bought it. I took it home and played it a time or two, and didn't know what the fuck to do with it, so I turned it off and put my Ugly Kid Joe - America's Least Wanted CD back in. Rocked out to Cat's in the Cradle, and Everything About You for another few weeks, then found (in my mom's car) a copy of Broken. Took that inside and played it. Suffice it to say I don't think I've listened to Ugly Kid Joe since. Ok, maybe once or twice for nostalgia, but that's it. My mom got kind of angry that I took her CD without asking, but was relieved that I was actually listening to something good. So then she gave me her copy of The Downward Spiral and PHM to compliment it. From there I went into all kinds of directions. I remember when The Fragile came out I had been a fan for a while at that point and my mom let me skip school to go pick it up. She also took me to the Fragility tour. I have a cool mom.

I still haven't really warmed up to Further Down the Spiral.

Syndicate
08-28-2013, 02:05 PM
Broken on cassette back when it came out in 1992. I was only 12, but I had an older cousin who got me into the good stuff at an early age. My mother would have shit if she had heard "FIST FUCK!" coming out of my stereo at that age, but I mainly listened to my music via headphones and my badass Walkman back then.

Wolfkiller
08-28-2013, 02:08 PM
I think it was TDS on cassette. I don't think I was ready for it at that point. I remember having that and Stabbing Westward's Wither, Blister, Burn, + Peel and thinking I enjoyed them but they were both too screamy for me, wasn't used to it then. I know my appreciation of NIN went up and down over the years and one day something clicked and I fell deeply in love haha.
Side note, I recall hearing a friend of a friend playing PHM for the first time and thinking Terrible Lie was Kill The Lights. Either way I was intrigued and went out for the cassette soon after.

r_k_f
08-28-2013, 03:49 PM
Broken & Fixed same day purchase.... Then the Sin and Head Like A Hole singles, then PHM..

YawnForKnowledge
08-28-2013, 07:00 PM
'Year Zero' in 2007. Was introduced to Nine Inch Nails in late 2006 via a friend who was doing some basic audio editing for a school competition we were both involved in: he was using 'The Hand That Feeds' as a part of a medley. After asking about the song, he gave me 'With Teeth' and thus began my Nine Inch Nails odyssey.

I've seen them three times now (the three times they've visited Ireland since 2007), most recently at Belfast a week ago. Planning to make a trip to the UK in April when Tension hopefully appears upon these shores, as suggested during the Zane Lowe interview.

fortheloveofgod
08-28-2013, 07:02 PM
PHM from Columbia House '92

m15a
08-28-2013, 07:36 PM
mine was FDTS. judging from this thread, selling what seemed (and seems) like a full album for ~$7 was very effective marketing in the mid-90s. actually, i just realized that "smells like children" was my first marilyn manson album, too.

i'm sure the concept of remixing was a huge influence on how i listen to, and compose, music. FDTS also introduced me to coil and aphex twin much earlier than i might have been otherwise.

Dryalex12
08-28-2013, 07:55 PM
I actually used to despise NIN for some reason I have no idea why,but I then heard alot about Hurt and I took a listen,and I questioned why I ever hated this band? So I got TDS and I've been collection ever since

Trunkjob
08-28-2013, 07:57 PM
First purchase was Year Zero back in 2007. I happened upon the ARG somehow, saw the Survivalism video and enjoyed it. I still remember the time I went to the AIR website and the warning siren scared the shit out of me.

steelnails95
08-28-2013, 09:22 PM
I love this thread, I've read though every page. I first heard Closer at number one on the top 8 at 8 countdown on Q99.5 and was instantly blown away(I was in to Metallica at the time) So purchased TDS on BMG music and could not believe how good it was. My musical tastes were immediately and forever broadened and changed. Thank you Trent

allegro
08-28-2013, 10:34 PM
"Broken" on CD, 1992.

BenAkenobi
08-28-2013, 11:45 PM
one day. this thread. "hesitation marks". oh all the face expressions :D

NINfanatic82
08-29-2013, 12:37 AM
My first NIN purchase was Broken & MOTP pt. 1 from Best Buy when I was 13 back in 1995 & remember being blown away by Broken, needless to say I did all the chores I could & went back a few days later & bought every cd I didn't have(this was back when Best Buy had all the imports) & that's when my sickness(collecting) began!!

slave2thewage
08-29-2013, 03:45 AM
The Downward Spiral and The Fragile on CD on my birthday in 2001.

Alexandros
08-29-2013, 03:51 AM
Pretty Hate Machine + The Fragile back in 2001, after a friend of mine had given me copies of his own to listen. Fun detail: My friend had only given me the Left CD of The Fragile, and had only written "Left" on the copy, so this is how I requested it from the store. It took a while to clear things out.

Kueller917
08-29-2013, 04:01 AM
Heard The Downward Spiral a few years ago. Was instantly hooked and I knew the nearby bookstore happened to have a copy of the double disc with the 5.1 so I went out a few days later and got it. I'm not really an old fan.

blackheart
08-29-2013, 12:53 PM
A friend of mine in middle school put on Pretty Hate Machine one day when I was at her house. When Down In It started, I said "Whoa, this is like...poppy." "No it's not!" she retorted defensively; "Just wait till you hear what comes after this CD." By the time PHM ended, I was digging it. Then I heard Broken, and I was officially obsessed. It took me awhile to get the CDs for myself, being a kid and all - I don't think I had my own copies till I was 13 years old - but then I quickly bought TDS too. Soon after that, I began collecting all the halos (I now have every single one).

The Fragile was the first album I had the chance to get right when it came out. I was in high school by then. I still remember Tuesday, 9/21/1999: a friend of my mine skipped 2nd hour to go to Best Buy to pick it up, and during the passing period between 2nd and 3rd hour another friend and I found him so we could ooh and ahh over the goods. I can still picture him solemnly opening up the case to us like a priest opening a bible, and we bemoaned aloud the 6 more hours we had to wait before going to buy it ourselves. I don't think I ended up able to get to the store that day (I still had no means of personal transportation), but I know that by the end of the school week, I had it in my hands.

blackroseMD1
08-29-2013, 02:02 PM
First cassette tape I ever bought for myself was Pretty Hate Machine in 1991 when I was 12. It blew my fragile little mind.

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk 4

Tyson
08-29-2013, 02:45 PM
First purchase was PHM in 90. Remember hearing Terrible Lie on the radio at a friend's house, and then Head Like a Hole in Class of 1999, so I bought the CD from K-Mart. Then when TDS came out my cousin joined the BMG club to get the 12 CDs for a penny each, and since there weren't 12 he wanted he let me get some too. We both ended up getting a copy of TDS. After that, I'd make regular weekend trips to the mall with my friend, and while he was getting a CD at Sam Goody (I remember music stores being a lot darker in those days) I'd be over in the corner picking through the NIN singles and stuff. Picked up stuff like Down In It, HLAH, Sin, Closer and MotP.

Then, when the internet started taking off in 98 I joined an online music exchange site where you sent in a CD you didn't want to trade for something you did. I remember abusing the system, because the trade value didn't matter. You could send in a crappy CD single and trade it for a full album. I remember buying bargain bin crap and sending it in for stuff like Broken, Fixed and Further.

