From: Bob McCabe (nefarya@utkux.utcc.utk.edu)

December 7th, 1996 -
Atlanta's International Ballroom

Ok, I won't bore you with stupid details that everyone else has heard. 
But it is worth mentioning that the show was unbelievable. The crowd was 
going crazy the whole show through and the ballroom was filled from the 
fron the the back and everywhere in between. I had never seen the back of 
a concert hall look as packed as the area by the stage. I was front 
center like usual, directly in front of the drum set and against the 
fence. And when I tell you I was scared because the gate was buckling 
from the weight of the crowd, you can't know the half of it. Psychotica 
opened and did all right. There was about 10 or 15 people into them and 
the rest of the crowd stood there blankly. The singer fro Psychotica 
tried to get the crowd going and stood up next to the fence and was 
high-fiving everyone. After they left there was a pretty big gap until 
Tool started, about 40 minutes maybe. The band came out all slow and 
dramatically. Maynard was half blue, half white and Adam was all blue. 
(Waist up) They started with Third Eye and it was pretty incredible. 
People were crowd surfing all over the place and I think about 20 people 
dropped on my head by the time the song ended, maybe more. Mynard looked 
trance like all night. He sort of danced, sort of flowed. It kind of 
looked like part Indian, part Hippy, part drug induced. He put on a good 
show. The rest of the band didn't move around too much or draw much 
attention to themselves. They play the videos for Sober and Prison Sex, 
but not Stinkfist. (A few people chanted chicken weasel right before Tool 
started the show, but I couldn't hear anyone say it after Stinkfist. They 
played a few songs off of Opiate and mixed the rest fairly evenly between 
Undertow and Aenema, though I don't really remember the songs they 
played. Maynard talked a bit between songs but I was too close to really 
understand what he was saying. I left after they played Sober (the second 
to last song) to go get a drink and then I could hear him clearly. He 
said that they would do a curtain call but only if we the crowd could 
show Tool that we deserved it. SO everyone starts screaming and moshing. 
Maynard started saying something about this next song was about Yoga and 
meditation and useless people or something. They then played Opiate. The 
last song they played (the second curtain call) was Aenima. My girlfriend 
say them in Philly and she said they used NY instead of LA and 
Pennsylvania Bay instead of Arizona. But here they used the regular LA 
and Arizona Bay. They played Eulogy (3rd or 4th song) and Maynard turned 
his back to the crowd and picked up this object and it seemed to attack 
to the microphone. It kind of looked like the body of a lamp or 
something, but tiny. Didn't someone say it was a megaphone? Anyway, the 
show was incredible, and incredibly violent. Everyone looked to get 
physical and I was pretty drained after the show. But it was an awesome 
show and I am so glad I got to see them. The only other band that came 
close in terms of violent crowd reactions was White Zombie - and Zombie 
didn't come as close as Tool did to bringing the house down...

Bob
nefarya@utkux.utk.edu