Tool
April 30th, 2006
Indio, CA @ Coachella Music & Arts Festival
DPA 4060 (9V BatBox >Line In) > Sony M1 > Maxell 90m DAT @48k >
Fostex D5 Master (DAT) Recorder > Tascam CD-RW5000 > flac > CDR

01. Stinkfist
02. The Pot
03. Forty-Six & 2
04. Jambi
05. Schism
06. Eon Blue Apocalypse > The Patient
07. Sober
08. Lateralus
09. Vicarious
10. Ænema

Notes: The most anticipated performance of the weekend. After a two and a half year hiatus Tool returns to the Main Stage of the Coachella Festival playing to a sellout crowd. The first show supporting the new 10,000 Days release was surprisingly old school, and also in Tool tradition tight as hell. The sound was tuned for them and no one on the field that night was disappointed.
Hoots and hollers during Massive Attacks' set did little to ingratiate Tool fans to the rest of the crowd, but truth be know, its a long hot day out in the sun, and the second day is even hotter. Add to that the fact that Madonnas' Sahara Tent appearance on the other side of the field delayed the Main Stage by an hour, and you may understand the frustration of a hard rock crowd being wooed to the synthetic sound of Massive Attack.
But little of that bleeds through once Tool takes the stage. Maynard in his cowboy hat sweats through a set of classic Tool songs as if two and half years were the single beat of a heart. Tool is back - and with a vengeance. Maynards stage banter confirms that this is fun again, throwing out barbs between each song, commenting that the naked man is " bumming me out", and how he knew we had "all downloaded the f*ckin' album already".
Eighty minutes later Coachella 2006 and Tool go down in rock n roll history, preserved here in A+ quality.
While this set does sound phenomenal there are two caveats, the first being the loss of about 20 seconds of Eon Blue (less was actually lost, but to make the edit transparent four bars were edited out) and the second consists of an "interruption" at the beginning of track 8, or more like a short conversation, that when examined closer, became too uncanny to leave out.