I remember anticipating TF in 99. Bought it in Sam Goody I believe, as well as snagging more singles like TDTWWA and WITT. Got TFA as soon as it came out from K-Mart again, as well as the single disc AATCHB. Got the deluxe AATCHB for Christmas. Got the AATCHB DVD from Best Buy. Everything past that point has been pre-ordered from nin.com.

Up until 99, while I did like NIN, I wouldn't have called them my favourite band. In fact, I specifically remember someone asking me in 2000 who my favourite band was, and I said, "I don't have one." Then I realized that I had more NIN CDs than any other band, and I had a tendency to listen to them more than anything else. I still have all of my originally purchased discs too, and that PHM from 90 still plays with a skip here and there. My original copy of Down In It isn't in the greatest shape though. Also, something that still pisses me off to this day, my original copy of Broken still has a bit of sticker on it. The music exchange site would put stickers on the openings of the cases to hold them shut during shipping. Wasn't a problem with the jewels cases of Further and such, but it was a pain in the ass on the digipaks.

hobochic
08-29-2013, 02:55 PM
one day. this thread. "hesitation marks". oh all the face expressions :D

That day might come sooner than we think. We should trigger the register function with a mexican piñata.

gamecat235
08-29-2013, 06:38 PM
My first purchase was the Sin single (12"), followed by PHM (on tape). But the album that changed NIN forever for me was Broken. Broken turned NIN from a band I really like, to a band I still obsess over more than 20 years later.

Matheson
08-29-2013, 10:17 PM
Year Zero was my first purchase although I downloaded The Slip first.

I watched the Survivalism video on YouTube 4 years ago and I was immediately hooked. I did some research on NIN (I usually do research before I get into a new band), and was intrigued by how it was essentially a one-man band.

A few days after I bought YZ, I bought the rest of the albums and listened to them chronologically.

ericy210
08-29-2013, 11:06 PM
I bought a blank cassette for a friend to put PHM on one side and a great mix of punk on the other- Germs, Dayglo Abortions, Dead Boys, Ramones, etc. I finally got around to listening to PHM and wore out HLAH. Buying Broken and a really copy of PHM followed, then TDS and Mansons albums. I called nothing records PR company that was listed in the liner notes for all the records on the label and found all the great bands Trent brought on the label. My eyes were opened to a whole new genre of music. I salute you, Trent!

schwilj
08-29-2013, 11:11 PM
My first purchase was the Lost Highway Soundtrack, my friend had played me some of PHM and TDS, but the Perfect Drug is the first thing that got me to buy something by NIN. After that I went back and listened to everything I could, and bought everything I could. So the Fragile was the first one that I got to be part of the buildup with the nin.com site at school and the hype on TV or whatever. (9/9/99 VMAs if I remember correctly...)

My first show was the With Teeth tour. I wish I could have gone before but just couldn't at the time.

Halo Infinity
08-31-2013, 01:58 PM
I'm not sure if this needs a new thread or not, but it has to be connected to this topic since it is about purchasing actual NIN albums. I'm just very curious as to how much they'd cost back in the early to mid 1990s. I actually didn't get into buying albums until 1999, so I really have no idea, and whenever I look up the costs of a CD on Google, the results seem to be very vague. Did Pretty Hate Machine and The Downward Spiral actually cost $19.99? I'd guess that when they first came out, they were at least between $13.99 to $14.99 though.

(I've seen an FYE I used to live nearby have Pretty Hate Machine at $17.99 and The Downward Spiral at $19.99. It's been out of business and has been replaced with another store since January though. I also ask because some of the results from Yahoo! Answers said that CDs were $20.00 in the 1990s.)

As for me, when I first bought NIN albums, that was around 2002-2003. Pretty Hate Machine and The Downward Spiral were around $11.99 to $13.99, and The Fragile was somewhere between $21.99 to $24.99. Broken was around $11.99 to $12.99 at the time.

(And this probably belongs in the Random NIN Questions thread, but I also thought I'd try my luck here.)

m15a
08-31-2013, 02:15 PM
i only know about the mid-90s. at that point, on long island (NY), non-sale CDs cost $17.99. later, they started to push the price to $18.99, but by that point i lived in NYC and started going to used CD stores, so i dunno. that's why buying FDTS (and various maxi singles like HLAH) for less than $10 was a big deal.

Scarlet Siren
08-31-2013, 02:15 PM
My first NIN purchase was The Fragile in 2000.

jesus
08-31-2013, 02:21 PM
mine was "With Teeth" , I was in the only cd store of this country , looking for a Korn album, and I had enough money, then I saw the only 2 disc avalaible wt and tds, I used to think that tds was boring [thank God I didnt bought tds because years later I have the oportunity to bought it in DE], so I bought WT, I was so happy when I saw that my copy has "Home" as a bonus track

Transfixed
08-31-2013, 02:42 PM
A friend lent me the cassette of PHM in 1994, and I convinced my mom to buy me TDS shortly thereafter (thank god she never heard it, she would have called an exorcist). I didn't really like TDS at first because I was too young to understand the complexity, the unique experimentation or the artistic & thematic nature of it. I just knew it was weird and intense and that drew me in.
Over time of course I grew to love it, then another friend played Broken for me in about '96, and I went on to purchase it, and Fixed, and Further Down The Spiral and at that point I was forever and permanently a NIN fan. Posters, t-shirts, magazines, backpack patches, car stickers, everything. Even the vanilla air-freshener they sold at Hot Topic!

captainbeyond
08-31-2013, 02:48 PM
Broken in 2001 I think. I was 16 years old and I could not believe that an artist actually made music like that.

scorpiusdiamond
08-31-2013, 06:10 PM
I remembered today my first NIN acquisition. Admittedly I heard 'Closer' first and thought it was gross (ha). I then heard the Cash version of Hurt followed by the NIN version out of curiosity. Following this I tried to um, acquire the NIN version of Hurt only to find what I thought to be a sub-par quality version - which is exactly the version that appears on TDS.
The next step was hearing about the Year Zero ARG and the songs that had surfaced from that, and having heard Survivalism I raided the iTunes catalogue to buy: Last, We're In This Together, The Hand That Feeds and March of the Pigs. From there on in I was hooked.

