for all the tools
if anyone apart from myself ever reads this crap, the name of my blog comes from 'Hush' on Tool's 'Opiate' disc. i'm a huge fan of their work. my favourite comment from Maynard about the band is "Tool is a verb, not a noun" which is an attitude i appreciate.
i was talking music with some friends the other day and raised the point about Tool using the Fibonacci math sequence to plan patterns for some of the 'Lateralus' album - read here. It was pretty funny, as the guys i was with immediately went into a rant about tool using this to "unleash the beast". weird, but a lot of people think of tool as some heavy, satanist band or some such. i guess if you rate Belle and Sebastian as anything but cockless drivel you might lump any band that uses a double-kick bass drum pedal as demonic followers.
funny, but if anything i would class the music as being closer to 'christian rock' than death - bare with me on this one (and i'm not a bible basher). sure their music is heavy(ish) and they use naughty words from time to time but almost all their lyrics are positive ones and many are highly spiritual to boot. tracks that are more popular such as 'Sober' and 'Prison Sex' may seem dark but they are all stories of progressing through nasty experiences and elevating beyond. unfortunately many people seem to miss the tongue-in-cheek nature of Maynard James Keenan's darker sense of humour. as i understand it, he grew up a baptist which would account for the humor (insert "reverand lovejoy' from the simpsons here - i love the baptist church's as they almost always have a sign out the front with some bent comment or affirmation).
still, i can understand why some don't like Tool although the view that it's 'prog-rock' and that it had it's day during the 70's is a strange one. especially coming from the mouths of people who like Jet, The Vines & any other average 70's-80's rock knock-off band that swagger around these days as though they have invented some new musical movement (they do what they do well, it's simply not particularly original is all i'm saying).
continuing the positive angle, A Perfect Circle's (Maynard's other band) cover album eMOTIVe certainly had a comment to make about the current world situation without soapboxing. their version of Marvin Gaye's "what's going on" simply blows me away.
one of my favourite Tool songs:
Lateralus: The Patient (track 3)
A groan of tedium escapes me,
Startling the fearful.
Is this a test? It has to be,
Otherwise I can't go on.
Draining patience, drain vitality.
This paranoid, paralyzed vampire act's a little old.
But I'm still right here
Giving blood, keeping faith
And I'm still right here.
Wait it out,
Gonna wait it out,
Be patient (wait it out).
If there were no rewards to reap,
No loving embrace to see me through
This tedious path I've chosen here,
I certainly would've walked away by now.
Gonna wait it out.
If there were no desire to heal
The damaged and broken met along
This tedious path I've chosen here
I certainly would've walked away by now.
And I still may ... (sigh) ... I still may.
Be patient.
I must keep reminding myself of this.
And if there were no rewards to reap,
No loving embrace to see me through
This tedious path I've chosen here,
I certainly would've walked away by now.
And I still may.
Gonna wait it out.
links:
:: Tool
:: A Perfect Circle
:: Maynard James Keenan
quote for the day:
"I would never want to be a member of a group whose symbol was a guy nailed to two pieces of wood."
- George Carlin
i was talking music with some friends the other day and raised the point about Tool using the Fibonacci math sequence to plan patterns for some of the 'Lateralus' album - read here. It was pretty funny, as the guys i was with immediately went into a rant about tool using this to "unleash the beast". weird, but a lot of people think of tool as some heavy, satanist band or some such. i guess if you rate Belle and Sebastian as anything but cockless drivel you might lump any band that uses a double-kick bass drum pedal as demonic followers.
funny, but if anything i would class the music as being closer to 'christian rock' than death - bare with me on this one (and i'm not a bible basher). sure their music is heavy(ish) and they use naughty words from time to time but almost all their lyrics are positive ones and many are highly spiritual to boot. tracks that are more popular such as 'Sober' and 'Prison Sex' may seem dark but they are all stories of progressing through nasty experiences and elevating beyond. unfortunately many people seem to miss the tongue-in-cheek nature of Maynard James Keenan's darker sense of humour. as i understand it, he grew up a baptist which would account for the humor (insert "reverand lovejoy' from the simpsons here - i love the baptist church's as they almost always have a sign out the front with some bent comment or affirmation).
still, i can understand why some don't like Tool although the view that it's 'prog-rock' and that it had it's day during the 70's is a strange one. especially coming from the mouths of people who like Jet, The Vines & any other average 70's-80's rock knock-off band that swagger around these days as though they have invented some new musical movement (they do what they do well, it's simply not particularly original is all i'm saying).
continuing the positive angle, A Perfect Circle's (Maynard's other band) cover album eMOTIVe certainly had a comment to make about the current world situation without soapboxing. their version of Marvin Gaye's "what's going on" simply blows me away.
one of my favourite Tool songs:
Lateralus: The Patient (track 3)
A groan of tedium escapes me,
Startling the fearful.
Is this a test? It has to be,
Otherwise I can't go on.
Draining patience, drain vitality.
This paranoid, paralyzed vampire act's a little old.
But I'm still right here
Giving blood, keeping faith
And I'm still right here.
Wait it out,
Gonna wait it out,
Be patient (wait it out).
If there were no rewards to reap,
No loving embrace to see me through
This tedious path I've chosen here,
I certainly would've walked away by now.
Gonna wait it out.
If there were no desire to heal
The damaged and broken met along
This tedious path I've chosen here
I certainly would've walked away by now.
And I still may ... (sigh) ... I still may.
Be patient.
I must keep reminding myself of this.
And if there were no rewards to reap,
No loving embrace to see me through
This tedious path I've chosen here,
I certainly would've walked away by now.
And I still may.
Gonna wait it out.
links:
:: Tool
:: A Perfect Circle
:: Maynard James Keenan
quote for the day:
"I would never want to be a member of a group whose symbol was a guy nailed to two pieces of wood."
- George Carlin
posted by brent c. airey at 11:46 AM
2 Comments:
I think that there's only a few blogs here which are worth reading, and yours is one of them..Keep
posting..
Why knock Belle & Sebastian? If there's a place for self-important "you're all living a lie - I hold the truth" style rock, surely there's a place for nursery school rock. People want different things from music - diversity is the gold!
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