Continuing with our salute to Maynard James Keenan on his birthday week (see yesterday’s Manic Monday), today we’re spotlighting another one of his critically acclaimed bands (safe for their last album anyway), A Perfect Circle, who burst onto the Y2K scene to much fanfare roughly 24 years ago. Initially started as a side project while Tool was fighting a messy legal battle with their record company, the band quickly took on a life of its own thanks to the success of their debut album Mer De Noms, which included now classic songs like “Judith” and “3 Libras”, the latter of which is performed magnificently in this clip from the Tonight Show with Jay Leno back in the year 2000.
A Perfect Circle always contrasted with Tool in that they brought a lot more melody and generally less aggression to the table, as Maynard even went so far as to say A Perfect Circle was more a reflection of his “feminine side” comparatively speaking. It’s an interesting dichotomy, which this downright pretty performance of “3 Libras” captures nicely here:
