Saw Nine Inch Nails at the Hordern last night. They were killing it until about half an hour in when suddenly the whole Hordern Pavilion lost power, P/A, lights, everything. When it became clear it was going to be a while before things got fixed, everyone drifted out into the yard out front to wait.

After about 20 frustrating minutes, we found ourselves people-watching… big guys with dreadlocked goatees in Slayer tshirts looking increasingly pissed off. Security guys running around with their walkie talkies, clearly terrified the Slayer tshirt guys would start a riot. Of course they decided to close the bar, which was presumably intended to prevent people from getting juiced up and rioting, but really only made things worse.

After 40 minutes the lights came on, and a huge cheer went up. Everyone filed back in and the band fired back into the set with 1000% intensity. Probably the best NIN show I’ve seen, despite (because of?) the intermission.

Most fascinating is this video that shows what happened backstage while they tried to get the lights back on. At the time, we were outside joking around that Trent would be curled up in a foetal position with Kleenex on hand. But as you can see in the video, he is calm, collected, an absolute pro.

NIN Sydney 2.24.09 – Mid-show Power Outage [HD] from Nine Inch Nails on Vimeo.