I am an incredibly huge Tool fan. I think I've purchased every CD and DVD release that's ever had Maynard's imprint on it. Tool, A Perfect Circle, it's all Maynard to me. In 1997 I saw them perform live at the Austin Music Hall. It was a great performance, a religious experience, the band sounded tight, Maynard was relatively normal, and it was like going to see any other band, albeit a great band. One of the reasons I fell so hard for their music was that show.

Compare and contrast that with the performance I saw last night.

I didn't get a comp ticket, nor a photo pass, but I hadn't really anticipated it, so I purchased a ticket long before the show and went as a "civilian." Not that having a photo pass would have helped. The sole photographer covering the show was limited to the first song. No cameras were allowed in the audience, and security had the word to boot people snapping with cell phone cameras. No video of the performance was shown on the ten or so huge monitors behind the band, only the grainy black and white photo gag that was done better 15 years ago by NIN.

Not that it would have mattered anyway. The photographer could have shot the whole show and still walked out disappointed. Hidden on a darkened platform, almost behind the drummer, completely in the shadows and almost indistinguishable amongst the equipment, lurked Maynard. Sited on either corner of the stage like the remaining rooks on an empty chessboard guarding the king and queen, awaiting a move that never comes, were the bass player and guitarist, lit up like statues at night. Also lit up was the drummer, occupying a riser in the back, almost center. But not Maynard. Like the monster Grendel in the Beowulf legend, Maynard remained perched in his corner, hidden in the dark. It was a full three songs before some slight movement allowed me to spot him onstage, and even then I had to get the guy next to me to confirm it. It was almost like Brando in Apocalypse Now, bald, sweaty, hiding in a darkened cave, spouting poetry no one else understood.

There is something wrong when the frontman for a band spends more time hiding in back than out in the front (hence the term frontman). I found it ironic the Maynard's sole interaction with the audience that I heard was to tell them it was great to see them, because most of the audience surely couldn't see him. He didn't interact with the audience, he didn't interact with the band, the band didn't move from their places. It was like watching some weird musical performance by mannequins controlled by the great wizard hidden behind the curtain.

The sound itself was horrible as well. Maybe it sounded ok from the soundboard. From where I sat, and from the places I moved around the arena, the band sounded loose and sloppy, like the foam surrounds on their woofers had been overextended one too many times and the cones were flapping in the wind, and the band seemed to be missing its cues. After five songs I just couldn't bear it anymore and I headed for the door, $50 ticket be damned. I would rather remember Tool as they were than this weird thing they have become. I might as well have gone home, put in a copy of Ænema and watched grainy 8 mm black and white video of my third birthday party.

About the only redeeming thing about the show was some of the neat new lighting provided by Austin's High End Systems. It's just too bad that Tool didn't make better use of it.

I quote the Simpson's Comic Book Guy "Worst Performance Ever."