Trent Reznor, bless his little black cotton socks, is giving away free shit again. This time, the goods are much more exclusive than the free albums of late, for only the most industrious (ha!) Nine Inch Nails fans were able to retrieve a pair of tickets from a Los Angeles drainpipe:

The band posted a file to its website with concert tour locations a couple weeks ago that visitors could download and open in the Google Earth software. Last Friday, a mysterious place marker appeared on the map, labeled “under the rock,” that pointed to a location in Burbank. Beneath that rock was an envelope giving the lucky discoverers entree to the show.

The Fortunate Ones told their story to the Los Angeles Times:

My brother TJ, a 33-year-old hard-core fan who has followed the band across continents to attend shows, was one of the first to see it. “We’ve got to go,” he shouted as I sat bewildered on the couch. “We’ve got to go right now!”

….

When we pulled up to a side entrance at the park, we were greeted by a locked gate and a parked minivan. A sticker adorned the car’s rear window that read “NIN.” We were at the right place.

TJ veered his car onto the curb, jumped out and started running. As I jogged behind him, I began to understand why my brother has long been obsessed with the industrial rock group. Reznor’s constant efforts to provide a surreal fan experience make it easy to get pulled in.

As we neared a split in the road, a man shined his flashlight in our faces. “We found it,” he said. But we knew the prize wasn’t where they were walking from. We ran past the wannabe saboteurs, and as I began recognizing areas from the satellite images, I felt a burst of adrenaline. I sprinted past TJ and stopped at the spot I had remembered, sweating and gasping for air.

He jumped in the ditch, and using his cellphone as a makeshift flashlight, he reached into the drain.

….

As we jumped up and down, celebrating our victory, it was obvious that Reznor had accomplished his goal. Those feelings of excitement and anxiety are the same emotions he aims to put across in his music. And that could explain why fans have been so overwhelmingly receptive to such a bizarre spin on one of the oldest forms of music promotion — a ticket giveaway.

– Mark Milian

This is an effective, inexpensive, and rather ingenious promotion similar to the strategy used by Trent for Nine Inch Nails’ Year Zero (2007) album:

mr. self destruct = the music industry

….

he leaked songs himself via alternate marketing schemes, such as leaving a jump drive containing an mp3 file – in a men’s restroom in london, near a venue nin played later in the day… not to mention the 30 or so web sites developed to further the alternate-reality-story-thread of year zero.

Can anyone ever say anything negative about Trent Reznor? Yes, this excessive praise is rather disgusting, but, until we uncover some bizarre habit that would reflect poorly upon the dude, well, we’re basically fucked here.