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MY VITRIOL
Nottingham Rock City
Saturday 15th July 2000
Some moments in life and in rock are imbued with a quiet enormity, a significance of transition and revelation. Two weeks ago, the lucky few observed such a moments for A Perfect Circle. By accident and happenstance, they found themselves functionally headlining The Lost Weekend, the most heavily touted and mooted rock festival in Britain this year. For those that bore witness, the idea that they would now be crammed into a club-size venue, sharing drains with the front-of-house plebs, risking the bar coke, seems risible. Yes, these lucky few had the requisite sense of wonderment about this evening and the joy of knowing that others would soon join them.
How does one open for such an eagerly-awaited appearance. Well, if you're grunge-popsters My Vitriol, you slope on stage, mess around with the guitarist's pedals for a couple of minutes, then have the vocalist storm off after three songs, leaving the baffled bassist to apologize. Well, that's what happens when you listen to "Siamese Dream" too many times.
When they combust and implode after some indifferently dull plodders and storm off to a welter of apathy, few could have been surprised. Even if they hadn't been flat musically, tonally and as performers, even if they hadn't been landed with the most unsuitable name since child-proof caps, even if they hadn't mistaken indifference for cool, theirs would have been an almost impossible task. They were mites at the feet of humble gods.
For rock and roll is too lumpen and misshapen a term for what A Perfect Circle achieve. They have a sense of the cosmic, of immensity, that few since Led Zeppelin, maybe Soundgarden, maybe Metallica, have even contemplated. Yet other such bands have always attempted to dominate, to idly impress the crowd. A Perfect Circle spellbind and entrance. Arriving with less aplomb and bombast than their roadies, this perverse and understated supergroup, drawn from the diverse ranks of Tool, Guns'N'Roses and The Vandals, seem almost too shy to perform.
Yet as the intro tape of the mystical, Suffi-tinged Renholder dissipates, it's almost impossible to believe that such grandeur and uniqueness could come from that tiny stage, from those mere five forms, to be contained within such a miniscule venue. To reconcile the shambling, hobbling, pallid Maynard Keenan, ridiculing rock antics in nothing but a bad wig and toddler's bathing trunks, with that voice that cleaves the roaring, black sexuality of Magdalena and soothes the vast yearnings of 3 Libras. To believe that Paz Lenchantin is playing that bass, rather than forming it with each caress of the strings of the aching Brena. To not hear summoned up every guitar spirit when Billy Howerdel and Troy Van Leeuwen lock strings to metamorphose Ozzy's Diary Of A Madman into a salutation of engulfing, tearful joy. To not blink with every skull-caving pound of Josh Freese's hammers of the gods in the raging, virulent Judith, that hurls the set to an unbearably divine conclusion. All impossible concepts, but true and real and here tonight.
In those rare moments afterwards when one can even remember My Vitriol, it is best done by comparing names: for they were arrant pretenders to some rock stance of anger. A Perfect Circle, as their name should suggest, were the defining opposite: alluring, complete, soothing, unassailably beautiful. They almost negate not merely the need for criticism but the act itself: so mesmerizing is their presence that taking notes mid-set seems like sacrilege. Almost devoid of the pointless banter that plagues so many bands, they are more open and communicative through their music. That's not to imply a lack of personality. Indeed, it's almost impossible to contemplate a band more human, more humane. So much so that, when Maynard is briefly overtaken by an onanistic urge during Thinking Of You, it seems more tribute than titillation, a heart-mending celebration, given boyish charm when he asks for "just a second to clean up". When, in final parting, Maynard removes his wig, it is not an encore that the audience wants, but another benediction.
Frankly, this isn't a gig. A gig is an event by which you are enlivened, hyped up, pumped. For all the raging emotions on stage, this performance creates peace and certitude in a God-wracked universe. This is legend.
SET LIST
Renholder (intro tape)
The Hollow
Magdalena
Sleeping Beauty
3 Libras
Brena
Orestes
Thinking Of You
Thomas
Diary Of A Madman
Rose
Judith
Mer Du Noms by A Perfect Circle is available through Virgin Records, as is their debut single, Judith.
RMW