The End of the Eighties, Track 34

“Sin”
Nine Inch Nails
Pretty Hate Machine
1989

The original two-disc compilation I made for the Bowling Green collection each carried its own subtitle. And, like Track 09 of this playlist, the subtitle for what was the second disc was taken from a Nine Inch Nails song. This time, “Sin”. And while the previous subtitle (“Just a Fading Fucking Reminder of Who I Used to Be” from “Something I Can Never Have”) is open to all sorts of interpretation, this one’s a bit more straightforward. After all, college (and the reminiscences of that experience) is about nothing if not “stale incense, old sweat, and lies, lies, lies.”

“Sin” is a song that always reminds me of John, if only because I know it’s his favorite track off Pretty Hate Machine. It’s a nice little nihilistic ditty about giving everything – sexually, I assume – and not having the emotional weight of the encounter reciprocated by the partner. Like much of the album, “Sin” takes life experience and runs it through the buzz saw angst of young adulthood to blistering effect.

The End of the Eighties, Track 28

“That’s What I Get”
Nine Inch Nails
Pretty Hate Machine
1989

Once again, it’s all about the flow within the playlist here. “Batdance” somehow fits perfectly against the synthesized steel drum percussion opening Nine Inch Nails’ “That’s What I Get”. It’s a song that is musically stark, devoid of softness. The only real emotion is conveyed by Trent Reznor’s vocals. Interestingly, though, the beats of Pretty Hate Machine’s leadoff single, “Down In It”, suddenly appear in the latter half of this song.

Thematically, “That’s What I Get” is all about the nihilistic place I found myself in between Pam leaving and my further self-exploration at Bowling Green in 1989. It’s as if every word of this song was ripped from my heart as I tried to navigate my victimized feelings over Pam’s departure. 

Just when everything was making sense

You took away all my self-confidence

Now all that I’ve been hearing must be true

I guess I’m not the only boy for you

That’s what I get

How could you turn us into this

After you just taught me how to kiss you?

I told you I’d never say goodbye

Now I’m slipping on the tears you made me cry

That’s what I get

Why does it come as a surprise

To think that I was so naïve

Maybe didn’t mean so much

But it meant everything to me

The song’s sentiment is echoed in hundreds of different variations throughout my writings of the era. Portrait of a Tortured Punk Poet as he attempts to find his way through both his feelings and the larger world, dressed in black, smoking a pack of cigarettes a day, and approaching his freshman college responsibilities more as “guidelines” as opposed to requirements.

The End of the Eighties, Track 25

“Get Down Make Love”
Nine Inch Nails
Sin Maxi-Single
1989

It’s kind of shocking to me that Nine Inch Nails’ “Get Down Make Love” was nowhere to be found on either of the original playlists. It’s probably my favorite NIN song alongside “The Only Time”. The first time I heard “Get Down Make Love” was at the Phantasy Theater on the Pretty Hate Machine Promo Tour at the end of the decade. I attended the show with coworkers from the CD store I worked at, and when my boss (a classic and prog rock dinosaur) yelled over the din, “This is a Queen song!” my mind was completely blown.

It was a crazy thing to see Nine Inch Nails live in the late ’80s. Surrounded by anger and bathed in aggression, those early shows were physically demanding of both the band and the audience. The ferocity of the performance lent an unpredictable air of excitement to the proceedings. It was antagonistic. It stirred you, pulled you in. I’m not a big guy, but this is the music that could draw me into the fray. Jostled and bruised, you would emerge from the cornstarch haze of the venue and head out into the Northeast Ohio night carried on an adrenaline surge. 

This was the first of an inspired list of Nine Inch Nails’ covers, leading directly to Pigface’s “Suck”, Adam & the Ants’ “Physical”, Joy Division’s “Dead Souls”, and beyond. Recorded or live, “Get Down Make Love” feels so much more raw than the rest of Pretty Hate Machine. This song is all about attitude. Opening with a sampling of the insistent sexual history interrogation from 1962’s The Cabinet of Caligari (co-starring Glynis Johns of Mary Poppins fame!), the slow menace of Queen’s original is transformed into a spiraling nightmare. There is a sense that this shit was just thrown together – the raging percussion, the screaming chorus. It’s all open wounds and bloodied knuckles. And, frankly, some of the best industrial pop you’ll ever hear.

The End of the Eighties, Track 20

“The Only Time”
Nine Inch Nails
Pretty Hate Machine
1989

At the crossroads of sex and religion, there lie Prince and Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor, and though these artists weren’t the genesis for my thoughts on these themes, they certainly informed my view. In Prince’s world sex is nasty and fun, but it also lives alongside absolute faith. Reznor’s vision is darker, blacker, more violent and questioning, borderline hopeless. Reznor credits Prince for “ideas and sounds” on Pretty Hate Machine, and nowhere is that influence more tangible to me than on this provocative track.

I have written at length about the influence of Nine Inch Nails’ Pretty Hate Machine, but “The Only Time” has always been my favorite song on the album. This darkly raging exploration of uninhibited lust and the act of losing oneself in another opens with the simple declaration: “I’m drunk.” Reinforcing the emptiness of the moment, this is followed by the admission that “right now I’m so in love with you / And I don’t want to think too much about what we should or shouldn’t do.”

As much as I love the shocking vulgarity of first verse’s “Lay my hands on heaven and the sun and the moon and the stars / While the devil wants to fuck me in the back of his car,” it’s the delivery of the next line that seals the deal for me: “Nothing quite like the feel of something new.” The idea of this graphic image being almost disposable gets to the heart of the detachment from reality that was a cornerstone of late ’80s/early ’90s young adulthood.

Looking back on my relationships of the era, I realize just how influenced by this song they were. I took to heart the notion that there needed to be turmoil to make a relationship real, to really feel. Reznor’s notion that “This is the only time I really feel alive” in the chorus echoed all the self-absorption of my late teens and early 20s tortured soul mindset, and resulted in many-a subconsciously sabotaged relationship.

Clever turns of phrase like “My moral standing is lying down” and imagery of “The sweat in your eyes, the blood in your veins are listening to me” work perfectly in front of the music’s clashing industrial synthesizer noise and looped breathing samples. Aggressive animalistic basslines thrust my reeling mind through an off-kilter fun house of emotional damage in the same way they propelled me through crowds at those early live shows.

I listen to this song nearly 25 years later, and I am immediately transported back to New Year’s Eve 1989, I’m in the music store I worked at through late high school and college, I’m at all those early shows at the Phantasy and Empire, I’m fucking up relationships that deserved better, and words are pouring from the tip of my Sharpie on to unruled paper at a furious pace. The sway this song and this album have over me is staggering, a catalyst to lay bare everything that was swirling inside me.