a perfect circle – fox theater, detroit

I was so super excited to hear that a perfect circle was getting back together to tour and I scooped up tickets to Fox Theater in Detroit and someplace in Pittsburgh right away. I headed out to this show with Phil, who had seen them in Buffalo (as did I) years ago, and we were both pretty excited.

After getting pulled over and having the car searched in Queenston, we made good time to Detroit through Windsor, grabbed yummy dinner at this Mexican place someone (I think sean) had posted a review of on fb a few weeks ago, then wasted a few hours at MGM casino before heading to the venue.

Fox Theater is stunning. You’ll just never have places like that built again, so glad it is well taken care of. The opener was Red Bacteria Vacuum, a punk band that turns out to be from Japan. Can’t say it was any good, but they were cute reading off a sheet of paper in english to the crowd about Japan, and how the best thing they can do to help Japan is play their music haha.

APC came on at 9, opening with Annihilation followed by Imagine, and then I got the bad feeling that this setlist was going to all be from Emotive…and I was right. So I don’t want to sound like I’m complaining, because in general it was a good show – Maynard still sounds amazing, the band (Billy, James Iha, 2 guys from Ashes Divide/Puscifer, no Josh Freese 🙁 …) sounded great. Just…I felt like I was seeing a new band I’d never seen before, because since I hated Emotive and listened to it a whole total of once, I really only knew like 5 songs. The setlist just bummed me out big time. They really must have played the entire record, just song after song from Emotive (just checked, they played 10 of 12 songs), and I started wondering if they were still doing the “one album per show” thing, and had hopes that Pittsburgh would be better. But sadly, setlist.fm seems to show the same basic set – lots of Emotive with a few changes in the songs from Mer Des Noms and 13th Step. *sigh* Guess I need to try to brush up on my Emotive before August.

So here’s the setlist:

Annihilation (Crucifix cover)
Imagine (John Lennon cover)
Weak and Powerless
The Hollow
What’s Going On (Marvin Gaye cover)
People Are People (Depeche Mode cover)
The Outsider
(What’s So Funny ’bout) Peace, Love and Understanding? (Nick Lowe cover)
When the Levee Breaks (Joe McCoy cover)
The Noose
3 Libras (All Main Courses Mix)
Gravity
Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie (Black Flag cover)
Magdalena
Passive

Encore:
Counting Bodies Like Sheep to the Rhythm of the War Drums
Fiddle and the Drum (Joni Mitchell cover)
By And Down

APC was never a band you really had to SEE, as they are not very active on stage, and they still aren’t. Maynard, James Iha and the drummer were on boxes at the back, with the bassist and Billy moving around up front. I’m glad we got Magdalena, as they sometimes seem to switch it out with Orestes (wouldn’t mind that either though), and they seem to switch out Gravity for The Package. So much of Emotive is slowish, it just brought the whole thing down. The crowd didn’t seem to have any energy (maybe due to a seated venue, but I’m figuring it was the setlist, the older songs got big reactions). Passive is better live than on Emotive, but it still pales in comparison to the live version called Vacant from…2001?ish (aka the buffalo show). Counting Bodies Like Sheep was pretty awesome, but it was one of 2 songs I liked from Emotive so it makes sense. And closing with 2 songs I have never heard before (or don’t remember hearing) was just…blah.

So….it sounds all like a complaint, but it’s only a half complaint. They really sounded amazing, and live music is always awesome. Nothing compares to live guitar, and Billy is a pretty great guitarist. I just don’t understand the setlist choices.

Now I need to get excited for U2.

A Perfect Circle Boston

August 18-20, 2000

August 18th, Danielle and I headed out to Boston to see A Perfect Circle in concert. We made plans for where to stay, and all that jazz, only we didn’t have tickets to the show. We figured we’d get scalper tickets, and go anyway. So we left around 7 am, after getting breakfast at McDs. We stopped to eat twice. We were starving, and so we got off at an exit in Mass, but it just turned into another expressway, and then into another one. We got off that and ended up in a mall parking lot, but I managed to get back to the Mass Pike without getting any food. After that small detour, we made it to Belmont, where we were staying, around 3:30. We got pizza, and made plans to take a taxi to the show. Debbie drove us to the subway station at 5:30 to catch a taxi to Avalon, which was in Boston, across the street from Fenway Park. The taxi driver, who didn’t speak English, dropped us off at Kenmore Square, because Lansdowne St. (where Avalon was) would be too crowded. So he pointed us in the direction of the street and we walked to the venue.