Copy of A
08-31-2013, 08:23 PM
What was the first NIN album you got? And what does it mean to you? For me, my first was With_Teeth. It is one of my favorite albums by NIN because the lyrical content and alternative sound really caught me. Now I am really into the industrial sound! But With_Teeth means a lot to me. Song's like Everyday Is Exactly The Same, All The Love In The World, Only, Beside You In Time and Right Where It Belongs. These song's helped me out a lot in that period (reoccurring period) in my life. Trying to rebuild myself and have a better outlook on things...but everything starts to deteriorate again. So albums like TDS and The Fragile are one's I connect to a lot more now.
Same here, with teeth. I saw the video for hand that feeds and fell in love with that song and then album. Now I'm a fan of most/all of his work

sick among the pure
08-31-2013, 09:01 PM
Actual my own copy purchase was PHM. My sister let me borrow her copy of TDS after I downloaded a bunch of random songs and wanted to listen to full albums. I bought them, in the most part, in order. Actual albums. PHM, then Broken, then my own copy of TDS, then The Fragile. Singles/remix albums came as I found them, usually.
I was pretty much completely caught up by the time THTF came out, except for Closure, which I was never able to find in stores after I started collecting, and didn't have the money for some of the prices I was finding. THTF was my first "when it was released" purchase, since I got into NIN right after AATCHB came out.

ataxia
08-31-2013, 09:24 PM
I had heard every NIN album before I purchased them, back in the fall of 2012 (I didn't have to wait nearly as long for HM suck it y'all) but my first actual purchase was either The Fragile or Broken, with my most recent being Ghosts. I can't wait for Tuesday you guys :3

thatguymark
08-31-2013, 10:07 PM
The Perfect Drug was the first mp3 I ever downloaded during my freshman year of college. A couple of years later, when The Fragile came out, I acquired that through a post-Napster file sharing app. I forget which one - it may have just been an FTP server. I dug some of the album at the time, but it didn't grab hold of me the way it would a decade later. The first actual NIN purchase I made was the Beside You In Time DVD. The first album I bought was Year Zero. From there, it was a very slippery slope to purchasing every other album within a couple of months.

Tyson
08-31-2013, 10:41 PM
I'm just very curious as to how much they'd cost back in the early to mid 1990s.

If I remember correctly, at the time PHM came out (90) CDs were $25 in my area. I remember, because I got some money from my grandma for my birthday (PHM was coincidentally released on my birthday), and I picked out AC/DC's Who Made Who on CD to buy with it. When I did, my mom asked me if I was sure that's what I wanted, because it would take almost all of the money I had. My mind is flipping between $25 or $27. I believe I had $30 at the time, so it could have been $27 after tax.

EDIT: This document seems to go against what I remember, but I'm 99.9% sure my memory is accurate. Maybe Alabama was late in dropping their prices on CDs. That, or K-Mart was just gouging people in a small town.

http://76.74.24.142/F3A24BF9-9711-7F8A-F1D3-1100C49D8418.pdf

Akuratyde
09-01-2013, 02:10 AM
My first purchase was Pretty Hate Machine in 1994 after seeing the videos for "March Of The Pigs" and "Closer" on Alternative Nation on MTV. My parents were going to the local mall and I gave them $15 and asked them to buy The Downward Spiral for me. When they returned they explained that they hadn't bought it for me because it had a Parental Advisory sticker on it, so they bought me PHM as a consolation. I loved it immediately, it was so unlike anything I'd heard and what I expected NIN to be after only having heard "March Of The Pigs" and "Closer". I bought Broken the following week and managed to buy TDS a month or two later from a local record shop that didn't ID kids when the albums had those stupid Parental Advisory stickers.

Dan Drone
09-01-2013, 02:28 AM
Either PHM or DWS in Feb 2001, because I was 16 and had my first source of income and I bought CD's a few times a month for like 4 years straight to build up my collection.

Halo Infinity
09-01-2013, 12:10 PM
EDIT: This document seems to go against what I remember, but I'm 99.9% sure my memory is accurate. Maybe Alabama was late in dropping their prices on CDs. That, or K-Mart was just gouging people in a small town.

http://76.74.24.142/F3A24BF9-9711-7F8A-F1D3-1100C49D8418.pdf

Thank you for providing such an excellent find. :)

Now if only they stayed the same since 1989-1995 (Between roughly $10.00 to $13.00 plus tax.), that wouldn't have been so bad, but it really seems that as of now, in this decade, perhaps CDs should've been under $10.00 by now, with double albums being under $20.00 too. (Or at least since the mid 2000s.)

But yeah, I know it's just not that simple. :p

la_mer
09-01-2013, 01:12 PM
Knowing how I describe things and ramble on, I'll avoid giving my history with NIN. But...

2002/2003.

I was 11, maybe 12. By this time, I'd been recording songs from radio stations, my own make-shift mixtapes.
My friend, who's 3 or 4 years older, gave me one of his tapes. There was this "awesome song" on there with a queer little sound that starts the final minute or two of it that made me want to rewind and repeat the track over and over again. That little "voo-whoo--voo-whoo-dudududu-voo-whoo" right before Head Like a Hole repeats the chorus several times at the end. I remember thinking it lined up with tiny pieces of sound and ambiance I had collectively grown to love over the years. Catchy as fuck. Had to get it. My friend told me about NIN. Found Pretty Hate Machine in the mall...$18 for a CD, yeah right, too bad.

My next option...Broken. Completely different sound. My first listen was with my mom in the car the night she bought it for me--she hadn't heard NIN before, and she's always liked lighter music. However, before this point, I was familiar with Closer--it came on the radio once, and she started moving/grooving. "Mom, that's not right; don't dance to this. Dirty lyrics, bad images *changes station*." Jump forward to playing Broken in her car. There's something about someone else's presence that makes you hear/see something differently, like you're experiencing it from their point of view. I thought: way different from the catchy HLAH. Tried listening to it again by myself on headphones...too heavy--I had gone to a Christian school and loved Smash Mouth/Sugar Ray/etc. by this time. Put NIN away, not my thing.

Fast forward to summer '05. Noticed "The Hand That Feeds" video for NIN, remotely remembered my initial experience in middle school. It was July. I had already enjoyed Manson's Holywood, so my "cup of tea" had changed, and my ears were ready. I wanted something heavy. Going through the emo phase. Needed something to combat anger, something about myself I hadn't really started to understand up until then. Flipped through CD collection. Found Broken. Highest volume. Holy shit. Soundtrack to Hell. This feeling, something pulsating and radiant, surged through me. Like touching lightning. Needed more. Friend introduced me to a few tracks from TDS, and then burnt me a copy of WT he had recently purchased. Offbeat at points, catchy at others, soft, then very loud (explosion after soft piano in middle of "With Teeth" title track). It took some time and several full listens, but it grew on me quickly, became my album to fall sleep to for the entire month of August.

I remember that special feeling of discovering something new. But something that was so familiar in an odd way. Maybe snippets of NIN songs I had heard on the radio growing up, or a few seconds of a music video or two that stuck with me. But even moreso, all the nuances of music my brain had collected as particular sounds that felt like "me"--it all rushed together, NIN was/is that collection of sound. In a matter of months, I had every studio album and a few remix CDs, started getting into Skinny Puppy, etc. (a new world of sound I would have never known).

Still consider myself a NIN-noob. I wasn't 15 in 1989, the perfect age to have discovered NIN. I can't say I grew up aware of TR's work. Hell, I was 4 years old, probably at home playing with Lincoln Logs, when NIN/Manson played for two nights in a row nearly 20 minutes from my house. I envy the years I missed out. But I'm grateful for what I discovered and that I can still look forward to more. Hesitation Marks is due in two days, and I feel like I've known NIN since before I was born.

