From: Mark Robinson (markr1@voicenet.com)



i posted a couple days ago about wanting to sneak a camera in. after 
reading lots of cool ideas (to whoever suggested the box of tampons.. 
that had to be the coolest idea.. too bad i'm a guy =P ), i decided to go 
with the tratitional 'hide it in your undies' idea. but then, as i was 
getting ready to conceal it minutes before the show, my friend jason (if 
anyone saw us he was the one with the red eyemakeup and marilyn monroe 
shirt and vinyl pants) gave me the coolest idea.. hide it in your boot 
under your foot. this worked PERFECTLY and i suggest it to ANYONE who 
ever needs to sneak a camera or minicassette recorder (like jason did) or 
anything else in. sure, it hurts like hell walking with a camera under 
your foot, but its barely noticable and if they do notice that one of 
your boots is lager than the other one just tell them that you sprained 
your ankle or something. Anyways, before the show I met a bunch of 
friends from IRC (SlaveMonk, ghoulish, shadowlaw, halloween and someone 
else [sorry.. i forgot]) and then we kinda introduced ourselves to EVB (i 
dunno if she knew who the hell we were though.. i was the one wearing the 
lightning bolt shirt and burger king crown). I also saw Kabir (the guy 
who runs the EXCELLENT tool page.. htyp://toolshed.down.net), but i was 
too shy to say anything to him because i wasnt completely sure it was 
him. OK, on to the show... 

We got in fine (they never even suspected that we had brought in a camera 
and minicassette recoder), and I got a tshirt on the way in (its white 
and says "TOOL" on the front vertically and has this wierd 
woodcarving-ish design on the back.. really cool). Because we were so far 
ahead in line we managed to get to the second row, which was cool, other 
than the fact that there were a bunch of stupid jock stoners in front of 
us on the railing. So the show starts. I was right in front of the stack 
on teh far right.. it was fucking LOUD. really really LOUD. luckily, my 
friend's earplugs werent fitting in his ears or something so he gave em 
to me. wow. it was great. earplugs rule. I dont really know Psychotica 
that well so i dont know which songs they playd or anyhting, but we taped 
it. Right after the first song, Pat Briggs (the lead singer) came down 
right near the crowd and picked this little girl who couldnt have been 
more than 13 out of the crowd and he asked her if it was her first show. 
she said yes, so he invited her to sit up on the stage. she looked really 
scared, but i'm sure she was having fun. During the second song, i was 
making serious eye contact with Pat Briggs, and when he came over to my 
side of the stage, I took my Burger King crown that I wore to the show 
off and held it up towards him. he took it from me and gave it a nice 
look, and then gave it to the little girl onstage. that was really cool 
(even though i had originally intended to give it to Maynrard). they 
played a couple more songs, and then during the second to last song, he 
started making serious eye contact wht me again. this time, he came off 
the stage into the area between the barrier and the stage and then jumped 
into the crowd right in front of me. he surfed his way back, grabbed my 
face and was about to kiss my head when he was pulled back by the 
bouncer. as he was being pulled back, i took a picture of him with the 
little camera i suck in. Psychotica finished up their set and then left. 
i thought they were REALLY REALLY good. I might go out and get their cd 
if i have the $$.

