Page 28 - the NOISE April 2014

A PERFECT CIRCLE
Once upon a time (about fifteen years ago) in the lande of Flagstaffe, there was a downtown watering hole called the Old Post Office, located on North San Francisco Street be- tween Aspen and Birch. It was one of the best music venues I’ve ever been in, Flag or elsewhere. It lasted about 18 months or so. A kitchen salon is there now.
The OPO was oval-shaped. The stage was at one end, the bar tucked into a corner at the other. There was a second floor with a balcony that wrapped around the whole place. They did all-ages shows by installing a temporary bar upstairs and wristbanding downstairs.
This was before Pine Mountain Amphitheater was built and before The Orpheum reopened. If a popular medium-sized touring band wanted a Flagstaff gig in the late ‘90s, they had two choices: Monsoons/The Alley (now Fire Creek) or the OPO. Among the groups hosted there were Machine Head, Suicidal Tendencies, Sevendust, Snot, NoMeansNo, The Specials ...
... and A Perfect Circle. They played the Old Post Office in Oc- tober 1999, seven months before they had an album out. The show was a big event here in the Cultural Wasteland. We saw Maynard and Billy walking down the street. I flirted (rather well, I thought) with APC’s bass player Paz at the Monte V, but other men were vying for her attention and I was too waxed on LSD and Newcastle to follow through.
About this time, we began hearing through the grapevine (pun) that Mr. Keenan had purchased property in Jerome and was actually living on it. Now why on earth would the vocalist of Tool, one of the 1990s’ most successful, original and killer hard rock bands, want to jangle his spurs in a hitchin’ post like Jerome, Arizona? What the hell was he DOING down there ...?
Well, anyone around these parts who hasn’t been brain- dead for the last decade knows what Maynard has been up to: turning the Verde Valley into an unexpectedly vital wine country, the new Napa. Let’s just hope those goddamn rich hippies don’t start moving in ... oh wait, they’re already here. Never mind.
Arizona Stronghold / Caduceus Cellars / Merkin Vineyards and their various friends are not only proud sponsors of this here pinko muckraking rag, but purveyors of some fine world class potables as well. We love ya guys, gosh darn it. Salut!
Maynard handles his latest passion the same way Tool handles their music career: with integrity, style, understate- ment and mystery. And a little sly outrageousness (like Mer- kin Vineyards’ label design). It may take years to see the full effect his winemaking will have on the region, just like it took years for Lateralus or 10,000 Days to sink into the listener’s consciousness.
Excuse me while I remove my tongue from the back of Mr. Keenan’s trousers so I can continue.
A Perfect Circle was conceptualized by guitarist and former Tool 6-string tech Billy Howerdel. In 1999, Tool were finishing
A Perfect Circle, circa 2013
their third album when they became involved in a court case with their label, delaying the LP’s release. Howerdel and Keen- an quickly assembled A Perfect Circle and signed with Virgin.
They played a handful of shows and appeared on Leno, Let- terman and Conan. The buzz surrounding A Perfect Circle was such that on May 23, 2000, Mer De Noms entered the Billboard chart at #4, the highest first week position for a debut album in history (a record the band still holds).
From 2000-2004, A Perfect Circle released three LPs and a DVD then went on hiatus. Tool put out Salival (an odds-n- sods collection with video, now out of print) in 2000, Lateralus in 2001, and 10,000 Days in 2006. Both groups toured exten- sively. Somewhere in here Maynard found the time to launch Puscifer (another musical project) and his vineyard. A Perfect Circle reunited for several shows in 2010 and 2011.
In an interview from a few years ago, the singer described the difficulties of the performing life. Tool’s most popular songs were written and sung by an angry young kid with a chip on his shoulder. The unfortunate result was an audience with a certain percentage of meatheads. As Tool’s music grew in complexity, the meatheads deserted them for Korn and Limp Bizkit (moshing to the Fibonacci Sequence is not easy).
Now that Maynard is nearing 50, he has faced his demons and channeled his energy into creative enterprises. He hasn’t ended up a joke or a media whore or a drug casualty like many of his contemporaries. He’s no longer that pissed off youth with a mohawk, he’s a grown man.
When fans request the oldies, Keenan has a decision to make: either reinterpret the songs through his new calmer self, which hardly does them justice (“He’s not even trying”), or conjure up a rage that doesn’t exist in him anymore (“He’s just faking it”). Both are dead ends. The only option that makes sense is to not perform them at all.
One has to wonder if the “true” Tool fans screaming for “Cold And Ugly” or “Prison Sex” at a concert are the same peo- ple they were in the 1990s. If so, it’s called arrested develop-
ment and that’s pretty sad. If not, then what they want from the four men onstage isn’t honest artistic expression but nos- talgia, a selfish emotion and another dead end.
With a few obvious exceptions, rock and roll is a young man’s game. The lifestyle tends to lose its appeal after living on the road for years and years. As rockers age, they risk look- ing and sounding pathetic, especially when they try to imi- tate the icon they were decades ago. The amount of ridicule they will endure depends on how deep their need for money.
Maynard James Keenan has stated he is serious about wine and seems ready to devote all his time to it. Winemaking re- quires a lot of patience and long term planning. It is definitely not for the young. It is something adults do.
As much as I enjoy the man’s music, would I resent Maynard for letting his career in rock quietly die so he can spend the rest of his life looking at soil samples and pruning shrubbery and watching the sun set over the Verde Valley while drinking
28 • APRIL 2014 • the NOISE arts & news • thenoise.us