Yep. I broke my promise. I rambled, as always. I guess I enjoy remembering/reading the dots that connect the main point together. I haven't done justice to my experience with NIN, and I apologize for the space this post takes up.

ripedecay
09-01-2013, 01:37 PM
I remember thinking NIN was cool when I heard Closer when it came on the radio and whatever. I sort of was into Tool and Manson more at the time and just was familiar with NIN. It wasn't until 99 and heating We're In This Together that I was into them seriously and that I was going to a local movie theater and wanted to buy The Fragile but didn't have enough money seeing as it was like $18 and had $15 after tickets for movie so I skimmed through the singles and found what would hold me off with a few listens until I could get back to the music store.

What I ended up buying for my first NIN purchase was the We're In This Together pt.3 single and was quiet happy with that at the time because it had The Perfect Drug & Complications Of The Flesh and obviously We're In This Together.

Looking back and having that be the first purchase technically, because I think I somehow had TDS before that but might have been a gift or friends (whoops).

jesus
09-01-2013, 01:55 PM
Knowing how I describe things and ramble on, I'll avoid giving my history with NIN. But...
.
I read it all, good history, I had the same feeling about hearing NIN before I get to hear them

mrselfdestruct94
09-01-2013, 01:57 PM
May 2005. I went to my local Best Buy to purchase the Star Wars: Episode III soundtrack (I had a major boner for the movie back then) and at the time they used to display all of their new CDs, DVDs, and games at a table at the front of the store. I saw the new Nine Inch Nails album, With Teeth, laying in a stack on the left side of the table. I decided to buy it because I'd been hearing the song, 'The Hand That Feeds,' for the past month and I really liked it. They've been my favorite band ever since :)

Dan Drone
09-01-2013, 02:25 PM
Either PHM or DWS in Feb 2001, because I was 16 and had my first source of income and I bought CD's a few times a month for like 4 years straight to build up my collection.

To add something, I almost got Broken at a flea market for 5 dollars a year before- but I saw the track list and decided to buy Orgy's Candyass for 3 dollars because it had more tracks and it was cheaper (I still love that album BTW) and like 2 more albums for 3 dollars but yeah just thought that was interesting.

ardera
09-01-2013, 02:41 PM
First heard in 1989 Down In It video MTV 120 minutes.
The bought PHM when it came out

Half Way Through
09-02-2013, 01:31 PM
After the Woodstock performance tried to find any cd from them. Didn't really know how many albums NiN had the time, so I kindly asked if the shop even knew NiN and the answer was quite funny. Couple of weeks ago they had TDS because it was on charts, but not the time I was there. So after that went to real record shop and to my big surprise found Broken in there. So headphones and Broken, what else could you hope for after long day wandering in a big city.

elevenism
09-02-2013, 03:29 PM
First for me was broken, on tape, when it came out.
I was like twelve and i'd seen NIN on Headbanger's Ball (wish, of course.)
I was into Pantera, Metallica, Megadeth...but this NIN was something else altogether....something that both terrified me but also something from which i couldn't look away.

Then Fixed (but i already had a Fixed shirt by then....i just hadn't seen the tape anywhere....
then i backtracked to PHM, bought the MOTP single, and waited for TDS to come out.

I'm not so sure i should have been listening to that shit at that age, but it started a lifelong obsession, and also set broken/fixed as the NIN project to live up to for me. And he never quite has.

P.S> dont get me wrong, i've fucking ADORED every NIN album since then.
Broken/Fixed was just my first.

ardera
09-06-2013, 09:08 PM
After the Woodstock performance tried to find any cd from them. Didn't really know how many albums NiN had the time, so I kindly asked if the shop even knew NiN and the answer was quite funny. Couple of weeks ago they had TDS because it was on charts, but not the time I was there. So after that went to real record shop and to my big surprise found Broken in there. So headphones and Broken, what else could you hope for after long day wandering in a big city.

I worked at a Chicago based chain record store, from 91 - 94. Many of us were NIN fans, so we made sure we were well stocked, with everything

mindviolation
09-06-2013, 09:31 PM
TDS - 1994. I was 14.

mixtress9
09-07-2013, 07:52 PM
My first purchase was the Closer single followed by The Downward Spiral. It just went on from there.

seasonsinthesky
09-07-2013, 08:27 PM
sounds insane, maybe, but my first NIN buy was The Fragile on vinyl.

this was before there were any rips populating the vast interblag (JUST before — probably 2003ish, since i got into the band with AATCHB when it came out in 2002). i had made my mission to be the first one!!~11 to get it out there digitally (and just to hear the different versions, really). didn't really work out that way, i don't think, but man, i was such a noob at that point in my life. not only was it my first eBay purchase ever, i didn't even have a credit card or PayPal, so i paid for it by money order. twice, because i forgot to include shipping cost the first time. yeah. it took a month to get the thing put in the mail, then almost another for me to receive it.

but oh, when i did...

heavenly_bearded
09-07-2013, 08:29 PM
Grandma bought little 10 year old Stevey a BMG pick 2 CDs catalog for Xmas when I was 10. Picked Broken and The Downward Spiral. Not only my first NIN CDs, my first CDs. That was 18 years ago, god I am old...

PeedroPaula54
09-08-2013, 12:03 AM
TDS on cassette tape in '94, but I only played "Hurt" over and over every time someone else I loved died. Next purchase was With_Teeth on CD.

MrsMeowMeow
09-08-2013, 05:14 AM
In 2004/2005 I started to listen to music again that I liked in the late 90's. Among others I listened a lot to Manson, so at some point I stumbled upon the name Reznor and nine inch nails and accidentially I saw "the perfect drug" on TV, then some weeks later "closer", "hurt", "the hand that feeds" and so on.
I'm not 100% sure anymore which one was my first purchase, but I think I bought first With Teeth and then AATCHB DVD 3 days after that, because I freaking loved NIN and couldn't think of anything else. I think I bought all the albums at once in the following 2 months, little 15-year-old-NIN-addict-me ^^

stefler
09-08-2013, 06:03 AM
I think my first NIN purchase was the The Downward Spiral album on CD in 1995.

slopesandsam
09-08-2013, 09:42 AM
I tried to get into NIN around the time that Antichrist Superstar was super popular, because I loved that album and people kept telling me "The guy from Nine Inch Nails produced it". I borrowed PHM off someone and bounced off it pretty hard. I was actually embarrassed when I played it at home, because I thought my Dad would hear me listening to 80s synth-pop and wonder what the hell was wrong with me.

It was probably a year or so later (it was 1998, I'm pretty sure) this kid at high school really wanted to borrow my copy of ACS, and he offered me his recently purchased copy of TDS in exchange. I grudgingly accepted (grudgingly because ACS was still my favourite album, and this was before it was easy to make your own MP3s or burn CDs, so it was my only copy, AND because I was still pretty skeptical about NIN after my PHM experience). I went home and listened to TDS. I can still remember not really knowing what to think of Mr Self Destruct, but I sat up and took notice when the drums started in Piggy, and by the end of that album my entire concept of what music could be had changed. I remember calling my best friend and saying "You have to listen to this album. It's the album Marilyn Manson wished he could have made!"

