Tool @ AT&T Center, San Antonio (05.21.2007)

Last night's San Antonio show was long overdue!! My wife and I had been holding on to the tickets for practically a year. I was particularly anxious for my wife to see it, since this was to be her first Tool show ever! But after all the months of waiting, the show finally happened! Before hitting the road from Austin, I practically flipped out for about 5 minutes as I tore the house apart trying to find the damn tickets! But in the end, I did find them, all wadded up and dirty in the back of our "random stuff drawer" in the kitchen. Right where I put them for "safe-keeping" months before, hehehe. We finally headed out at about 5:30pm, battled rush hour traffic for about an hour, and cruised into the AT&T Center right about 7:50pm. Boo-yah.

Just a few minutes after 8pm, the opening band Kinski went on. Their first song was a bit droning and repetitive, and didn't really grab me. However, they played 3 or 4 more that I thought were actually pretty decent. They were completely instrumental, not entirely heavy, but not necessarily on the mellower side either. They had some decent riffs going, and some electronic/keyboard type elements. Not bad, I might look into them a little and see how their recorded material sounds. It was pretty funny though, you could definitely tell that they are not accustomed to playing on a huge stage. The four guys were all kind of bunched up together in the middle of the stage, they didn't spread out at all. My wife thought it was "cute".

But enough of that, you say. We want to hear about Tool!!! First off, here is the setlist:

01. Jambi
02. Stinkfist (Extended)
03. Forty-Six & 2
04. Schism
05. Lost Keys/Rosetta Stoned
06. Right In Two
07. Wings For Marie/10,000 Days
08. Lateralus (Extended w/ King Crimson dudes)

Well, lets get the negative stuff out of the way. I will reiterate (to the dismay of many, I'm sure) the slight disappointment in the setlist. I know its been beaten to death, but that doesn't change the truth of it. It was nothing surprising, essentially a greatest hits + new material type of set. I personally think they could do better, but any Tool set is still by definition a good set, so its not a major problem. The only real legitimate complaint is that the sound was kinda crappy, definitely the worst sound of any Tool show I've ever been to before. Everything was very muddy, Maynard's vocals were way too low and Adam's guitar was way too distorted. And its not just because it was in an arena, I've seen them in arenas before where they've totally nailed the sound.

Other than those two things, the show completely kicked ass. The visuals were stunning as always. There were four smaller screens along the back of the stage, where they projected all the video clips that they play during the songs. Immediately behind that was the gigantic 40-foot (or whatever) screen that spanned most of the width of the stage. Up here they projected images of a more static nature. The lighting would change, and the image projected changed from song to song, but they didn't play any actual video up there. The stage itself was a glossy white, which in itself looked really damn cool when the high intensity white lights would come on. But the added bonus is that it provided a perfect surface to have images projected down onto it, which they did a lot throughout the show and it looked magnificent. As is well known, they busted out the lasers during "Wings For Marie"/"10,000 Days" and "Lateralus", which I was really anxious to see. I was worried that the overall effect would come off as cheesy, but on the contrary I thought they used it very well. But to me, the coolest thing they had up there were these 3 circular light assemblies that went into action during the long intro to "Wings For Marie." They started moving around and the centers of them started glowing purple, almost (but not quite) ultra-violet. They slowly moved around and "looked" out at the crowd, like they were eyes or glowing hands or something. They did this for a couple minutes and then returned to their original position. Kinda hard to describe, I just thought it was pretty cool.

As for the band themselves, they seemed in good humor. Their entrance was a bit hilarious, they all walked up onto the stage with the lights fully on, Danny in his brace. You could hear a collective gasp from the crowd. I think everyone knew "hey this is Tool, they screw with us all the time." But you could tell everyone was still holding their breath. Maynard then got on the mic and remarked on the fact that they had cancelled on San Antonio a couple times now, but that it wasn't their fault. He then said "We have good news, and we have bad news. The good news is.........there is no bad news." Danny shed the brace, the lights dropped, and the crowd breathed a collective sigh of relief, hehehe. They launched right into "Jambi", which I thought was a really good song to start with, and they just cruised from there. The energy and execution were tip-top all night. Justin was rocking violently back and forth the entire show, Danny was a blur, and Maynard was there in the back being his normal goofy self. Adam was, well, Adam. Stoic, I would say. Maynard was particularly Matrix'ish last night, constantly leaning way back and waving his arms in the air like he was dodging bullets in slo-mo. The crowd was extremely vocal, you could tell that this was a town hungry for their long overdue show. I was actually fairly impressed by it, the other arena shows I have seen were all loud and appreciative, but I felt like S.A. took the cake in this regard.

Minor complaints about the setlist aside, I really liked the song flow for this show, probably better than the other Tool shows I've seen. They've always done lots of instrumental stuff between songs, but I thought it was much smoother for this show. There really were no dead points or times where its just an annoying repetitive sound to kill some time (like they had on the first leg of the Lateralus tour, where they had a sound like someone hawking up a loogie looping for like 10 minutes). "(-) Ions" was played before "Stinkfist", and that was the only segue that I recognized as something definitely from the albums. There was an intro to "Schism" that did not sound like "Mantra" to me, and the intro to "Right In Two" was maybe a little "Intension"ish, but not really (and actually, I liked this intro much better than on the album). And there was a long ambient kind of intro to "Wings For Marie" (while the circular light assemblies were doing their thing) that I thought was really cool. It was all very seamless, I thought they planned it out pretty well. And no matter how many times I hear it, "Lateralus" is a perfect show-closer. That song always impresses me, just how much it can musically kick ass and rock out, and still have such a positive message. And the visuals for that song have always been my favorite too, with all the swirling colors and the spiraling videos. That song always leaves me just straight up feelin' good. And clearly, the rest of San Antonio was feelin' pretty damn good too!

Overall it was a blast and I left smiling ear to ear. And very importantly, my wife was VERY impressed! She already liked Tool quite a bit, from hearing the mixes I've made for her. But I think this locked her down as a fan for good! I hope you all enjoy the your upcoming Tool shows as much as we did!