So, first and foremost – I want to apologize for my lack of staying in touch with all of you AWESOME fans of The Blaze and of Lincoln’s rock music scene! I haven’t been keeping up with all of you for too long, so this will be my latest effort to change that!

Secondly! I have a whole lot to say about a lot of the shows that come to Lincoln and the surrounding areas that The Blaze is a part of and I absolutely do not have time to say everything I want to say about the shows while I’m on the air bringing you guys the music. So that’s why I want to fill you guys in on my thoughts about the TOOL concert we had at PBA last Thursday.

One of the biggest topics of the show that I think is worth mentioning is the exclusion of the ability for fans to take pictures and videos of the concert. When I first heard about this rule for the show, I didn’t understand why that would be the case, but after thinking about how the members of TOOL are, it made sense. Every member of the band is incredibly insistent about their privacy and they love to be mysterious. So I originally thought that may be the reasoning behind why the band wouldn’t allow people to take pictures.

After just a few songs from TOOL, I started to look around at the audience, and I was amazed at the fact that literally NO ONE had their phones out recording the performance or taking countless blurry pictures, and it was awesome! My favorite thing about the fact that no one was recording or taking pictures was the thought that every single person in the audience was focused on the performance, and the effects, and the music, and what they came there to see. I feel like so many of us are so concerned with showing people what we’re doing through social media and having pictures and videos to show people after the show, and it takes away from the actual enjoyment of the experience. Going to concerts is my favorite thing to do in the entire world, and I love being immersed in the music and the experience and I was so happy to see everyone else at the show experiencing the show rather than posting their pictures to social media to show their friends and family that they went to a concert.

Continuing on this point, it was cool that at the beginning of the last song, “Stinkfist”, the band allowed the crowd to take their pictures and videos to show their friends and family. I feel like this was an effort to give the people that really love showing others the pictures and videos from a concert because someone couldn’t afford a ticket, or maybe they had other plans and couldn’t go, or whatever reason somebody wanted to record a video or take pictures. This really brings the thought that the band still does appreciate the fans that are at the show regardless of if they wanted to smother themselves or their friends and family with the pictures.

Now then, the show itself.

The performance was absolutely incredible! Exactly what I wanted to see from TOOL. They played so many great songs that have become classics in their repertoire and they also performed a couple of the new tracks from the upcoming record that we’ll hopefully see before the end of 2019. I say “hopefully” because any TOOL fan knows how misleading and mysterious the band can be when discussing new music. I mean, they released a “new song” “Sounds of Night Crickets” as an April Fool’s joke. And that’s not the first time they’ve done something similar.

The special effects and videos the band played during the performance were so incredible, and I loved that the music video for “Vicarious” was played as the background visuals. That’s such a cool music video, and TOOL really doesn’t release a lot of music videos, so it was really fun to see the video along with hearing the song performed live.

My favorite song of the entire performance was “The Pot”. When I talk to people about what song they should listen to first when discovering TOOL, I always tell them to listen the “The Pot” first because it’s such a great song, first of all, but a lot of TOOL’s songs have some weird and interesting time signatures and “The Pot” has an easy-to-follow song pattern. I was singing along, swinging my hands in the air, stomping my feet to the beat – I was completely immersed in the song and I LOVED it!

So, to wrap this up; TOOL was easily one of my favorite concerts I’ve ever been to in my life – and I’ve been to a lot of great shows! I’ve been waiting to see TOOL for years and I finally got my chance. I can’t wait for my next one!

Since the fans weren’t allowed to take pictures during the majority of the show, The Blaze’s photographer posted plenty of great pictures from the show which you can check out here.

Thanks for reading! Much love,

Brady \m/ (>.<) \m/