The next day I went to school and negotiated by buy TDS off the kid I'd borrowed it from. He didn't like it very much, and was willing to part with it for half of what he'd paid for it, plus an extended loan of ACS.

(I also eventually changed my mind about PHM, and bought a copy during the lead up to the release of TF, when I decided I had to get my hands on every bit of NIN material I could find.)

NINfan04
09-08-2013, 03:15 PM
Sin and Down In It singles in early 1994. I went to the store originally looking for PHM but they were out so I bought it a month later.

Frydek
09-08-2013, 03:57 PM
When I read all these posts, I'm amazed that so many people got into NIN in the 2000s. The first album I got was TDS when it was released. I taped it on cassette from a friend's CD (this is how old I am, cassette generation...) My then girlfriend was so hooked on Closer and the "I want to fuck you like an animal" part :D
When I saw NIN during the recent festival tour, I was so happy to see a girl next to me who was probably 20, singing over Wish where the song was written before she was even born.
I guess I find it really cool that NIN travelled through time and still makes sense to younger people.

Brownd
09-08-2013, 05:58 PM
My first actual NIN purchase was the Ghosts I-IV 4LP vinyl which I just happened to find on a local record shop a few months ago. I also found Welcome oblivion on vinyl there but I was short on cash already, to think I just went to check out the place and was gonna leave with my hands empty... :rolleyes:
It was like a dream came true, it was almost impossible to find NIN stuff here. I now also ordered HM on Deluxe CD from nin.com and expect it to arrive soon

Halo Infinity
09-08-2013, 06:51 PM
I just noticed that most first purchases here seem to have happened around The Downward Spiral era to the And All That Could Have Been (Live/Still) era. It's just an observation and thought that occurred to me upon checking out this thread several times.

ninja77
09-08-2013, 11:03 PM
TDS, early 1995 - shortly after I bought my first CD player. I was a senior in HS at the time, and up to that point, all of the music I owned was on cassette and vinyl. At the beginning of the school year, a friend of mine asked if I had watched NIN on the Woodstock 94 PPV a few weeks previous. I said no, but my curiosity was piqued because it seemed that Trent and NIN were being featured in EW and Rolling Stone magazines and getting name-dropped on Letterman all the time. I wanted to know what the fuss was about, so I asked my friend to make a tape for me. I was absolutely mind-blown upon first listen. Hearing TDS was a revelatory (and revolutionary) experience for me. My primary exposure to music was top 40 radio up to that time and this was nothing like anything I had ever heard in my life - much like the way I felt when I heard Nirvana's "Nevermind" the first time. I thought it was an instant classic. I bought the CD from Columbia House a few months later after saving up the money to buy a CD player. I've been hooked ever since.

nin5in
09-09-2013, 12:45 AM
Pretty Hate Machine and The Downward Spiral.

wizfan
09-20-2013, 04:01 PM
The And All That Could Have Been DTS DVD around 2007, then Year Zero and BYIT a few months later. I'll never forget that moment when I had heard about the YZ CD that would change color according to the temperature, but when the CD had arrived it was hot as hell outside and the CD was already in a grey-whitish state when I opened it. Boo, heat spoiler.

nowimnothing
09-22-2013, 03:59 PM
It was Friday, 21st March 1997. I had just turned 18 and my parents gave me $500. I had glandular fever really bad, but it didn't stop me from jumping on a train and heading to Newcastle to buy a shitload of records.

I had never really heard much of NIN before, but for some reason I felt compelled to buy 'Further Down the Spiral'.

I listened to it on repeat over and over and over - to the point that the other records I purchased didn't even get listened to. I can't even remember what else I bought.

I then made it my mission to get every NIN release I could get - and PHM and Broken were next. Of course, The Perfect Drug was on rotation that year. There was no stopping me from that point...

KrakenWakes
09-22-2013, 04:32 PM
PHM the week after Lollapalooza. Man, I'm old.

slopesandsam
09-23-2013, 07:40 AM
I think being a NIN fan is a ticket to feeling old. Because for whatever reason (NIN is awesome), NIN appeals to each generation, apparently.

When I first started listening to NIN (in 1998), I remember going online and getting the distinct impression that I was young for a NIN fan (I was 17 at the time). Now I feel old for a NIN fan.

I especially get weirded out by the fans who say they first encountered NIN through WT, because none of them had to suffer through the SIX FUCKING YEARS of complete silence from the NIN camp (unlike the last four years, in which we actually knew what Trent was up to) between TF and WT. I think a lot of us were halfway convinced that NIN was done, for good. That there's NIN fans out there who don't have that experience is really strange to me. Those fans probably play the Sim Reznor flash games and wonder what the hell the joke is, given that Trent is so prolific now.

tony.parente
09-23-2013, 08:10 AM
With_Teeth in 2005, didn't know what to expect but All The Love In The World was NOT it...and I was psyched about it.

sentient02970
09-23-2013, 08:44 AM
the downward spiral on CD, while on a business trip, 1995

DaNiN
09-23-2013, 12:32 PM
Back in 98 a record store was going out of buisness and selling cds for half price,i got tds and broken because i liked the artwork and the digipacks...i had never heard of nin.

That same day i bought my 1st manson albums too(portrait,acs and slc)..again coz i thought the covers were bold and shocking.

Before that fateful day i used to only listen to grunge and 70's stuff..

becoming
09-23-2013, 03:06 PM
The downward Spiral was my first purchase, I'd "heard" NIN before but after I purchased TDS it changed everything, really it changed my life. I was 14 at the time and it had came out a few months earlier. A senior girl I was friends with turned me onto it.

My mother listened to the CD shortly after I purchased it and had me go to counseling for 2 months following that. :(

Halo Infinity
09-23-2013, 03:11 PM
I liked your post, except the part where you had to go to counseling. What the fuck? :eek:

botley
09-23-2013, 03:17 PM
I bought The Fragile from HMV on Bloor Street just a week or so after it came out. That was fourteen years ago, and I'll be 27 soon, so I guess I've been a fan longer than I've ever NOT been a fan.

Halo Infinity
09-23-2013, 03:26 PM
It looks like I'll have to wait until 2020 for that to happen to me. I became a fan in 2002. Damn, and that's only a 3 year difference, but when you look at it that way, I see what you mean. I think it would've been nice if I found out about Nine Inch Nails earlier.

I also heard about NIN in 1999-2000, but didn't get into him yet. :p

Al_Hunter
09-23-2013, 03:54 PM
The Fragile. I would have been about 14, don't think it had long been out. I can't say I was mad about it initially, it's only as I've got older that The Fragile and The Downward Spiral really made sense.

DaNiN
09-23-2013, 03:57 PM
Adding to my earlier post.

I used to buy guitar world magazine and they always advertised rock band t-shirts and i always saw nin shirts but never gave it much thought so its safe to say that Trent's album covers got me into nin then manson and after a 10 months i got the fragile and rear online that apc was opening for nin so i got into apc then tool..

