Trent Reznor engaged to Mariqueen Maandig of West Indian Girl

Ah, spring -- the time when a young man's fancy turns from Twitter wars and hilarious fake Timbaland collaborations to love. Over the weekend, the L.A. art-rock band West Indian Girl posted the news that its singer, Mariqueen Maandig, is tying the knot with Nine Inch Nails mastermind Trent Reznor. The two were recently photographed at the "Star Trek" premiere at Grauman's Chinese Theater on April 30. Hearty congratulations are due all around -- we can't think of two more striking and talented L.A. frontpeople to take it down to the proverbial courthouse and make it official.

-- August Brown

Trent Reznor photo by Kevin Winter / Getty Images; West Indian Girl photo by Karl Walter / Getty Images

Fan spends $20,000 to hang out with Josh Freese and friends

True to his word, alt-rock drummer extraordinaire Josh Freese is honoring the outlandish marketing campaign he cooked up to promote his new album “Since 1972.” One 19-year-old fan from Florida decided that rather than investing $20,000 in a car, he’d prefer hanging out for a week and playing miniature golf with the onetime member of Nine Inch Nails, the Vandals and A Perfect Circle and his rock star pals.

Thomas Mrzyglocki snagged one of the pricier premium packages that Freese whimsically, but seriously, offered over his website for those who buy his second solo album. The cheapest, at $7, covers a download of the album’s 11 songs. The physical CD comes out April 14.

At the top end, for $75,000, Freese says he’ll join the buyer’s band (if he or she has one) for a month and go on tour, join them on a limo ride to Tijuana, take them on a flying trapeze lesson followed by homemade pasta cooked up by NIN guitarist Robin Finck and his wife. He’ll also write and record a five-song EP about the buyer’s life and let them take home one of his drum kits.

Josh Freese: He can be bought

Drummer Josh Freese has spent a fair amount of time in high-flying circles as a member of Nine Inch Nails, Guns N' Roses, the Replacements, a Perfect Circle, the Vandals and Devo. So when it came time to release his new solo album, "Since 1972," he figured it couldn't hurt to aim high, without ignoring the average punk or alt-rock enthusiast who might want to check it out.

Freese created a tiered program in which the more buyers pay for the 11-song collection, the more they get for their money. For $7, fans can download the album from his website, but for anyone with a spare $75,000 kicking around, Freese has assembled a package that leaves the word "premium," well, cold.

For that princely sum, the Buddy Rich of alternative music promises that he will:

* Write and record a five-song EP about the buyer's life.

* Join the buyer's band (if he or she has one) and go on tour.

* Take the buyer to a flying trapeze lesson with his former NIN cohort guitarist Robin Finck.

* Send the purchaser home with one (but only one) of his own drum kits.

And he'll throw in a T-shirt.

"It's gotten a lot of attention, which is good," said Freese, 36, between bites of a Cobb salad at a cafe in Long Beach Airport recently. "I'm not expecting that anyone will really buy the most expensive packages, but if they do, I'm up for all of it. It's not like I'm gonna go, 'Oh, dude, it was just a joke.' "

Read more Josh Freese: He can be bought

Trent Reznor decries scalping, looks to the future of concert ticket biz

In a post on the Nine Inch Nails message board, Trent Reznor takes on the current hot-button issue of concert tickets and scalping. His post strives to assure fans that no one in the NIN camp "supplies or supports the practice of supplying tickets" to the secondary market, and he notes that tickets sold through Nine Inch Nails' fan club do not result in a "profit center" for the camp.

As industry giants Live Nation and Ticketmaster aim to merge, more light has been shone on the ticketing biz. A recent Wall Street Journal article noted that some of the best seats in the house reach the secondary ticket market via the artist and/or the artist's reps, a practice that can sometimes amount to $2 million in added revenue, reported the paper.

The article prompted a response from Ticketmaster's Joe Freeman, who noted that such practices allow artists to "participate more fairly in the economic value of the experience they're providing to fans." Dynamic pricing is the buzz term, and, in short, it means that the cost of tickets could rise or fall as demand increases or decreases -- more like the airline industry, wrote Billboard.

It's a scenario/proposal that doesn't seem to excite Reznor. Rather than use the term dynamic pricing, he employs the word "auction." He writes:

Nine Inch Nails, Jane's Addiction set tour dates

The pairing of Nine Inch Nails and Jane's Addiction will hit the Los Angeles area May 20 with a date at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Irvine. The itinerary was released late Tuesday night on the Nine Inch Nails website, and a "here's what we can tell you" note up top hints that more dates are to come.

An on-sale date has not you been announced, and the dates don't yet appear to be in either the Ticketmaster or Live Nation databases. Thus far, 22 dates have been revealed. The concert, which Trent Reznor threatens will be his last before he "makes NIN disappear for a while," will open May 8 in West Palm Beach, Fla.

There's a May 18 date in Las Vegas for road-trippers, as well as a Friday-night performance tabled for May 22 in Mountain View.

Friends of Pop & Hiss who live in Chicago will see Nine Inch Nails sans Jane's, which will fuel suspicion that Jane's Addiction will appear at this year's edition of the Windy City fest Lollapalooza, which is set for Aug. 7-9.

-- Todd Martens

Photo: Trent Reznor Credit: Peter Tym / For The Times

Tour itinerary after the jump.

Trent Reznor saying goodbye, with Jane's Addiction?

A small consolation to those not seeing Jane's Addiction at the Echo tonight: It sounds like you'll get another shot to see the original lineup.

But here's the catch: It will probably be on a much bigger stage, and it may be the last time you see Trent Reznor -- at least for a while. Reznor posted today on the official Nine Inch Nails website that he's plotting a major world tour, with Jane's Addiction as a co-headliner.

After the outing, which will commemorate the 20th anniversary of Nine Inch Nails' debut, "Pretty Hate Machine," Reznor writes it will be "time to make NIN disappear for a while." While Reznor doesn't offer too many details as to why the time is ripe for a hiatus, he notes that 2008's "Lights in the Sky" tour was the "culmination of what I could pull off in terms of an elaborate production. It was also quite difficult to pull off technically and physically night after night and left us all a bit dazed."

A proposed tour with Jane's, he writes, would be "much more raw, spontaneous and less scripted." He promises further details soon, and credits Jane's Addiction for giving Nine Inch Nails one of the act's first big breaks.

However, nothing sounds too set in stone, although there have been some Trent/Jane's rumors circulating for a bit now. "I reached out to Jane's to see if they'd want to join us across the US and we all felt it could be a great thing," Reznor writes. Pop & Hiss has requested a comment from the Jane's Addiction camp.

Reznor's announcement to take a hiatus comes as Nine Inch Nails has seemingly been on a creative surge. Last year saw two Web-first releases, the  instrumental "Ghosts I-IV" and the more fierce "The Slip." Both albums saw Reznor not only experimenting in the studio, but also toying with new distribution models.

But expect it to be a while before the break comes -- Nine Inch Nails will be playing the Bonnaroo festival in Manchester, Tenn. Also, here's betting Reznor isn't completely silent during the hiatus. He's spoken in the not too distant past about developing a TV series inspired by 2007's "Year Zero."

-- Todd Martens

Photo: Peter Tym / For The Times