Matt Connarton Unleashed: Why I hate TOOL

0:00 Speaker 1: Now, do you guys have any covers? A lot of bands will throw in a cover. I'm just curious.

0:05 Speaker 2: So we've been trying to figure out what what to cover and what we could make work. Yeah.

0:14 Speaker 1: I can imagine, like like some classic Sabbath like Sweetly for something.

0:17 Speaker 3: We do have a Sabbath song on the chopping block to learn for covering. Which one was it?

0:23 Speaker 2: Hand of Doom?

0:24 Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, I can I can picture that. Yeah.

0:28 Speaker 3: But yeah, I I've been in a lot of bands, some of which have played covers. I have like a weird moral hang up about covers because so hear me out.

0:39 Speaker 1: Okay, oh, very curious.

0:41 Speaker 3: If you play in a band that does mostly original songs and you play a cover live at like say a bar or something, you have suddenly become the disappointment jukebox for the entire audience because a couple of people in the audience liked the cover song. But then they're like, hey, can you play leather and Lace or like something, and you can't. You play leather and Lace, you can't play free Bird, you can't play Sultans of Swing, you know what I mean? Like, suddenly you can't play what they all of a sudden want to hear and what they've tricked themselves into thinking they're there to hear that suddenly you owe them something.

1:19 Speaker 3: And so with me, I like to play covers if it really means something to me, Like if I can get something emotionally out of performing this song in front of people, play a cover all day long. But I'm not just gonna play you know, wagon Wheel because it'll Does that make sense?

1:38 Speaker 1: It does? It does. I can relate to what you're saying.

1:41 Speaker 3: And no shade to anybody who makes a living playing covers, that's that's not what I vibe with musically, you really speak.

1:52 Speaker 1: Yeah, No, I can relate to that tremendously because you know, I played a bunch of bands and I always fought against doing too many covers. It would be hard to talk the other people I was in these bands with out of doing any covers. But I was in a band called First Shove, and like, the one cover that we were doing was we did Last Breath by Hate Breed and that was okay because it was short and it wasn't with with that kind of situation, It's not like somebody's not going to say, you know, okay, now do you know free Bird, you know what I mean?

2:24 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no, that's true, like in that and that type of element, you know, covering a song is almost like more more or less paying homage to an inspiration.

2:36 Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, that band we played with it that red alert shout out to Trick Attack. They got at the coolest design I've ever heard of. So everybody loves the Tony Hawk pro Skater soundtracks, right, what if there was a band that that was their whole thing and that's Trick Attack, No kidding, Yeah, be on the lookout for Trick Attack coming to a place near you. They were so awesome, they were sick and they've got such a good idea of just like taking this soundtrack. It's resonated with so many people our age and exposed so many people to so many cool forms of music and uh yeah, just kind of bringing the spirit of that.

3:09 Speaker 2: And and to like skateboard to countract being played live that that was like, man, my fourth grade self was over the moon, respectfully, Yeah yeah, yeah, respectfully of course, the nostalgic it was great.

3:26 Speaker 4: Where are they from?

3:27 Speaker 1: Are they from around here?

3:28 Speaker 2: Trick They're from Massa?

3:30 Speaker 3: Yeah, mass I think?

3:31 Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, oh maybe we can get them on the show. That's that's very interesting. Yeah, but yeah, I always I always fought against doing too many covers in the bands I was in or or. My thing was, if we're going to do a cover, let's end with it that way. Yeah, way, there's not that way. There's no misunderstandings about you know, are we an original band? Are we a cover band. I was just you know, we'll do well, well, let's do it at the end. But the other thing that drove me nuts to back in and this, you know, I'm older, So this goes back like twenty years.

3:59 Speaker 1: But there was a period where and and anybody, any of my peers from that time will know what I'm talking about, because I know I know some of the people I knew then listen to the show. There was this period where if you were a New Hampshire band and you were an original band that liked to sprinkle in a couple of covers, all of these bands were covering sober By Tool.

4:27 Speaker 4: It was so.

4:28 Speaker 1: Obnoxious and it wasn't even like all these bands were covering Tool. All these bands were specifically covering sober By Tool. And it even and I was in a band called my life crisis. And I remember one of the guys was like, because everybody in the band was a Tool fan, including me, I like Tool. I didn't. I never loved Tool, but I liked But I think I burned out on them because they just they were so ubiquitous. It was like, Oh my god, no more Tool. And I remember the conversation with these guys where one of them was like, we should do a Tool cover, and I remember just I'm sitting there silently thinking, oh, no, I know what's coming next.

5:08 Speaker 1: We should do Sober. It was so weird and I'm not even I'm not even exaggerating or being hyperbolic. All of these bands were covering that specific song.

5:18 Speaker 3: I must really resonate with the new Hampshire musician craft.

5:22 Speaker 4: I guess it was so strange at like twenty years ago, if you walked into any bar where there was a rock band plane, whether it was an original band that did one cover or a cover band, you were going to.

5:37 Speaker 1: Hear Sober by Tool. It was bizarre and it was very frustrating. And here I am, two decades later, finally venting about it publicly.

5:49 Speaker 3: Good to get that out of your chest.

5:50 Speaker 1: It does I've been carrying that around with me all this time. We'll be like, Oh, it's a great bassline, don't get me wrong.

6:03 Speaker 3: Yeah, can't we be sobhup? Yeah me too, man.

6:11 Speaker 2: I had a funny idea. I was thinking, you know, wouldn't it be funny to open with a cover and then before every original song you played, just be like, oh, this next one is war Pigs by Sabbath.

6:29 Speaker 3: I do stuff like that with There's another band that I play sometimes with. We're kind of like in the middle of like a semi break now, but we're called Targets. Targets shout out to Sean James Sweeney. Uh we uh. I kind of like MC for them because everybody else just like he is either too busy setting up there like synthesizer for the next song or whatever. So I just kind of end up like talking, and I'll introduce songs with like names that are familiar or like not say that where us. I'll say that like hey, where are the backs three Boys?

7:00 Speaker 3: Or where the fine Young Cannibals or something like that, like anything so that it seems like I'm am seeing but I'm actually giving the audience no information at all. That's kind of my stick.

7:11 Speaker 1: Oh that's cool, that's cool. I like that.