Now im recalling that when i got tds and broken i saw the nothing record logo and when i saw the same logo on the manson album i thought it was interesting so i got it.i'm grateful that instead of going home from school i got off the bus and went into the record store.the owner was a US citizen and he got all the albums from the US..to this date its hard to find these albums where i live.i buy most of my cd's when i travel to europe.

The_Prowler
09-23-2013, 04:02 PM
I had a copy of The Downward Spiral that someone made for me, but my first actual purchase of my own was the CD for And All That Could Have Been, followed closely by the DVD. That was just after they were released. I was a hopeless addict from the very first time I ever heard them.

Halo Infinity
09-24-2013, 05:21 PM
I just noticed that most first purchases here seem to have happened around The Downward Spiral era to the And All That Could Have Been (Live/Still) era. It's just an observation and thought that occurred to me upon checking out this thread several times.
Oh, I wanted to add something to my own observation. Aside from Nine Inch Nails being at the peak of his popularity in the 1990s around 1994-1995, CDs were not only popular, but much more affordable along with CD players well into the early 2000s. Yes, I really am convinced that CDs were still a hot item in 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, and most of 2004, even in spite of file-sharing and MP3 players. That could be the case too.

And well, with NIN, most fans stay for life from the looks of it anyway, so it's also cool, yet no surprise why we've also seen and heard of fans buying Nine Inch Nails CDs since the Pretty Hate Machine and/or Broken eras. (Since NIN is just that good.) ;)

becoming
10-01-2013, 03:19 PM
She is a VERY religious person + I was in a lot of trouble in my youth. The CD was the straw that broke the camels back.

Jon Griffin
10-01-2013, 10:07 PM
Bought MOTP on itunes one day and got hooked.

Charmingly Miserable
10-01-2013, 10:10 PM
I remember "borrowing" TDS back in 1994 from a friend and I got hooked. (I was 13 at the time. Don't all 13 year olds "borrow?" lol)

wolfpuppet
10-02-2013, 03:56 AM
Down in It from a used record store, and Slaughter in the Air from a specialty CD shop. Mid-1995.

Unfortunately, record shops in the Philippines weren't exactly well-stocked. I kept asking for anything from a band whose name the salesladies couldn't pronounce. After a year of checking and re-checking, I finally hit pay dirt and found those records in the span of a single week.

I had to make do with whatever I found, which resulted in a very non-linear path... I listened to Kiss the Stone bootlegs and Further Down the Spiral before I even got The Downward Spiral. I remember being really excited to hear what the original versions of Heresy, Ruiner, and Eraser sounded like.

The_Prowler
10-02-2013, 11:03 AM
Oh, I wanted to add something to my own observation. Aside from Nine Inch Nails being at the peak of his popularity in the 1990s around 1994-1995, CDs were not only popular, but much more affordable along with CD players well into the early 2000s. Yes, I really am convinced that CDs were still a hot item in 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, and most of 2004, even in spite of file-sharing and MP3 players. That could be the case too.

And well, with NIN, most fans stay for life from the looks of it anyway, so it's also cool, yet no surprise why we've also seen and heard of fans buying Nine Inch Nails CDs since the Pretty Hate Machine and/or Broken eras. (Since NIN is just that good.) ;)
I downloaded The Slip for free just like everyone else, and I STILL went out and bought the CD the day it was released.

roolfdriht
10-02-2013, 05:57 PM
This thread has triggered a surge of nostalgia that's managed to overcome my usual lurker-only disposition, so thanks for that!

Growing up in the 1980s, I was exposed to a fairly eclectic mix of contemporary pop thanks to my father: Springsteen (no thanks), The Cars (loved them), even Madonna (I couldn't deny the power of some the Like a Prayer singles...though being gay probably helped). However, the most significant musical discovery of my pre-teen youth was Depeche Mode. Not long after its release, a babysitter happened to play a tape of Music for the Masses in front of my father, who subsequently purchased a copy for himself that was in heavy rotation around the house thereafter. This synth- and sample-heavy sound was a revelation to me, it's fair to say that DM provided the soundtrack to my life for years thereafter.

Flash forward to 1991. I entered 5th grade and transferred to a new school. My cohort there proved to be substantially more up-to-speed on the latest musical trends than I was, thanks largely to the older siblings that I lacked. I was informed in fairly short order that DM and "synth music" in general was most assuredly not cool. Couldn't I tell that this stuff required no musical talent whatsoever to produce? Metallica, Aerosmith, and the emerging Nirvana, on the other hand, had chops sufficient to be worthy of admiration. Hastily succumbing to the peer pressure, I gave my amassed DM CDs to my father (at this point I had every studio album except - for some unknown reason - Construction Time Again) and proceeded to explore the world of rock and grunge. While I cringe now at how quick I was to discard something I loved for the approval of my "friends", I can at least point to this culture shock as the start of my focus on the discovery of new music.

Given the era, MTV was a crucial tool in this regard. Many of my grunge-period finds were thanks to high-rotation "Buzz Bin" clips with widely varied degrees of artistic merit (on one hand: the Breeders' Cannonball, on the other: Blind Melon's No Rain). Obviously more edgy fare was receiving airtime on the channel as well, but my typical viewing hours didn't generally overlap with 120 Minutes. So, hard as it is to believe now, I can attribute my first exposure to NIN to whichever forward-thinking MTV programmer decided to slap a "buzzworthy" label on the Closer clip in the spring of 1994. I don't believe I even heard the full song all the way through at first - just a few seconds including the "help me" lyric that were used in a promo. That brief taste was enough to convey the notion that here was something with the elements I'd been missing in my musical diet since tossing DM to the side: interesting sounds, layered production, synthesizers! And on top of that, there was no denying the truly unique visual presentation.

I'm pretty sure I resolved to buy TDS on the basis of that snippet alone. However, it was not the next CD I purchased due to a silly personal hangup. Over spring break, my father and I spent a few days in New York City. My recollection of the trip is hazy at best, but I clearly remember taking a trip to the late, great Tower Records (most likely the Lincoln Center location). The intent was to pick up TDS, but I was put off by the thought of having to travel with a non-jewel case CD in my bag - heaven forbid it should become damaged in transit! I also held out hope that perhaps there was a different edition in a standard jewel case that was simply out of stock, since other major releases at the time (e.g. Pearl Jam's Vs.) occasionally had multiple variants. So, with those considerations taking precedence, I opted for a copy of Soundgarden's Superunknown instead.

Back home in the Chicago suburbs, I determined to my satisfaction that if I wanted TDS, I'd have to tolerate the flimsy, non-traditional packaging, and I plunked down my cash at the local Blockbuster Music...I think. I have no explanation for why I distinctly remember almost buying TDS but not the act of actually buying it. In any case, all subsequent NIN-related events in 1994 - the shock upon first listening to TDS in full and the love affair that developed thereafter, the initial exposure to PHM and Broken at summer camp, somehow persuading my mother and my father to take me to see NBK in the theater (on two separate occasions) - remain much more vivid. The same can be said for the next 19+ years of my obsession.

