TOOL: NEWSLETTER

TOOL NEWSLETTER
DECEMBER 2008, E.V.

Recently I received a rather lengthy e-mail from President-elect Barack Obama, and although I won’t post it here in its entirety, the gist of it concerned a matter that he personally felt needed urgent attention. With the “turning of the page”, meaning the coming new year, the new administration, and the new positive attitude sweeping the nation, one of the things high on his list of priorities as part of “the changes America needs” is to engage in serious dialogue in 2009 with Tool’s content manager, or “a high level administrator of the Tool websites” to see about changing the format of the newsletters so that they would include more news about the band itself as opposed to the various subjects of interest to the four members and/or their close circle of friends. Now, as you might well imagine, with all that’s going on in the world today, I was a bit flummoxed as to his concerns about the website, not to mention how Barack obtained my personal e-mail address in the first place! And although I could have responded that these are tough decisions, and that I’d have to think about it - being that I am the decider around here, to be perfectly honest, in that we are indeed “turning a page”, I have to admit that I whole heartedly agree with Obama. Perhaps to highlight the gravity of the situation, the e-mail he sent ended with “we have a lot of work to do” in bold-faced type, to which I sent my immediate reply stating that I would be more than happy to comply with his request, offering then a warning about any possible “Hochstetters” out there.

TOOL

Although I really don’t have any specific information at this point (just snatches of conversation heard now and then), if the past is any indication of how things work in the Tool World, this is about the time when members of the band start getting really serious about composing new music that they will eventually (hopefully) record. As for any TOOL tour plans in 2009, despite all the rumors on the Internet and elsewhere, as far as I know nothing has been decided yet. With this said, certainly anything’s possible come the spring, summer and fall (winter, too). Although you are free to speculate all you want, I would ask that you please do not read more into this than I’ve just stated. To repeat: in the past it was shortly after the holiday season that the band members began writing in earnest for a new record, and, as far as I know, nothing has been decided as of yet with regards to any possible Tool tour in 2009…

TOOL WEBSITE NEWS?

One thing that has been discussed for quite some time is to give a bit of a face-lift to the Tool websites (Danny’s site as well). This is something that I certainly hope happens in 2009, and the sooner the better, but for now we’ll just have to wait and see what transpires over the next month or so… UPDATE: This was further discussed at a meeting on January 12th, and some progress was made as to making this a reality.

MEMBERS OF TOOL

Possibly at least one member of TOOL will be guest performing on the new ISIS album (recorded by “Evil” JOE BARESI). More details later… UPDATE: ADAM JONES performs on the first track, and according to Isis drummer Aaron Harris, he did a great job of blending his ‘Tool’ style of playing with the style of Isis. The album is scheduled to be released sometime in April.

PUSCIFER

Everyone knows that MAYNARD’s band PUSCIFER added a third show at THE PEARL in Las Vegas on SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 15th, right?..

VOLTO!

DANNY, John, Kirk, and Lance will be performing at THE BAKED POTATO on THURSDAY, JANUARY 15, and possibly also doing a show in ANAHEIM during the NAMM CONVENTION. There also should be one helluva MONDAY NIGHT NAMM JAMM (both on the 12th and 19th) with all those out of town musicians visiting the L.A. area.

ADAM JONES AND THE QUISP ENIGMA

While at Danny’s house the other day, I couldn’t help notice a box of “Quisp” cereal on a table full of recently opened Xmas gifts (to be listed in a future newsletter). As it turned out, ADAM had given this to Dan, having purchased it on a recent visit to the east coast. Seeing how the box was in such good condition, I picked it up to check out the date, and was surprised to see that it was 2006. Evidently the Quaker Oats people are still making the saucer-shaped crunchy corn cereal with the ‘quazy’ pink alien on the cover in a limited distribution. Now, as strange as this seemed to me, what was really strange is that Adam knew that Danny liked Quisp. Some readers might remember my post from December 11, 2007 with the accompanying photo of a broken “drum contraption” in which I mentioned that I believed that Danny’s power came from his eating an entire box of Quisp everyday while growing up in Kansas. Well, evidently Adam read this, even if Barack didn’t. Anyway, for some reason (prior to the 2007 post), I always thought Danny preferred “Quake” even though Quisp did have the better prizes inside…

TOOL IN DARKLORE VOLUME 2

In case some of you missed it, TOOL is featured in the anthology “DarkLore Volume 2” that was recently issued by the Daily Grail Publishing. In his piece entitled “OCCULT ROCK”, author/editor Greg Taylor writes about Tool’s interest in the occult, shedding light on such things as Dr. John Dee’s Enochian “Sigillum Dei Ameth”, the “Salival” cover art, “Lateralus” lyrics/Fibonacci Sequence, talismanic boards, parasemiotic symbols, the idiotheosis of “Faaip de Oiad”, Danny’s Jeff Ocheltree/Paiste bronze drumkit, the cryptic insert in the packaging of the import of “Aenima”, the “Flaming Eye” motif, Blue Apple symbology in the “Parabola” video and much more… To order a hardcover or soft cover copy, go to www.amazon.com and type in “Darklore Vol 2”