tool time!

the money woulda been cool, but i think the experience was cooler…

…although it coulda been a lot cooler!

for starters, there was parking. i’ve been to a couple DOZEN events at this place, and never been stuck that far out for parking. it was seriously ridonkulous. and i’m sorry, but if you’re gonna put me in another county don’t charge me the same twenty bucks at the space i had at iron maiden where i could literally read my license plate while i was in line.

on the upside, prior to that, i’d hit grady’s bbq so i had a two meater to walk off anyway. moving on…

so i went nuts at iron maiden because i was so close and took a lot of pics. i put a few up here previously. and the day i went to tool, i splurged and ordered a canvas print of a few of em, making my own 80’s inspired layout:

so i thought this was a bigger deal to me than it was. while i didn’t get to take a lot of pics, which kinda sucked, it meant nobody else did either. plus, it seems that ominous line about “emergency cell phone use” scared people outta using their phones at all, which made the arena more dark than usual, which as awesome with the spectacular lasers and alex grey art projections (the artists i used for the main graphic this month due to this show, as well as all related bits to it).

the set list has a few tracks off the new album, minus the one i really wanted to hear (i call this the john mark curse, as he’s told me that happens to him at most shows) but otherwise a bit of a greatest hits set, minus the track that got WAY overplayed during my college radio days (“sober”) and sonically and visually this show was stunning. and, for the final song of the encore, they relented and told us to pull our phones out.

the problem was the floor was flat, i’m 5’8″, and so we got a whole lotta this:

which in hindsight looks artsier than it feels, forces me to see they have a point – put down your god damn phone and enjoy the show, god damn it!

that being said, it WAS the last song, i was gonna dip half way through it anyway to beat the crowd to parking, and as i exited i realized the higher vantage point was an advantage:

and i also could get a better glimpse at the definition of an enigmatic front man:

which, if you were a real photographer with press credentials ends up looking like this:

so i guess to reiterate my previous point, put down your god damn phone and enjoy the show, god damn it!

and don’t let the merch lady deny you the cool ass poster because somebody else “outbid you” for fixed price merch:

learn from my mistake on this one – i had to pull a google image because i was D-nide!