Watch Maynard James Keenan step towards the limelight with early band C.A.D.

C.A.D. — (Image credit: Children of the Anachronistic Dynasty)

Rock stars don’t fall out of the sky fully-formed. For every ‘overnight success’ the music industry serves up, there are many more grafters working hard yards in the shadows, their imagination fired by dreams of graduating into the big leagues.

Take Maynard James Keenan, for instance. These days you know him as the urbane, erudite , wine-making polymath frontman of Tool, A Perfect Circle and Puscifer, but back in the late ’80s, post-US Army service and pre-Tool, the singer slogged it out on the Michigan gig circuit with grandly-titled post-punk schemers Children of the Anachronistic Dynasty. In the underground rock circles in which C.A.D. operated, scoring a 30 minute showcase slot on public access TV was undoubtedly A Big Fucking Deal, another tentative step towards the limelight, so one can only imagine just how excited MJK and his pals were for the opportunity to charm and bedazzle a watching Great Lakes audience in April 1987.

Listening closely to this priceless and fascinating rare document, filmed on April 17, 1987, one might detect the skeletal framework for Tool’s 1993 single Sober in the C.A.D. track Burn About Out. Alternatively you might just wanna gawp at MJK’s idiosyncratic fashion sense, which was very ‘of its time’. Either way, this is a treat.

Enjoy!

Artists

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