I couldn't help but read all the preceding posts on this thread, and I really appreciated hearing how people made their first discovery in the post-Spiral years. Part of me is jealous that you were all able to skip the interminable waits between TDS and TF and TF and WT, but at least I have my ridiculous memories of frantically trying to tape The Perfect Drug off the radio when it premiered in either late 1996 or early 1997. It was like getting a glimpse of sunlight after years of living underground...or so I melodramatically thought at the time.

thenorthwood
10-07-2013, 10:02 PM
The Downward Spiral cassette in 1994. I think I bought it from a brief dalliance with Columbia House when you got 10 or so cassettes for a penny when joining.

sa_nick
10-07-2013, 11:26 PM
2002, And all that could have been (live)

Same as me! The DVD, not the album, to be specific.

koz-ivan
10-08-2013, 02:02 AM
i'm not sure i remember my first nin purchase, it would have been one of the early halo's either the head like a hole maxi single, sin, down in it or pretty hate machine. (at the time i'd buy a lot of cd singles, so it's entirely possible i bought at least one of them first) but most likely it was pretty hate machine.

Halo Infinity
10-08-2013, 08:25 AM
I noticed that some people got Further Down The Spiral before The Downward Spiral. As good as a remix that was, and as much as I think it's far better to have TDS be the first experience, I could also see how FDTS could look like an actual album to people very new to NIN.

Frolick Shiawase
11-24-2013, 01:08 PM
Well, I first heard NIN with The Perfect Drug and downloaded two or three songs as a kid...
My firts Halo was quite a lot years later, with Halo 22... Yeah, a live DVD was my first NIN purchase... But then again, I had all their discography downloaded by then.
It was curious, I asked for something by NIN in a huge department store because I saw the PHM reissue a week or two before... And when they said they didn't have anything, I was in disbelief... The DVD's cover caught my eye, and then I read the side of it... "NINE_INCH_NAILS [HALO_22]"
It was a great find, I remember getting excited to the point of tears... And actually crying when I saw what Trent did in Beside You In Time (the glass thing, it is still one of my favourite things NIN has done live)

So yeah, now I have 12 halos: 2, 5, 8, 14, 16, 17CD2, 19, 22, 24, 27 and 28dcd... goshdarnit, Trent... Why is it that he attacs directly to the collector's impulses?

AudreyElizabeth
11-24-2013, 03:10 PM
I guess I'm getting old. Wait, before I get into that, where did the forums go on NIN official?
Anyway,I remember rocking out to Head Like a Hole in 1989. I was 7 years old lol. MTV was a staple for my whole family; we were all music lovers. That doesn't count as a purchase though. The first NIN fan I ever met made a tape of TDS for me. I was just a kid, back in 94-95, and I didn't have a whole lot of money. After I wore the tape out, my best friend gave me the Closure VHS tapes for Christmas. These were hidden from my parents and watched with GREAT relish! We bought a copy of Spin magazine when TR was featured on the cover, I bought Antichrist Superstar and celebrated the fact that Trent produced it, I snatched up Further Down the Spiral as soon as it hit the shelves. I spent my lunch money on this shit! I made a clay-animation video adaptation of Poe's Tell Tale Heart, and the last scene featured the tormented screams of The Downward Spiral track (it was a copyright violation, but what does an 8th grade kid know about that?).

Later- my husband surprised me with a copy of With Teeth for my birthday; it was so fucking awesome.

Fast forward- in college I was asked to create a storyboard for my film class. I chose The Thin Red Line and decided to portray the disinterment of Japanese corpses on Guadalcanal. I made the drawings in charcoal, threw them into Windows Movie Maker, and chose the first two tracks of Ghosts for the soundtrack. My teacher was quite moved by the project, and I got to list Nine Inch Nails in the credits.

Last month, I finally, finally, FINALLY got to see NIN in concert. Bridgestone Arena, Nashville, TN. I went to work for the next two days with a hoarse and broken voice, my head reeling from the experience.

Damn. I love Nine Inch Nails. So, since the age of seven (and I'll never forget a sleepless night when I saw the Down In It video on MTV) I've been rocking out with Trent.

artdeco
11-24-2013, 08:37 PM
broken in 1993....though my friend let me borrow PHM in 1992. it even had the little mini-disc thingy. good times.

Fixer808
11-24-2013, 09:02 PM
I'd been vaguely aware through the 90's, but I was still listening to a lot of Floyd and Genesis, general classic rock stuff, and whatever came on the radio. Friend made me a mix tape of some TDS and Broken stuff and I was hooked. Think TDS was first, on tape in like '96, then the Perfect Drug remix EP when it came out.

Oh, and I guess buying Quake in '98 or so counts.

Joy Prevention Hotline
11-24-2013, 11:04 PM
NIN became my favorite band in the weirdest way possible, when I was 40. The first album I bought (or even heard) was Ghosts, downloaded from nin.com.

But my first Trent Reznor production was actually Saul Williams' Niggy Tardust. I was not a hip hop fan either — I bought it after reading about it on Ars Technica (http://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2008/01/gettin-niggy-with-it-reznor-releases-numbers-for-online-experiment/), of all places. It wasn't even a review of the music, but an article about the "pay what you want" marketing that was still a big deal in the wake of Radiohead's In Rainbows (which I also bought after reading about it on Ars or maybe Wired). I was intensely curious about the evolving post-Napster music economy, but not really looking for new bands at that point.

My knowledge of NIN was almost nonexistent. I'd downloaded HLAH from Napster and thought it was an OK song (only to realize years later that I'd seen the video sometime in the 90s), but I'd never even heard of Closer or Hurt yet.

Somehow Niggy and Ghosts led me to the LITS presale — which led to a bunch of illicit downloads :rolleyes: to get caught up on the discography — and seven months after Niggy I was buying Broken and a CD copy of The Slip. So I guess the unorthodox marketing worked. :)

The avalanche started after I saw the show in August. From then till NINJA I was buying just about everything I could get my hands on from Amazon and iTunes, plus an import copy of PHM from some record shop in Argentina.

45rpm
12-01-2013, 06:10 PM
Halo 3/"Head Like A Hole".

Pdhot65ton
12-04-2013, 11:40 PM
I traded a Michael Jordan NBA Hoops card for a copy of PHM and copies of Nevermind and Green Day "Dookie" for TDS. this probably 95-96, parents wouldn't buy them for me, and I couldn't go to a music store on my own to buy them, had to go black market. First NIN album I actually paid money for was The Fragile through BMG. Still have them all, beat to hell, but they stand tall next to their sealed collectable brothers in the man cave still, and will forever.

Pdhot65ton
12-04-2013, 11:41 PM
I traded a Michael Jordan NBA Hoops card for a copy of PHM and copies of Nevermind and Green Day "Dookie" for TDS. this probably 95-96, parents wouldn't buy them for me, and I couldn't go to a music store on my own to buy them (12-13 y/o then), had to go black market. First NIN album I actually paid money for was The Fragile through BMG. Still have them all, beat to hell, but they stand tall next to their sealed collectable brothers in the man cave still, and will forever.

icecream
12-05-2013, 12:02 AM
My first purchase was WT when it came out. I was just getting into "modern" music at that time. To me now, it's one of my least favorite NIN releases. I lent that cd to a friend to copy and ended up moving soon after and never got it back. Most meaningful NIN purchase (aside from tickets) would be the vinyl TDS I have. I'm not into collecting but I have most of the albums on cd, none of the singles, remix etc...

