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| A Perfect Circle, Tool, and protest songs by jeep 11/11/2004, 8:24pm PST | ||||
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| Can not describe how ambivalent I am towards this band. I was a fan of Tool from the Opiate EP I got in high school, listened to them through college, and then they went and made a pretty decent album about my favorite stand-up comic (Tool's Animae and Radiohead's The Bends are both written about/dedicated to Bill Hicks). The lyrics were always angry, usually revolving around telling priests and politicians to fuck off, and the singer was always politically active (he's on Rage Aginst the Machine's first CD) and had a very distinctive voice. The music was sludgy but interesting enough to stand out, and holy shit did they blow Nirvana off the stage at Lollapalooza in Orlando. In the end, there was deeper stuff, better voices, more original music and lyrics, etc etc but it was nice to have one good band that WAAF could play between Zep and Floyd and not feel like they were forcing it (you would not believe the degree western Massachusetts is dominated by WAAF, Zep and Floyd).
Anyway Tool's songs were too long, stilted and weird for pop radio ie. MTV, even though their home-made videos were pretty amazing (at first). In the end I guess they were Rush all over again, so no big deal if you never cared for them, I just preferred them to, say, another 3:50 from Candlebox (who incidentallly opened for Rush in Jacksonville and no one clapped, funniest thing ever), though I'd have been just as happy if Corrosion of Conformity had taken Tool's place, really. Something borrowed something new something something... So they're still a band or something, but there's this other band "a perfect circle" their friend started and they're basically Tool-lite which honestly removes the novelty. However, in a weird reversal of the old Van Halen Effect, the singer from Tool actually sings in this Tool cover band. If the other Tool guys want to make clay animation and this guy wants to keep singing, fine. It's just weird to hear him that way, I wish he'd get a guitar and sing old blues songs or something, I felt the same about the late Layne Staley, I figure when you have a distinctive voice you have an obligation to destroy other people's music with it. So this cover band's first record was basically laying the groundwork for Creed and Evanescence, which should sufficiently ward you the hell away from it. Second's not much different, but this new one...I'm more ambivalent than ever. I grew up really liking old war protest songs. My parents were not peaceniks and I was not raised one, I always thought I'd join the military when I grew up. Hell I only watch CNN when there's bombing. I'm not that emotional a guy, though, and the stuff always sounds sincere, like they actually give a shit about each individual snowflake over wherever we're killing whoever. I guess I'm attracted to the sound of it because it's unfamiliar. Pre World Champion Red Sox New England was a cold motherfucker to grow up in, I suppose. So this third (I guess?) album comes as a semi-surprise, and is semi-artistically successful. Titled eMOTIVe, because this one time they heard e.e. cummings was cool, it features the band following the premise upon which they are based to its logical conclusion: A Zeppy-Floydy Tool cover band doing a concept album in which they cover 12 war protest songs. For the most part not very inspired choices, stuff you'd assume if I told you Pearl Jam or somebody was going to do this. Imagine, What's Going On, People are People, When the Levee Breaks (he covered this when he was still touring in Tool) are all there, some Devo, a few others. The final cover is a Joni Mitchell song Fiddle and the Drum which I really like, but I really liked it when she sang it too, so I'm not sure they'e added anything here. This entire post was an excuse to point out that one of the best protest songs and one of the best songs ever are on Resume* by Ritchie Havens, and if you've never been lucky enough to hear either "Handsome Johnny" or "High Flyin' Bird" you should look around for them. /jeep/ ...* I am so not looking up the character format for the word "resume" as in "list of shit I did before." The record is a best of, like pretty much every CD you can get of Richie or old Leonard Cohen (...and who by fire?). |
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A Perfect Circle, Tool, and protest songs by 11/11/2004, 8:24pm PST  Re: A Perfect Circle, Tool, and protest songs by 11/11/2004, 10:47pm PST Re: A Perfect Circle, Tool, and protest songs by 11/12/2004, 2:45pm PST Why are you trying to reason with Creexul? It's just not wurf it, dogg. NT by 11/12/2004, 3:32pm PST Re: A Perfect Circle, Tool, and protest songs by 11/12/2004, 5:21pm PST I pretty much loathe protest music by 11/15/2004, 8:17pm PST |
