On November 4th, 1995, me and a number of my friends were going on a group date to an Aeros hockey game. In fact, this was actually my first date with Deanna Ladimir, a friend of mine in high school that I dated for a couple of months when I was just 16. Daniel Putt and I had been regular concert goers and had heard all day on the radio that Nine Inch Nails was in town for a surprise show at Numbers in Montrose. Unfortunately it was either impossible to get tickets to the show because they were just giving them away, or they sold out that morning in just a few minutes. Whatever the case was, we didn't have any.
The Aeros played near downtown Houston at what was then the Summit. After seeing the game, Putt and I suggested to our particular group of six that we stop by Numbers just to see what it sounded like from the outside (Nine Inch Nails had only just climbed to the very top of stardom the year before and we were pretty anxious to catch any glimpse we could). We parked in the neighborhood where we commonly had before and headed over to the club. Although we were far from dressed like club-goers, it was pretty enjoyable to hear the music.
Evidently the bouncer on duty took notice of our excitement just to be standing outside listening and told us that for $20.00 per person he'd let us in. It's a little harder than you might think to scrounge together $120.00 as a 16-year-old, especially in 1995, but we did somehow manage.
So, despite being dressed like young high school yuppies that had just come from a hockey game with a bunch of other high school football players, cheerleaders, and drill team members, we got to see Trent Reznor perform to a packed house of maybe 800 just people. I very distinctly remember walking in just as "Something I Can Never Have" started playing.
The only downside of the entire night was that two of the girls with us had to be home by a certain time and refused to accept that this was one of those times it was better just to break curfew (naturally my date did not have this problem). Much to my chagrin, we did wind up leaving before the show ended.
The only thing that puzzles me to this day is how easily we were able to find our way from the Summit to Numbers without the use of a GPS or even a phone.
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