When we walked up lots of people were outside looking for tickets, and we found Krista and her friend Sarah. They needed one ticket, and ended up getting it from this guy with a stuttering problem. They went inside, and left us out to find tickets. We ended up getting some free promo stuff, the Mer De Noms 4 song sampler CD, and the Sunna sampler tape. We walked around and asked a few people. One guy offered us backstage passes. I asked to see them, and he showed me, but it was so generic it was obviously fake. So he said he’d try to find us tickets, because he felt bad we had driven so far to see the show. Then we ended up getting our tickets from the stuttering guy. It felt like a drug deal. We walked down the street a bit with him (away from the cop who had been sitting in front of Avalon. There was a baseball game too, so there were lots of people selling tickets), he gave us the tickets, we gave him the money and pretended nothing happened. So we went inside, by this time, very low on cash. We passed the merchandise for sale, and saw a shirt we NEEDED to have. So Danielle got money out of the ATM for them. We got our shirts, and headed inside the bar area.

We made our way closer to the stage on the floor, and I was looking for Krista. I had given up and was just looking around the club when I saw her standing on these steps that went from the bar/table area to the dance floor. So we pushed our way through the crowd over to her, and got on the steps with the people who were over there. We could see great because we were higher than everyone else, but we were right in front of the speaker. Sunna was the opening band, and they were pretty good. Just really, really loud, so I was totally deaf after their set. Next to us was this guy who seemed really nice, cuz he helped us onto the steps, and stuff, but he turned perverted. He was trying to get between us girls, and ended up almost groping Danielle during A Perfect Circle’s set.

So anyway, Sunna played, and left, and APC set up their stuff. A black translucent curtain fell in front of the stage, and we waited for the show to begin. After a long wait, 2 women walked on stage, sat at a table and lit a candle (so we could see through the black curtain). They played some card game, and whoever lost took a piece of clothing off. The point of this, I don’t know, but of course the guys loved it. So they got down to their underwear, blew the candle out and left. Then APC finally came on. They opened with “Magdelena”, half of the song performed behind the curtain. Then the curtain fell and it was just so way cool. After ‘Magdelena” was “Orestes”, and ‘Sleeping Beauty”. I have no idea the order of the set, but I know they played everything except “Renholder”, and they added “Diary of a Lovesong”. They closed with “Judith”, as expected. It was so awesome to hear everyone scream “fuck your god” along with Maynard during that song. During one of the first songs, people were pushing everyone on the floor, and everyone on the right side of the stage (where we were) fell like dominoes. This caused everyone on the steps to fall too. I think I was one of the last people to fall, but this guy fell on my leg, which was caught between him and the steps. I’m so lucky it didn’t break, cuz this guy was really heavy. My leg hurt a lot, and I thought I was bleeding, but this hot guy in a black mesh shirt helped me up. Danielle asked if I was ok, and I was. So we watched the rest of the show which kicked ass. It was one of the best shows I’ve seen. Maynard’s vocals sounded incredible, and everyone played with such excitement and passion. It was incredible. Maynard had a blonde wig on instead of the brown one he had been wearing. He talked to the crowd a lot, about living in Boston, and his reason’s for writing Diary of a Lovesong (to mediate his liking of Black Sabbath and the Cure). Paz had “D Lohner” written on her bass. I tried to get pictures of it, but even though I was close, I was too far away for the writing to turn out good. After the show, we got out of Avalon, and it was raining. We walked to the Square where we had been dropped off to get another taxi home. This guy didn’t speak English either, yay. So we got back to Belmont, and put ice on my leg. I had a big red welt, bruise and brush burn near my knee, inline with where the edge of the top step would have been, and a big bruise on my ankle where the edge of the lower step was. I am so damn lucky I didn’t break my leg. It hurts like a bitch.

Saturday Debbie and Kenny took us to Harvard Square to look around and shop, and to Newbury Street. We had dinner at Friday’s on Newbury. I bought a bunch of used CDs at one shop. At the Tower Records in Harvard Square, they had a big APC display of the promo poster, and album flats pasted onto one of those Styrofoam tack boards. I asked the guy if I could have it since the concert had been the day before, and they didn’t need to advertise it anymore. He asked me if I was trying to convince him, or myself, and I said him, so he told me to get it out of there. So Danielle and I took the display, and are going to use it at school. At Newbury comics, I asked for a few more APC album flats. Saturday night we went back to Belmont and watched “The Jackal”. Good movie. Sunday we got up early and headed back home around 10. We stopped to eat at the same McD’s we did on our way home from Salem last Halloween. We got home around 5/5:30.

It was an awesome trip, and an amazing concert despite the leg wound.