I've been waiting 6 years to see Tool.


Fantomas were as excruciating as Tool were exhilerating. I wish I'd stayed in the car 
rather than heard the awful noise produced by the opener for a full 42 minutes. People 
were leaving the arena in droves with fingers in ears, and I didn't even feel guilty 
not clapping. They were topped in "The worst band I've seen EVER" category only by 
Atari Teenage Riot, and by a slim margin.

Tool, however, gave a masterful performance. There were some very bad things that were 
out of their control (see below), but as a band, they were vibrant, emotional, and 
precise. The stage setup was unorthodox - with Adam and Justin in the front with the 
spotlights, and Maynard being at the back of the stage by Danny's drumkit. Not once 
did he even have a spotlight on him, so it created a cool silhouette effect agaist a 
screen so you could see his movements really well. My friends and I had a discussion 
that we *think* he was completely naked during the first song, and then he changed into 
his, errr, tighty-blackies for Stinkfist.

Two huge screens filled the space above them, but unlike the usual "close up shots of 
the band", the screens instead played videos for all the songs. Most of them were in 
the vein of most Tool videos, but a few were some distorted naked swimmers (props to 
Tool for showing male and femal nudity equally!). Even the songs that didn't yet have 
videos had original art with them, and only Stinkfist and Schism had clips from their 
actual videos.

Then, during Schism, the figures from the video came out on stage on all fours with their 
heads bobbing (just as in the video), walking around the band. But the best was yet to 
come -- before Parabol the figures climbed ropes about 20 feet off the stage onto simple 
loops and did contortionist acts hanging from their feet, which continued the whole way 
through Parabola (I was concerned about blood rushing to their poor heads, but I'm 
guessing they're pros!).

Musical highlights for me were definitely Eulogy, with the beginning coming in exactly 
as the album version, and Lateralus, which was just performed to perfection, and we 
decided was probably the band favorite. I did want to hear Pushit quite badly, but after 
a guy behind me screamed "Play Pushit you fucking assholes!!", I decided I didn't want 
to hear it that much anymore, since that'd mean he'd hear it, too.

1. The Grudge
2. Stinkfist
3. 46&2
4. Prison Sex
5. Eulogy
6. Schism
7. Dispostion
8. Reflection
9. Parabol
10. Parabola
11. Eon Blue
12. The Patient
13. Aenema
14. Lateralus

Notice there were no songs from Opiate and only one from Undertow, which I thought was 
a bit odd...

Now, the bad:  
1) The acoustics. Corrugated steel and concrete are not the best materials for concerts.
 The sound got muddy and Maynard's vocals got lost, which really disappointed me. When 
I saw A Perfect Circle at Glastonbury, his voice was so clear and striking that it 
seemed like he was standing next to you, and I swear, was actually clearer than on the 
cd. This just wasn't the case last night, and it wasn't his fault.

2) The people. They were truly, truly awful. I remember in an old speech class, we 
discussed the difference between hearing and listening. These people have never 
listened in their life, and most certainly never did to any Tool songs. They took this
 beautiful, personal, and thought-provoking music and stripped it down to it's basest 
elements. I've defended Tool fans for years, but not any more. 

In my area alone, we had a complete cross-section of the crowd. Mostly strung-out frat 
boys posturing heavy metal pointing and head-banging, dragging along their waif and 
clearly bored girlfriends who sat and moped that they wanted to go home through the 
whole concert. Then, there were the straight-up metal fans. God help them. My friend's 
personal favorite was the drugged-out girl who couldn't even move to lift a cigarette 
to her mouth, and required her friends to do it for her. Across the aisle from her was 
the chain-smoking 15-year-old, but my personal favorite was the obvious stripper who 
gyrated and groped herself for the entire concert. And was in my field of vision the 
entire time, which was really distracting, but also really funny. I could literally go 
on and on, but no one would believe these people if you hadn't seen them.

Dispostion and Reflection might as well have been unreleased songs, for the crowd 
reaction they got. Harly anyone even clapped, I'm guessing because they never got that 
far through the album.  The true magnitude of these people struck me during Aenema, 
though. The whole crowd screamed out the "Fuck..." parts, but didn't know the rest of 
the words, so they just put all their effort into screaming "Fuck" over and over. I 
just wanted to shake them and scream "Don't you get it? He's singing about you!! 
YOU'RE the problem, the assholes he's talking about!"  So quietly, I prayed for rain 
to instead wash these people away rather than LA, which made me feel a little better.

Oh, and I didn't see any other tdn shirts, eihter. All that cred wasted. *sigh*

3) the Merch. $35/40 for a teeshirt. $50 for long sleeve. geez.

All in all, I feel sorry for the band if this is what they've put up with the entire 
tour. I thought halfway through that this might be the first and only time I see Tool 
if the crowds & acoustics are like this all the time, but my friend swore that neither 
are usually this bad, so I may live to see another Tool concert someday.

For now, though, I think I'd rather listen to my albums and get better sound quality 
where I don't have to put up with the dregs of society. And I can still live with the 
illusion that Tool fans are intelligent and thoughtful people.

melissa, last concert of the weekend.