This was my first Tool show. I've been a fan since 2001, but somehow always ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time and never caught a show. Having finally seen them live, I was not disappointed -- not by the set, nor the length, nor MJK's much discussed supposed disdain for Tool's fans. I haven't much to add to the positive reviews above (I got the impression the band was having a good night), but I do want to say something about the negative reviews I've read on these boards.

Most of my comments relate directly to criticisms hurled at MJK; the sum of which could be stated as follows: the illusion that any of us know Maynard or Adam or anyone remotely associated with Tool is just that -- an illusion. We know the boys in Tool from two things: their music and their stage shows. You can't reverse engineer even a cursory understanding of who a person really is from either of those two things. Consider that in many ways I know more about the goddamn Kardashians than I do about Maynard. You have to ask yourself why that is. It's probably because the Kardashians are trading on their celebrity, not on their talent (such as I'm generous enough to even pretend any of them have any talent at all -- and I am not). Maynard is trading on his art -- period. The music is primary here. This is Tool; not some boy band, or some silicon-enhanced, lip-synch automaton with a weave and an earpiece mic, or even some whiny emo band spending more time checking their eyeliner than their tuning. If the music alone isn't enough for you at a Tool concert, then maybe the music just isn't enough you, period.

There is more than a whiff of irony in Maynard's onstage presence. His lyrics and vocal performances run the gamut from defiant and rage-filled to reflective and vulnerable. Asking for amiable banter with the audience after a song like "Hook with a Penis" is like chasing a glass of 30-year-old scotch with bubblegum-flavored schnapps. Tool and Maynard are supposed to burn a little on the way down. You don't get Maynard's voice and artistic approach out of someone like Sammy Hagar for a damn good reason. And I don't want self-effacing rock star bluster at a Tool concert. The music is well served by the stage show. More than any other show I've been to, Tool's vision seemed of a piece. Fatuous, plastic rock star pretensions are not needed.

For me, Tool delivered what I'd hoped. Maynard conveyed a dark, ironic, almost ghostly presence behind a wall of sound projected with deadly precision by a band content to allow the music to carry the audience aloft. I don't need or want typical head-banging, rock star antics to prevent the music from achieving escape velocity. Very much like King Crimson, with Tool, the music is the message. But, if mugging, preening performers are what you want, next time consider dropping cash to see Spiderman hang from a wire on Broadway.

If Tool return to the stage in the future, so will I.

My two cents.