Immediate thoughts after Tool’s pummeling 95-minute Temple Buell Theatre beatdown Wednesday night:
Thank you, Maynard James Keenan, for making music, creating art, perpetuating the bizarre, wearing a cowboy hat, boots and a dinner plate of a belt buckle.
If we talk tomorrow and I can’t hear you, speak louder and understand the trauma my eardrums suffered last night. The sound was pristine, but there was a lot of it. And also, happy birthday, Danny Carey. Keenan said as much about five times to his drummer, who was born May 10, 1961, even kidding that they had to get him back to the retirement home.
This was Denver’s most-talked-about show of 2006, and it lived up to the hype in nearly every facet. Keenan, Carey, bassist Justin Chancellor and guitarist Adam Jones introduced the crowd to the next generation of Tool, a band always maintaining the vanguard of art rock. And they proudly strutted the new record, “10,000 Days,” prog-rock jams and all, while never relenting with the scream-along hits.
But the most obvious change from last- generation Tool was Keenan. He still sings sans spotlight from a pedestal at the back of the stage next to drummer Carey, but he’s now physically owning the music, playing to the fans with angular backward leans, unexpected grins and strange witticisms.
“Sorry to keep you up past your bedtime,” Keenan purred two songs into the set, right about 8 p.m. Then the unusually social Keenan launched into “H.” and “The Pot,” the latter a new track and one of the band’s more straightforward rock songs.
And the crowd lost it. One girl walked the meandering line outside the Buell an hour before the show with two $100 bills. “$200, one ticket,” she said, her red fishnet stockings working the pavement. Later she screamed out of delight. She got a ticket. And thanks to Keenan and his friends, she also got all her money’s worth.
Pop music critic Ricardo Baca can be reached at 303-820-1394 or rbaca@denverpost.com.
