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Originally Posted by gogologogolo
Pretty much. Maynard didn't do much of anything the whole show, just kinda hid in the shadows. Which is his shtick, apparently. I probably would have enjoyed the show more if I was still in high school, or maybe stoned out of my mind, but I've definitely lost my enthusiasm for these guys at this point.
Maybe that's the reason bands like Swans can still stay vital after so many years--they just refuse to play the same old shit.
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That, and, Swans is the band that Tool wishes it could be. You look at their whole approach to music, parts of their sound, their image, and they are extremely indebted to Swans in just about every way. Except Swans has, like you said, never settled, not even with their familiar material. It's always shifting and changing. Tool fucking wishes they had the stamina and curiosity of those wonderful old geriatric bastards.
I think I pretty much stopped caring about Tool when I got into Swans because I was like, "Ah, so this is what it's supposed to be like, without the 120 minutes/nu-metal flourishes, and with a thousand times more musical variation and texture."
Tool put on a good show in their prime, surrounded by other bands that wanted to be Swans but probably didn't even realize that's what they wanted at the time... but in the grand scheme of things, they're kinda nothing.
And yeah, Maynard's always been a shadow lurker. At least he had when I've seen them. It's been frustrating. But I've been super stoned every time I've seen them, so I've found plenty to take my mind off the fetal mohawked weirdo wandering around the stage like Golem.