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SCOTT WEILAND |
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RIDE THE CLICHÉ...
Flash to a Fishbone concert at Axis on Landsdowne Street sometime in the early 90's....the place is packed and I'm hangin' back behind the velvet rope in all my dandyesque finery, lettin' the college kids mosh themselves silly. I only went cos the singer, Angelo, was a sweet enough cat, back when I used to see him almost daily at Bleeker Bobs notoriously overpriced record store on Melrose Ave. in Hollyweird - we used to laugh about Morrisey's lipstick stained, glittery, gold shirt that Bob had for sale there, for like, five thousand dollars - and there was this nervous spectre over by the bar in the cloistered off VIP area, and as I found myself drunkenly fumbling through the pockets of my racy wine silk brocade smoking jacket (from Love Saves the Day in NY bought circa 84) for a light, I asked the twitchy guy if he saw any matches by the bar and these two huge gorillas appeared outta nowhere ushering Mister Twitchy up a flight of stairs and the bartender tells me, "that was Weiland". Yawn. Fishbone rocked the room to a fever pitch that night- like a cross between the Red Hot Chili Peppers and 70's P-Funk, live. I was watching the horn section, when this little kitten purred seductively all up next to me, asking if I'd seen my shifty old cohort, Nasty Bastard, and I realized this was the same chick I'd seen make two guys at once at a post- Black Snake Moon (gothic local band-influenced by Bauhaus, T.Rex, and Nick Drake) show- after party a few months back. Next thing I know, the crowd parted for a huge
brawl taking place -ape like bouncers, trying to pull some musclebound pro
wrestler colossus off some other foaming at the mouth, livid titan, who
managed to get in one more mean hook, before flashing me this big, yellow,
chipped tooth grin- it was the Nasty Bastard himself, with a big shiner
blackeye, yellowing and purpling-up the whole right side of his face. It
seems the girl, who was indeed, his preacher's daughter ex-, had
intentionally drawn us apart from one another, before sicc-ing her
gargantuan fiancé on old Nasty, who had broken her heart after insisting
she participate in allmanner of lascivious activity, in their
hallucinogenics -crazed, wild times together, and she was apparently
still a little upset about their carnal carnival gone bad. Upset enough to
want to continue their voyeuristic S & M debauchery, by seeing her current
beau pummel her ex, Nasty Bastard, into concrete. Nasty had held his own
with this Italian Goliath, three or four times his size, before the
bouncers broke it up, dragging the aggressor out a nearby exit door, and
me and Nasty departed from the front doors into a cab, Nasty proudly
beaming like a kid, about his shiner-obviously having, thoroughly enjoyed
the whole scene. Grunge was coming into vogue at the time, and I tried to
like Green River, cos they covered some trashy glam stuff, and the
bassist I was playing with for a minute kept suggesting we call our group
the Rehab Dolls, but aside from Mother Love Bone and the
Screaming Trees, I just wasn't connecting with much from Seattle. "Use
Your Illusion" was commonly being referred to by disappointed
Guns'N'Roses fans everywhere, as "Loser Illusion" and I also had little
"patience" for Axl and Slash's bloated double-album full of pompous
ballads about the super models they'd been sodomizing and the various
journalists Axl wanted to beat up. Izzy had left the band, the "Spaghetti
Incident" was alrite, I guess -it bought homes for some of my absolute
favorite punk idols, but who really wants to hear Duff sing? I could
barely sit through his first solo album and it seemed like my kinda
rocknroll was already in a steadfast decline. |
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| Manic Street Preachers' "Generation Terrorists", Hello Disaster's "The Young and the Useless", and Thee Hypnotics "Soul, Glitter & Sin" were on my turntable most of the time that year - I was summarily unimpressed by all the grating, nasal-inflected broodiness of grunge, although I was kinda shook when Cobain blew his head off - just cos we used to play with this Revere Beach- Johnny Thunders- Paul Stanley Italian punk dude named Arthur, and his band, Swindle, had put out a seven inch called "Nirvanacide" like, the week prior, cos we were already all so oversaturated by grunge- I think the B-side mighta been a Plasmatics cover -it's hard to say- my memory's such a swampy fog at this point, but it was spooky, cos I too had been making some rumblings about that subject, even entitling my shitty demotape at the time "Flash Metal Suicide" -which was really more of a comment on the fact that I had the misfortune of having integrated my childhood metal dude friends into my band which was either called Murder Stars or Pale Imitations at the time, which meant flash metal solos and alot of Billy Duffy and Joe Perry style guitar hero posturing on the part of my respective guitar players, which was widely frowned upon by all our contemporaries. It was too metal - everybody else had been growing sideburns and wearing tanktops in their Social Distortion - derivative punk bands, and still trying to adhere to some misguided, "loud fast rules"/no solos punk rock rule book, whereas, I could never give a fuck. |
