When Nine Inch Nails played Numbers in 1995 "the whole floor was a pit"

On November 4, 1995 industrial rockers Nine Inch Nails played Numbers in Montrose. The show is still remembered for its excitement and intensity. On November 4, 1995 industrial rockers Nine Inch Nails played Numbers in Montrose. The show is still remembered for its excitement and intensity. Photo: Courtesy: Numbers Nightclub Photo: Courtesy: Numbers Nightclub Image 1 of / 128 Caption Close When Nine Inch Nails played Numbers in 1995 "the whole floor was a pit" 1 / 128 Back to Gallery

"The whole floor was a pit," says Chris Baccaro of an epic concert by Nine Inch Nails at the tiny Numbers nightclub in Montrose on Nov. 4, 1995.

Now 44 years old, the service manager at an area Ford dealership speaks about the show in mythic terms, like many Houstonians who found themselves covered in the sweat of others that night.

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This weekend, Nine Inch Nails is one of the headliners of the third edition of the Day for Night music and visual arts festival at the former Barbara Jordan Post Office.

But back in 1995, Trent Reznor and his band were coming off a curiously unpopular co-headlining tour with big fan David Bowie, who had sworn off the hits for career obscurities. Reznor told fans in Houston that night that the Bowie tour "sucked", which wasn't a slight on Bowie but uncultured fans.

As Rolling Stone notes some fans left before Bowie could hit the stage during some tour dates, or soon after, an unthinkable concept in our post-Bowie world.

NIN decided to shake the cobwebs off with a short, 11-date club tour through the South in the weeks after the tour wrapped, bringing along alt-rockers Helmet. It was a year and change after the band had released had its landmark "The Downward Spiral" record.

"In another time and another land, Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor might have been a religious ascetic," Houston music critic Rick Mitchell wrote in 1994 in his review of an International Ballroom show that May. "He could have spent his days isolated in a monastery, meditating on his spiritual unworthiness and flagellating himself to atone for his wicked sins.

"But this is Western civilization in the 20th century, where sinners write books and go on talk shows rather than whipping themselves, and even monks can have hit records."

The band had previously played Numbers three times, first opening for The Jesus and Mary Chain in February 1990, coming back that summer on their own, and returning early the next year. By the time they played Numbers in 1995 they were an arena band on MTV and kids in the suburbs adored them.

(A headlining gig at The Summit on Halloween night in 1994 with Marilyn Manson as tour support is worth a story of its own.)

"We used to go to Record Rack almost every Saturday, and we would see the pictures of the first time they played there at Numbers," Baccaro said.

Tickets were put on sale just days before the show at the Astroarena ticket office across town, as Numbers itself would have been too small to accommodate the surge of black-clad teens looking for tickets.

One Houston NIN fan, Rob Stokes, wasn't lucky enough to score tickets, so he and a friend decided to camp out in front of Numbers and hope for the best in the cold November air. Roadies, feeling charitable, let the college-age boys come inside and see the array of equipment loaded into the venue that morning.

"There were mountains of equipment cases marked with NIN logos. More than I could ever imagine fitting on the stage," Stokes said. Sadly the roadies didn't have extra tickets.

Then, Record Rack owner Bruce Godwin showed up, and things took a turn for Stokes and his friend. The boys plead their case, but Godwin told them to go home.

"We are devastated. My buddy goes nuclear on Bruce. Screaming how this is complete crap and how can you do this to the biggest effing NIN fans ever and on and on," Stokes said as he laughed.

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Stokes said he followed Godwin to his car and apologized for his friend's outburst. Godwin, for some reason, rewarded the bawling he just received.

"He got really close and said, 'Give me $100.' I run back to my buddy and he gives me $50, and I went back over and handed him this little wad of cash. He goes into his car and comes out with an envelope," Stokes said.

Inside the envelope were two printed vouchers for the show. The guys had just received what Godwin tells them are the final two tickets to the show in Houston.

"I thanked him immensely, shook his hand and started to go back over to my buddy," Stokes said. When the doors finally opened, the two biggest NIN fans in the city were camped out in front of the stage, front and center.

"I was in heaven. Screaming along with all of my favorite songs that I knew forwards and backwards. I got battered and bruised, but it was worth it being at the front," he said. "I even got to touch Trent."

Reznor, later, came back into the venue after the show, nursing a wound from guitarist Danny Lohner's guitar, to get a drink or two for the pain.

Stokes and his friend left the venue after the show and missed meeting his idol by mere minutes.

"Looking back, I am still amazed by the show. It was amazing and one of the most adrenaline-filled performances I've seen before," Stokes said.

Music-scene veteran and LD Systems production manager David Garcia was one of the other 20-somethings in the crowd that night.

"Seeing Nine Inch Nails in the '90s was this transcendental experience. Trent was in his prime. There was an energy and a level of production that I hadn't experienced at the time," Garcia said. "When they hit the stage, my face melted off."

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Numbers, even today, is an intimate place to see a show.

"All the concerts there were special because it was small," Baccaro said. "I'm not sure how many people were there that night, but I guarantee you, if the fire marshal showed up, it would have been shut down."

The set list, opening with the pummeling "Head Like a Hole" was heavy on the hits from the "The Downward Spiral" and "Pretty Hate Machine" albums and the band's assorted EP cuts.

One Houstonian, restaurant-scene mainstay Joshua Martinez, brags to this day about the show and his battle wounds.

"I stage-dived, and the whole crowd parted like the Red Sea, and I came crashing down on my jaw and dislocated it," he said. "I still stayed for the show and went to the emergency room after."

It's said that Reznor lost his voice during the next show two days later in New Orleans. The tour petered out by December. NIN acolytes and Nothing Records labelmates Marilyn Manson would soon take the reins as the angst-ridden, scary teenage-friendly band of the moment.

Reznor would emerge with 1999's highly-anticipated double-disc "The Fragile". The cathartic set of songs was the by-product of a decade spent in depraved situations and somehow surviving.

These days Reznor is a respectable Oscar-winning film composer built like an ex-NFL linebacker with a healthy handsome rage onstage, earned through spending the '90s mired in dread and self-loathing.

Craig Hlavaty is a reporter for Chron.com and HoustonChronicle.com. He's an intolerable native Texan with too much ink in his skin and too much brisket stuck in his teeth.