This concert took place almost four years to the day that I had last seen Tool on that fateful acid fueled summer evening at the Gorge. It was my third experience at the Schnitzer and the third occasion I was lucky enough to see Tool. We were still living in a world where you had to wait in a physical line to buy a ticket instead of just purchasing one online. I was still working at Meier & Frank at the time and lucky for me our store was a Ticketmaster outlet. Over the tenure of my employment I had become chummy with the customer service staff that ran Ticketmaster but unfortunately for me the demand for this concert was so overwhelming that preferential treatment was not a possibility. I timed my break to coincide with the time the tickets went on sale but two people had still beaten me to the punch. I figured I would still be able to get decent tickets for Lucinda and I since I was only the third person back. Each person in front of me bought two tickets and when I was up only one ticket printed out. The concert had sold out after our outlet had printed a mere five tickets, which took all of about one minute! Let’s just say that there were plenty of bummed out people behind me in line. Knowing how much I loved Tool Lucinda without hesitation said that I should just go alone, which sucked because she had never experienced Tool. This was a pretty special concert for a few reasons. The first being that Lateralus was released less than three months earlier and the second being that this was only one of only nine shows on the tour that were opened by King Crimson, who are extremely admired by Tool. I didn’t really know too much about King Crimson at the time but remember they put on a very epic Pink Floyd-ish show. Tool’s show and music had evolved quite a bit in four years. Maynard had retreated to the back of the stage and their visuals became more intense. I’m almost positive they opened their set with “The Grudge.” This was the first and only time I ever saw them perform “Ticks & Leeches,” my favorite song from Lateralus. They closed out the first part of their set with an extended version of “Reflection,” which was incredible because the album version already runs over 11 minutes. Despite being by myself and not on acid I did not go home unfulfilled.