Before they got all U2 Achtung Baby-stylized on stage, Tool put on one of the just straight-up intense live performances I have ever seen. My freshman year of college, Jaime, Catfish and I drove to Raleigh at the last minute one night to catch them live just as Undertow (which had been out a while) broke.It was unreal. If you think Maynard is weird here, I'm pretty sure he stripped completely naked during our show and I want to say Catfish may have been hit in the face by his sweatpants when he tossed them. We were on the first row and I think it took 2 months to regain my hearing. Without further ado...
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I saw Tool a couple of times, but the best was at a local hard core club called the Masquerade here in Atlanta. Can't remember the year but it was probably about 15 years ago (damn where has the time gone). This place holds maybe 200 people max, and I remember that my ears rang for days. Serious noise.
Other standout shows at this venue for me include Iggy Pop, Butthole Surfers, Porno For Pyros, and Parliment/Funkadelic.
I've always liked Tool, but I think Maynard really had a good thing going with A Perfect Circle -which reminds me to update my MySpace Music page...
I remember hearing of the Masquerade. That Tool show we went to would have been about the same time frame. It was at some place in Raleigh (God...I can't remember the name now) that was very similar. Just a big bar that held about 200-250 people. We drove up that night at the last minute. Walked right in and got right up in the front row.
I remember Failure opened up for them and it was the first we had ever heard of Ken Andrews' band. They rocked.
I also remember about 2 years later, Tool playing in Raleigh again at a much bigger venue and us thinking we would be able to just show up sans tickets and buy when we got there again. No such luck. By then they had blown up. I think we wound up drinking 40s and listening to what little sound we could hear stream into the parking lot.
Want to know scary? In middle school, my buddy's aunt took us to see a concert (it was either INXS Kick Tour with Ziggy Marley or REM Green Tour with Drivin' & Cryin'). Anyway, a few years ago I was going through my old stuff at my parents and I found a flyer that had been stuck on the cars in the Coliseum's parking lot after the show. It was a flyer to for an After-Concert show at Rockafellas in Five Points in Columbia. And TOOL was the headliner.
I'm sure glad we were too young to go to that. I could have been irreparably harmed being exposed to Maynard and the boys at such a young age.
Now Rockafellas had some big talent come through there. And it was about as tiny a dive-bar club as could be had. In fact, you have inspired me to post about it. Let's see what I can dig up.
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