I SAW TOOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You know how Simeon sees the baby Jesus and tells God he can die happy now...well, the same thing goes for me except all I have left is to see Pearl Jam and I can die a happy man.

Friday night I saw the best heavy metal in the world right now, Tool: four guys who hate playing in four four time, love playing in drop d, c, or b tuning, and have nothing but contempt for the frat boys who think their music is about aggression.

Adding to the amazing experience was sharing it with Jeff Green, a great friend of mine that I had not seen in I think four years. (My relationship with Jeff can best be summed up like this, he introduced my to heavy metal by playing my first Pantera, and I got him baptized at our church) Jeff and I, drummers the both of us, waited in the smokey Kemper arena for Tool to take the stage. Four guys, dressed in white lab coats, came out and pulled away the carpet on the stage. They revealed an all white stage with an all white backdrop. We were puzzled, it looked like a Strokes concert, or the Killers.

The arena went black, the crowd erupted in cries of anticipation, and in the dark we could see four guys ascend to the stage and take their instruments. Tool opened the show with thunderous unison drop d riffing and low and behold, that white stage was a GIANT VIDEO SCREEN!! Adam Jones played guitar on a lake of lava, Danny Carey's drums floated in some waters from a lake in hell, over Maynard James Kennan's sholder as he belted out lyrics in his amazingly strong tenor growlscreech came a flying demon skull who opened his mouth to reveal another flying demon skull. Then the lasers started.

It was unbelievable, Jeff and I were speechless, and exhausted from non-stop air drumming for 1 hour 45 minutes;we just sat there after the show waiting for the crowd to disperse, laughing histerically. It was all we could do.

Danny Carey, the drummer, is too good to be human. And, being in Tool, it's quite possible that he's not ALL human. With his towering 6'6" frame behind an expansive double bass drum set (which may or may not double as the band's space ship they use to get from show to show), he played all the beats I wanted him to play. Two impossible high hat/bass drum patterns from two seperate albums and an even more impossible triplet pattern on the double bass.

Well, I could go on like this forever. Needless to say, the show was good.
Now I return to my normal life, going to work, going to school, doing homework, knowing that somewhere out there, something amazing is happening to someone at a rock show.

So, until next time, never stop looking for new music...go to as many shows as you can (you too, mom and dad, whatever your style, get out there and see it happening)...don't steal music...support local radio...shop at local record stores...join e-mail fan clubs...Rock and roll is not dead, it's just a little harder to find these days.

B