Dissonance

In 1995, Nine Inch Nails co-headlined the Outside tour with David Bowie. Although NIN were supposedly more popular than Bowie at the time, Trent felt uncomfortable having his idol open for him. So NIN played after the opening band Prick and before Bowie. Their set was named Dissonance.

After NIN played a re-worked instrumental version of "Eraser", Bowie's band gradually came onto the stage to play 5 songs with NIN. Reznor and Bowie sang duet throughout this dual mini-set, with Reznor leaving the stage at the end for Bowie's band to perform their own set. NIN and Bowie's individual set lengths ended up being roughly equal.

The concept was innovative for its time, and received low sales and mixed reviews. Generalizing here, the young crowd did not stay for Bowie's set despite the segue, and the old crowd did not get industrial. Nowadays, these shows are treasured by the bootleg community.

NIN set

1. Terrible Lie – pre-emptively begun without warning (no pre-recorded build-up such as Pinion)
2. March of the Pigs
3. The Becoming
4. Sanctified
5. Piggy (Nothing Can Stop Me Now) – the remix
6. Burn
7. Closer or Closer To God – the remix, which probably confused the audience
8. Wish
9. Gave Up
10. Eraser – re-worked instrumental

NIN and Bowie set

11. Subterraneans – over top the synthesizers, Trent performed a saxophone solo whilst Bowie intoned the first verse of "Scary Monsters"
12. Scary Monsters
13. Reptile
14. Hallo Spaceboy
15. Hurt – with a unique synth part; a performance of this version is included in Closure

Trivia

• Later, Bowie would attempt a similar tour in Europe with Morrissey. This also received mixed reception from the public, with Morrissey dropping out after refusing to segue his set into Bowie's as Reznor had done.

YouTube videos

Low quality videos of the 1995/09/17 show:

1. Eraser
2. Subterraneans
3. Scary Monsters
4. Reptile (part 1)
5. Reptile (part 2)
6. Hallo Spaceboy
7. Hurt