Maynard James Keenan
Fucking Maynard, man. Dude’s a genius.
Hmm. You may not be familiar with what I’m talking about. Allow me to back up.
Sometime in college, my friend Jeremy introduced me to a band called Tool, fronted by Maynard James Keenan, who wrote all the lyrics and music, as well. Maynard was a weird guy. He never allowed himself to be seen without some kind of disguise, even on stage. One time, he came out all painted blue (see pic above). I was at that show. Bizarre.
Anyway, this was sometime before the hit single “Sober” came out, with that creepy stop-motion animation video with all the raw meat. Jeremy mailed (yes, physically mailed, this was before they invented e-mail) me a cassette tape (remember those?) with Tool’s first album, Undertow, and their EP Opiate.
I played the crap out of those albums. Seriously. All the fucking time. They were so damn good, with complex lyrics that explored the harshness of reality and emotion without censorship or shame. It was such a sharp deviation to the Seattle Alternative Rock craze that dominated the music scene at the time. Not to put down Pearl Jam or Nirvana here, but I always liked my music a little… harsher than that. Tool really delivered. Their energy is much more brutal, and the beats and lyrics remind me of the darker side of testosterone, the side I can never really explain to my wife.
The side that likes Fight Club.
Those Tool albums were like the first CD’s I bought when I broke down and got a CD player not long after that. As a poor college student, buying a CD of a band you already own on tape is a big statement. Tool became a staple of my music collection, and I would frequently play it in the background when I was writing, or playing Dungeons and Dragons, or reading fantasy novels.
They put out their next album years later, just after college ended, and I remember it in the context of “The album I was listening to during the Underdark D&D campaign.” That was the campaign where I created Aldun Orion, the fantasy character that would go on to star in first two full novels I ever wrote: Heart’s Guard, and Snowcrest.
And while I was writing those novels, I was listening to those Tool albums, plus Maynard’s “side project”, A Perfect Circle, and their first album, Mer de Noms. Perfect Circle is thematically different in a lot of ways from Tool, but just as deep, just as moving, but also had a fantasy element, using references like “Sleeping Beauty” and adding a heavy religion theme. It was really perfect for the type of writing I was doing.
Tool and A Perfect Circle had each released another album by the time I started working heavily on The Painted Man. I can’t even tell you how much of that book is written while thumping my head rhythmically to Lateralus and Thirteenth Step.
A Perfect Circle put out an anti-war cover album, eMotive, right before the 2004 election. Like everything at the time, it was politicized and demonized and trashed, but it really is a solid creative work. That carried me a while, as did a single called “Rev 22:20” by Maynard under the name Pusicfer that was on the soundtrack to the movie Underworld, again showing a fantasy bent towards their work.
I just found out a couple weeks ago from my buddy Jay Franco that over the last few months, Maynard released a flood of work from his Puscifer project; an album and 2 EP’s. Needless to say, I bought them immediately.
And like a chameleon, Maynard has once again delivered an amazing piece of art totally different from the other things he has done. I think that is why I respect him so much as an artist. He keeps pushing in new directions, trying to play with the emotions people don’t use quite so much. The ones that make you uncomfortable, but leave you feeling cleansed when it’s over. This is something I am always reaching for in my own work. I don’t want to keep writing the same book over and over, like many authors do.
How amazing and wonderful it is, then, that now, as I am embarking on a full-time creative career, the artist who has musically inspired so much of my work is helping me along once again.
(He’s got help, of course. Maybe I’ll post again soon about music no one cares about but me!)
Whoa, Whoa. Jeremy mailed you a cass. . . a casset. . .a caset. . .
What the hell is that?
I am happy to say my child will never know.
Truly, we live at an amazing time.
Have you ever heard the story of where the name TOOL came from? Keenan was a cadet at West Point. When he dropped out he said the people there were a bunch of tools and the name/idea just kind of stuck with him. Pretty funny.
I like Keenan. He works with a lot of musically interesting female performers. Tori Amos, Melissa Auf Du Maur, and others. I liked TOOLs early stuff, but to me Lateralus was the beginning of their decline. Now they seem cast into the mosh pit of introspective fratboys. A Perfect Circle is a much more interesting band to me these days. I haven’t heard Puscifer yet, I hope they are good too.
Keenan clearly knows a different bunch of West Pointers than I do.
Mmm, makes me want to buy a TOOL cd now. Have any suggestions?
I like that you wrote what you listened to while writing the book. I’ll have to try listening to TOOL while reading your book when it comes out.
And hey, I was born in 1989 and I still have like 10 cassettes. For real.
1989? Ye, gods. Do you have any memory of the pre-internet world, or is it like me trying to remember the Carter administration?
Undertow is probably the best Tool album. That or Aenima. The Opiate EP is also very good. I think you might prefer A Perfect Circle, though. Try Mer De Noms.
I still have a little box of cassettes I keep for sentimental value. I haven’t owned a cassette player in like 10 years.
Um, barely. My brother Rob would definitely remember as he is seven years older than me and was the first one in our family to figure out how to use it.
I have a cassette player somewhere, they’re still in most CD player consoles and I remember beating the crap out of my Backstreet Boys tape and listening to it like everyday in 4th grade(1998-1999). Rural areas are slow to change so yeah, I remember this stuff despite being “young.”
Honestly, I don’t even have a CD player anymore, apart from my computers and my DVD player. I think I have a CD boom box with a cassette deck in my storage unit in the basement, but I try not to go down there much.
I have a huge, beautiful CD case in my library, and it is essentially obsolete, because all the 400 or so CD’s on it are already ripped to my computer. I wonder how long until the (even bigger) DVD case in my living room is just as worthless?
I figure by 2009-2010, every movie in existence will be in some kind of On-Demand Pay-per-view format on your cable (or that new fiber-optic thing that’s going to replace cable).
It’s good to have hard copies. I still insist upon buying CDs.
I still have a CD player buried in my room somewhere but since I’ve been at school I’ve come to rely upon my lappy. Just a few less wires to think about though I’m going mad without my FM radio to keep me up to date. That’s why I used a boom box: the radio.
Kind of sad though. We lossing hard copies of everything.
I don’t know if I would miss hard copies all that much. My home is about at capacity in terms of… stuff. Books, comics, magazines, CD’s, DVD’s, etc. I don’t have anywhere to put anymore, so I would just as soon go digital, and look forward to a future of neat, minimalist decor.
Like on Star Trek, but without all the cheap gray plastic.
Time to buy a Kindle then. Or one of those Sony digital readers.
Well if you have enough stuff then what the heck should I get you for Christmas? Better yet, how big is your wrist and what are your favorite colors other than red and black?
Uh, well, my wrist is apparently 7″ around, which surprised me for some reason. I never really thought about it before.
I live in NYC, so I tend to wear dark, solid colors, blue, green, gray, black.
Are you going to design me a wrist tattoo?