Omega
12-05-2013, 12:15 AM
First NIN purchase was TDS in 1994...though I had owned/heard the HLAH remix album and PHM, HLAH remix album was a gift, the PHM cassette was borrowed. The HLAH remix album was actually the first cd I had ever seen as cds were just starting to come out back then. Awesome gift huh? Not only was it a cd, of which I'd never seen before but it was also NIN! Lol, totally dating myself, haha. The town I'd lived in still only sold vinyl or cassette at the time of Halo 3 and they sure as heck didn't have any Nine Inch Nails. I tried looking for NIN but nope.. if it wasn't Madonna or Journey...good luck, LOL. One still probably couldn't find any NIN in that dinky town. Once I moved to a bigger city..I had every NIN album out..and first in line upon new releases.

Hyperpower
12-05-2013, 02:37 AM
good thread, alot of very interesting posts in here.
as for my first purchase? it was PHM.
a friend of mine introduced me to nin in '93 and i instantly loved HLAH and Down in it, been a fan ever since and nin just seems to get better.
btw, Botley for some reason i thought you had been a fan alot longer, not sure why :P

Volband
12-05-2013, 03:11 AM
I ordered The Slip as soon as it came out.

That's still the only NIN purchase I have, but I'll do my best to make up for it. Buying CDs just so that I can say "I own the real one!" has been a luxury for me so far. I'm not even sure which to buy next. The Fragile is really close to me, but hell, it's the most expensive one.:/

katara
12-05-2013, 06:08 AM
That's still the only NIN purchase I have, but I'll do my best to make up for it. Buying CDs just so that I can say "I own the real one!" has been a luxury for me so far. I'm not even sure which to buy next. The Fragile is really close to me, but hell, it's the most expensive one.:/
Get Broken! ;)

Halo Infinity
12-05-2013, 04:25 PM
I ordered The Slip as soon as it came out.

That's still the only NIN purchase I have, but I'll do my best to make up for it. Buying CDs just so that I can say "I own the real one!" has been a luxury for me so far. I'm not even sure which to buy next. The Fragile is really close to me, but hell, it's the most expensive one.:/
I'd definitely go for The Downward Spiral and/or With Teeth next. They definitely seem to be among the far more accessible NIN albums out there, and reasonably priced, and easier to listen to. I'm also one of those fans that would actually recommend the regular version of Pretty Hate Machine if you're lucky to find it on a lower price, or even brand new with a reasonable price. I've actually ordered the 2011 version before, and it seemed to be the closest thing to the 1989 version. That's also unfortunately out of print though.

Volband
12-06-2013, 04:55 AM
Thanks for the advice, but I don't think personal preferences matters much for me, I love everything that's NIN, but let's see:

PHM (original) - as you said, can I even get it for a normal price? I'm not a collector to pay $$$s just so that I can say "I own it!".
PHM (deluxe) - I prefer the original, since that was the one which was part of my whole "explore NIN" experience.
Broken - yeah, well. I guess it has a cool cover :D
TDS - if it comes with additional stuff (like posters or artwork, Idunno), then I'm definetly digging it; it's also THE nin album, even if it's not the closest to me.
TF - I'd buy it immidietly, but it's way too pricy, and Trent just said a deluxe edition might come in next year, so it's definetly a no-no.
WT - One of my favourite albums, next to TF, but isn't it just a plain disk? That's so lame.
BYIT - that cover is ahmazing.
YZ - It's cool, especially if I could get the color-changing disk!
Ghosts - Really nice cover, but if I'd buy it, I'd try to get some deluxe version, if there's still some out there.
HM - It's definetly on the priority list, since it's new AND cool at the same time, I just don't know which cover would I prefer.

Choices, and Christmas is so close... though I'm already buying at least one concert ticket.

Halo Infinity
12-06-2013, 03:23 PM
I'd probably recommend settling for the Deluxe version of PHM if you can't find the original one. Get Down Make Love sort of makes up for it in a way. It seems like getting TDS and HM as of right would be the safest bet for you yet. :)

This is probably the best price I could find for a brand new original PHM at Best Buy's site though. It still could've be better, but at least it's under the $15.00 mark. I'm also surprised that it's even available to start with. Barnes & Noble has it too.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/pretty-hate-machine-cd/8239239.p;jsessionid=DFC33263D0E25CF71A2CD9D3B5849 F27.bbolsp-app01-159?id=1495121&skuId=8239239&st=Nine Inch Nails Pretty Hate Machine&lp=2&cp=1

(http://www.bestbuy.com/site/pretty-hate-machine-cd/8239239.p;jsessionid=DFC33263D0E25CF71A2CD9D3B5849 F27.bbolsp-app01-159?id=1495121&skuId=8239239&st=Nine Inch Nails Pretty Hate Machine&lp=2&cp=1)http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/pretty-hate-machine-nine-inch-nails/22378288?ean=602527746999

MrSlfDstruct
12-06-2013, 05:59 PM
Thanks for the advice, but I don't think personal preferences matters much for me, I love everything that's NIN, but let's see:

PHM (original) - as you said, can I even get it for a normal price? I'm not a collector to pay $$$s just so that I can say "I own it!".
PHM (deluxe) - I prefer the original, since that was the one which was part of my whole "explore NIN" experience.
Broken - yeah, well. I guess it has a cool cover :D
TDS - if it comes with additional stuff (like posters or artwork, Idunno), then I'm definetly digging it; it's also THE nin album, even if it's not the closest to me.
TF - I'd buy it immidietly, but it's way too pricy, and Trent just said a deluxe edition might come in next year, so it's definetly a no-no.
WT - One of my favourite albums, next to TF, but isn't it just a plain disk? That's so lame.
BYIT - that cover is ahmazing.
YZ - It's cool, especially if I could get the color-changing disk!
Ghosts - Really nice cover, but if I'd buy it, I'd try to get some deluxe version, if there's still some out there.
HM - It's definetly on the priority list, since it's new AND cool at the same time, I just don't know which cover would I prefer.

Choices, and Christmas is so close... though I'm already buying at least one concert ticket.

I find it ironic that you dog Broken for having dynamic range yet want the original version of PHM over the remaster.

Joy Prevention Hotline
12-06-2013, 06:37 PM
Lots of original PHM copies on ebay too.

Volband
12-06-2013, 06:38 PM
I find it ironic that you dog Broken for having dynamic range yet want the original version of PHM over the remaster.
Sounding has nothing to do with my choice of purchase, since I doubt I'd listen to any of them. That being said, original PHM is closer to me, that's all.

Halo Infinity
12-06-2013, 10:00 PM
I'm really trying to remember the very first Nine Inch Nails album I've ever purchased. I'm sure it was The Downward Spiral in 2002.

GrayscaleRain
12-07-2013, 02:27 AM
For me it was Broken, I bought it from a Best Buy in 2004 before With_Teeth came out along with a copy of David Bowie's Low.