Fans of Nine Inch Nails deep discography will be familiar with their song “The Perfect Drug.” Even bigger fans of the band will know they’ve never actually brought that song out for a live performance on stage. On Tuesday night, that factoid changed as they made the live debut of the song at Colorado’s hallowed Red Rocks Amphitheatre. First check out the live performance below:
The song was included on David Lynch’s neo-noir film from 1997, Lost Highways. While it’s actually a really great example of Nine Inch Nails at their most commercially accessible, it’s not a huge surprise Reznor’s kept it off of set lists for over 20 years. On BBC radio, he named it the piece of work he’s least satisfied with. “It was one of those things where you have a week to do a track for a movie,” he said. “The mindset that you kind of adapt in that situation, or I did, was ‘Let’s go in and experiment and see what happens, and it’s not, y’know, whatever comes out of it, it’s not the end of the world.’ For comparison’s sake, here’s the original version.
During a tour that just kicked off a few days ago, the band has already made quick work of touching on rarely-performed songs. About a week ago they dusted off a series of songs they hadn’t played in a long while when they played the 1992 EP Broken in full to kick off their set (and the tour as a whole).
Photo Credit: Raymond Flotat
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