This Is The First Day Of My Last Days

Ithaca Festival, 1996. A young unsuspecting fiften year old boy walks into the horribly-named "Sounds Fine" on the Commons and, on the recommendation of a close online friend, purchases The Downward Spiral by Nine Inch Nails. He takes it home and listens to it.

This was the point in his life that his musical tastes would change forever, swinging from - well, let's be honest here, mostly crap, to industrial rock and a wide range of electronic music. He would obsessively collect every album by Nine Inch Nails, even the obscure (both halves of the Closer single) and the mundane (the Down In It single with a whopping three tracks, all repeated on the Head Like A Hole single). T-shirts were purchased and worn proudly. Bumper stickers were put on cars. Lyrics were memorized.

You get the picture.

Tonight, after nearly ten years of on-again off-again fan-worship and countless money spent, this slightly older, much more cynical twenty-five year old man will walk into Madison Square Garden to finally see the band he's been obsessing about for all this time.

Excited? You bet your goddamn life I'm excited.