A Perfect Circle live album and greatest hits compilation confirmed

Rolling Stone recently interviewed Maynard James Keenan (Tool, A Perfect Circle, Puscifer) about his various musical and comedic outputs. The most exciting piece of information (for me at least) is the announcement of a box set of live A Perfect Circle performances, and a greatest hits compilation is also in the cards.

Rolling Stone (RS): What can you tell us about the Perfect Circle box set?

Maynard James Keenan (MJK): We did a short run a couple of years ago, where we did the albums front-to-back. Three nights, three records, the whole album. And some of the songs we haven't played in eight to 10 years. Some of them we hadn't played at all. In the box that you have, you have those three CDs, and then you have us live at Red Rocks. Always fun to play Red Rocks. And that's the full DVD – that's the full live performance. And there's other bells and whistles attached to it – there is an autographed lithograph. I think five lithographs are included in the box, and there is a custom-made resin A Perfect Circle box that it all goes in. So it's kind of fun.

(RS): And from what I understand, A Perfect Circle is releasing a "greatest hits" package, too.

(MJK): Of course, record companies always have their little clause in their contract, about their right to release a greatest hits record. I think that can be kind of weird sometimes, when you see "the greatest hits," no, no – "the greatest greatest hits." Releases by a record label that the band had nothing to do with, and there's several versions of the same thing, over and over again. That's kind of why we did the DVD and the box set. If you're going to release a greatest hits, we should also offer something that's not just the old recordings, rearranged. But on that greatest hits, there's going to be the studio version of "By and Down," which is the new track that we've been working on, that we never quite got around to recording. 

Man, that custom-made resin A Perfect Circle box looks really interesting. I doubt I'll be able to afford such a lavish sounding set, but one can live in hope. The greatest hits compilation sounds less inspiring though, especially as there is only confirmation of one new song.

The greatest hits compilation, Three Sixty is due out on 19 November, while the A Perfect Circle Live: Featuring Stone and Echo box set will land ten days later.