It took about 30 minutes for tool to get ready, but it was definitely 
worth it. maynard came out in full body paint, one half blue and one half 
white. adam jones, the guitarist, was all blue and the bass player (john 
something.. i forget his name) was all white. They started out with THird 
Eye (which surprised me because i thought they were going to play that 
last). It was EXCELLENT. maynard was TOTALLY into it. he had two 
microphones, one for normal vocals and one for distorted vocals, so it 
was cool to watch him dancing around with a microphone in each hand. 
during the entire set, they had these two video screens in the background 
playing wierd stuff. During third eye it was just the wierd square thing 
with the watery stuff coming out of it from the cd cover. Unfortunately, 
during this song, one of teh bouncers saw me taking pictures and asked if 
i had a camera. of course i said no, but he was suspicious so i stopped 
taking pics. Next was stinkfist, which got the crowd totally going. it 
was a good contrast to the mellow tone of third eye. On the video screens 
they were playing these really cool computer graphics that made it look 
you were going through this ash-like black and white curving tunnel thing 
(it reminded me of this one video they play on AMP all the time). As 
instructed by the Tool webpage, I yelled "chickenweasel" after stinkfist, 
as did a lot of other people, but i dont know if maynard noticed. Next 
was forty-six and 2, which was another really heavy song to go with 
Stinkfist. During this song they had cool red and green computer animated 
moving shapes on the video screen. Next was Eulogy. Wow. This was 
excellent. Maynard was totally into it. nothing really cool on the video 
screens for this one, but it didnt need anything. Prison Sex was next, 
which was really good. They played the prison sex video on the screens 
during this, but they reversed it and made it black and white. Also, 
maynard changed the ending of the song. i'll have to go back and listen 
to it on the tape we made because i dont really remember _what_ he did to 
it, i only remember it being different. but it was still great. Pushit 
was next. before the song, he said "have you ever loved someone so much 
you had to kill them? or had someone love you so much you had to kill 
them? me neither." The song was great. reallly mellow, yet intense. i 
found myself just closing my eyes and absorbing the music and everything. 
it was great. on teh videoscreens during this song they had black and 
white inverted images of these tribal people jumping around, and clips of 
elephants and camels fucking. really odd (but then again what do you 
expect from tool). maynard got REALLY into this song. Next was H, before 
which maynard explained with something like "you ever watch those warner 
bros cartoons when you were a kid? whenever someone had to make important 
decisions they had a little angel on one shoulder and a little devil on 
the older shoulder each telling you what to do. but in real life its not 
like that, you have to make decisions on your own. thats what this song 
is about". the song was ok, its not really one of my favorites, but it 
was still cool. just not excellent like everything else. After H, the 
drummer (dammit.. i forget his name too.. sorry) started this really 
long, intense drum solo, which, after 7 or 8 minutes or so, mutated into 
sober. it was amazing. this was probably the climax of the show. on the 
screens duing this one they played the sober video inverted and black and 
white, like they did with prison sex. After this they did Opiate, about 
which maynard said, "you know, god, buddha, all these guys had some 
really good ideas. but then they got these agents to spread thier word 
and corrupted it and turned it into this big money making thing. agents 
are bad. thats what this song is about" (sorry if im misquoting here.. 
this isnt exactly what he said but its basically what he said.. i dont 
remember the exact words). Opiate was excellent. everyone sang along, 
including me. it was just great (i really wish i could hear a tape of 
manson covering this as they supposedly did back in their SpookyKids 
days). this is prolly my fave tool song and i was really glad they did 
it. After this song, the band huddled together for a minute or so to 
discuss what the last song was going to be, and then returned to their 
postitions. I was hoping that they would do AEnima (i LOVE that song), so 
when Maynard did his "ehhhh ehhh ehhhh ehhhh" to open the song i was 
soooo excited. AEnima was perfect. The really cool thing was that they 
changed the lyrics from "This hopeless fucking hole they call L.A." and 
"see you down in Arizona Bay" to "This hopeless fucking hole they call 
Ney York" and "see you down in Pennsylvania bay" (yeah ok it didn't 
rhyme, but it was still really cool). to top it all off, the video they 
were playing in the background was really cool. it was like this guy 
wrapping these cords around himself, but wherever the cord was became 
transparent (they prolly used blue screens and a blue cord. pretty 
tricky), and the guy was all bloody and tha camera was moving around and 
stuff. its hard to explain but it was really cool (my friend said it was 
like a cross between the Happiness in Slavery video and some cheap 70s 
porno flick, which is kinda true). Back during Opiate, i had taken my 
camera out again and gave it to my friend jason who was in a good spot to 
take pictures. he got some REALLY good shots during opiate and aenima, 
but, during the last minute of aenima, someone STOLE the camera from him 
and held it up in the air and a boumcer grabbed it. the person who stole 
it from him just blatantly grabbed his hand, which was down at his sides 
at the time, and pulled the camera out. jason wasnt taking pictures at 
the time, so this idiot had obviously seen him with the camera and made a 
conscious decision to STEAL this camera from him for his own selfish 
reasons. this wasnt a bouncer that stole it, mind you. it was another 
"fan." Becuase of this asshole, all of the trouble we had gone through, 
all of the pain i had to endure while walking on this thing (slavemonkey 
can attest to this, he saw me with it in my shoe.. it HURT getting that 
thing in there), the effort we put into taking these pictures, was all 
for nothing. I might understand if a bouncer took it from us, becuase 
thats thier job and we shouldnt have had a camera in the first place, but 
this was some SELFISH ASSHOLE who took it for his own personal reasons. 
Other than that, the show was EXCELLENT (better than Manson without a 
doubt), and I would reccomend that anyone who lives near a town that tool 
is going to go to this show if tickets havent sold out. Later.