1996: In high school, I was in a band where the bass player was a what I would like to consider a super-fan of the band Tool. We used to sit in his car in front of the house where we rehearsed and listen to Aenema on repeat really fucking loud. For hours we would sit there and listen to the tape, staring out the window, playing air drums, inhaling his numerous yellow tree air fresheners.
It was a waste of time, sure. But when you're baked out of your mind and in lust with a band as mysterious and thrust-worthy as Tool, well, I'm thankful I sat still and soaked it all in. Every person that sat in that car in front of that house knew every fucking riff, drum breakdown, creepy calliope intro part, lyric and/or vocal inflection of our dear Maynard James Keenan.
1997: When I enrolled in college the first time, Tool wasn't really one of my main focuses musically, but the huge fucking bass drum of Danny Carey or the voice of MJK remained two things I couldn't live long without reconnecting with.
1998: Living in California for a year or so after my first attempt at higher education, I was introduced to an entire new level of fandom. Where I once thought knowing every lyric and air drum fill constituted being a huge fan, I was living among people with entire parts of their lives dedicated things that to me were just... things. Entire rooms decorated in a reference to specific song lyrics, or album covers framed on walls in place of family portraits, months at a time dedicated to following a band around the country, children named after the pseudonyms of band members of bands I had never heard of... People were fucking weird about shit bruh.
During this time in Santa Barbara I was slowly easing out of my jam-band phase and back into the distorted, angst sprinkled evil burrito of Tool and the gang.
1999: When I headed back to Illinois, I was greeted with my greatest addiction as far as music is concerned, and I won't lie and say it lasted for years. It lasted for one album, and it was almost exactly 365 days long.
May of 2000: A Perfect Circle's debut album Mer de Noms was released, and it was everything I fucking lusted after in those college years of faux-maturity: defensive, powerful, angry, loud, and then beautiful, introspective, swelling, peaceful and pleading. Maynard James Keenan fronted a band that connected with my balls as if they were fucking plugged directly into the fucking soundboard.
August of 2000: I had already seen A Perfect Circle in concert four times. I left on a few trips where I missed nearly a month of class to follow APC around the midwest and southern United States toward the end of 2000 and into the beginning of 2001. On that tour, over half of which I drove solo, I met so many fucking people that helped me figure out who I didn't want to be in life.
After maybe the 8th show in as many days, I was walking with a group of guys I had met outside the St. Louis show at the Pageant, and one of them turned to me and hit me in the shoulder. He started singing the lyrics to the song 3 Libras and it struck me that I had been hearing the same fucking songs played out of the car stereos in the fucking parking lots and after-parties that all of us had paid to fucking see on fucking stage.
Every single one of us newly 21 year old pricks was addicted to the dozen or so songs on Mer de Noms, and some of us were only interested in less than half of the songs on that muthafucker anyway. What A Perfect Circle created was a mystique paired with an amazingly captivating front man that knew how to bridge the gap between nerd and rock god.
A year after that A Perfect Circle album came out, Tool dropped Lateralus.
Then I saw one of the best live music experiences of my life: It was May 17th, 2001 when I saw Tool at the Riviera in Chicago. I stood next to the lighting guy. I managed to get his set list before I left. I framed that ticket and that set list and the free tour poster I was gifted from Jam Productions before I entered the venue. Maynard was dressed in leather from his toes to his neck. It completely shat on any show out of the baker's dozen or so I had seen over the course of the past year from APC.
While A Perfect Circle might've composed three or four songs that completely oodle my vajoodle, Tool fucking murders shit in an intensely intricate way that no other band I've ever sucked off has ever done for me.
Both Tool and A Perfect Circle, have led me to believe Maynard James Keenan is the prick that ruined a good chunk of my young life. His dark and captivating tone is exactly what I wanted when I want it.
fucking Maynard. Let the rabbits wear glasses...
Back on that APC tour of 2000, I remember getting an oil change outside of Columbia, Missouri and talking to my roommate over a crusty pay phone. "Hey, I just won a free tattoo." he says, "You want it?".
Six months later, I was leaning over a tattoo parlor chair getting the APC logo tattooed onto the back of my neck.
This morning while explaining what it was to my oldest child, I couldn't help but think of all the people I thought were fucking weird out in California for doing the same fucking shit.
Fuck. Music is a thrifty cooze ain't she?