columbus seems to be deprived of a lot of good tours. being a fan of almost everything on ipecac records and almost everything involving mike patton, this tour seemed to me to be a very fortunate exception.
the opener was skeleton key, whose unusual rock was a relatively bland, despite being unusual. think jesus lizard sans jazz sensibilities and unpredicability, faith no more sans patton's spasmic presence, primus aans technical prowess. without the amazing second percussionist this would have been boring, but he single-handedly rescued the show. banging on buckets, trash cans, fuel canisters, fire extinguishers and road signs with drumsticks, metal poles, car wheels and chains is difficult to do in a rock-and-roll context, but the man did it well. his humorous stage antics (buzzsaws, pogo sticks...) added to the fun.
the next band was the infamous melvins, and they were like no other. this is not to say, necessarily, that they were good. they were the melvins, and their sludgey metal was hard for some to take for as long as they played. i liked it merely because of the comedic aspect: this band's music has not evolved since the early 80s, it is filled with every metal cliche imaginable, and yet they seem to take it very seriously. funny stage suits, good drumming, big hair.
last was mike patton's most recent project, a band called tomahawk that involves patton (faith no more, mr. bungle, fantomas, lovage) on vocals, duane denison (jesus lizard, denison-kimball trio) on guitar, kevin rutmanis (melvins, fantomas) on bass, and someone called john stanier playing drums. the music was interesting, but i was not as much of a fan as i expected to be. despite some creative use of electronics, the band seems to rely heavily on nu-metalish song structures that patton has not touched since faith no more (you know the kind, with soft verses and the "explosive" choruses). this "write a rock song" attitude allowed for an exciting live show with patton up to his usual antics, but it also encouraged a lot of inane moshing and hard-assery in the crowd. this is definitely the most accessible and dumbed-down of patton's post-fnm work, and a significant chunk of its fans seemed to be accordingly dumbed-down. this is not to say that there were not great moments. seeing patton is an amazing experience in almost any context, and even the more dull songs were far better than those of any other band doing this sort of rock music today. there were some amazing vocal/instrumental/electronic freak-outs, but these were unfortunately the only times that denison was able to flaunt his unique style and prodiguous skill (and they were improvised, probably not on the album). this was certainly a good show, but not great - i'll be waiting in line for fantomas.