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So anyhoo,
that’s where that phrase originally came from - "Flash Metal Suicide"-
from me and my shady cohorts being scorned by our by-the-book punk peers
who all eventually ended up playing music just like ours, and dressing
just like us, and growing their hair out anyway. You know it's all true. We were trying to be like Smack and the Hollywood Brats, and Hanoi Rocks and the NY Dolls -in Boston of all places- when most everybody we knew in bands, were still into like, I dunno- Fugazi and the Pixies, I guess. I never was much of a straight-edger. I never had no big R.E.M.- phase. I did like alot of queerish glam and new romantic stuff that STILL makes some o' my hard rocker pals cringe, though'. Just Ask Sleaze. So those of us who'd known the band, Big Bang Babies in Hollywood, were put-off when Stone Temple Pilots shaved their corny grunge facial hair and mohair sweaters and used that obscure glam band's name as a song title – just like Courtney Love did with Celebrity Skin. We felt like underdogs for wanting rock to still be fun and look cool, we all dug the Stray Cats and Generation X as far as examples of what a cool flash punk might looklike-even the Romantics, really- and from our teenish perspective, it felt like, if all these grunge people were so bloody cool, why didn't they ever have the imagination to come up with their own non-glam shit. Me and my friends were always being cast as the
outta-style, Aerosmith dinosaur rockers, even while the indie cliques on
the college circuits' own vanguard, were consistently pillaging their best
ideas from all OUR fave glam and 70's punk groups and trying,
desperately, to steadily reinvent themselves as glam rockers. Fuck, man -
I could show you pictures of me in 1989-1994 when I weighed 120 lbs,
shirtless, in the same nazi hat and silver leather pants Scott Weiland
wears now in Velvet Revolver, and pictures of him from the same
year with the Anthrax facial hair and Mister Rogers sweater. It's weird.
So anyway, when I saw the STP video for "Big Bang Baby" that was made to
look like the sort of early MTV low budget new wave bands I loved, I was
starting to get a little annoyed, cos I thought he was supposed to be the
tortured, smacked out, depressed, flannel wearing, grunge guy. THE BIG EMPTY.... |
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San Diego's culture-slut, bandwagon huffers,
Stone Temple Pilots, had come to fame seemingly overnight, with their
fusion of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Alice in Chains-influenced
songs, but now, they were moving into Flash Metal Suicide territories, and
I wasn't diggin' it. They also wanted to "channel" the ghosts of all our
most beloved icons-like Marc Bolan, John Lennon, Ian
Hunter, and Tom Waits! We were very possessive about all the
bands we were made fun of, and even beat up for liking! It's all very
juvenile, I know. Oh yeah, and when I worked at Taang! records, the
Lemonheads old punk label, me and the owner, Curtis Casella,
used to sit around playing Slade records all day long, so when hippie
aristocrat, Evan Dando, decided to call his major label "alterna-hunk"
grunge-lite record, "C'Mon Feel the Lemonheads", me and Curtis both
rolled our eyes. Cheers to Noddy.
I still dunno what to think about Evan. He used to shovel the snow so I wouldn't have to, and go and fetch coffee for the office, and help with all my shit work, and hang around downstairs listening to me talk about the Deadboys and Real Kids all day and how I detested all his friends bands -like Dinosaur Jr. and Upside Down Cross, but he did end up agreeing with me about Poison Idea and he really dug their Go-Go's cover. |
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It's hard to like a millionaire model Graham
Parsons wanna-be who pulls his acoustic out to serenade the girls under
the tree and who enthusiastically begs you to come see his dumb acoustic
show at the Middle East and then blows you off in front of his grunge lite
J.Crew catalogue models/Juliana Hatfield entourage when you feel
obligated by all his snow shoveling to make an appearance and man does
this kid suck live. A granola bar with stagefright. Anyway-yep- I was
gettin' tired of all the models and millionaires makin rocknroll into a
beauty contest- with guitars, but I had no way of knowing how much worse
it was gonna get in the years to come. Thank God for the Aussies, y'know?
I never would of made it through the 90's without the Beasts of Bourbon,
AC/DC, Spencer P. Jones, and Rose Tattoo. _____________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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DANCE THE MUSTY QUEER...
Ok- back to fucking Weiland...I laughed out loud the
time I read NY rock crit, Tim Stegall, refer to his bunch as the "Stone Gossard Pilots" in some "Alternative Press" from years back. I'd come to
disdain these shameless bandwagon chasers and everything they represented,
but I can admit to being surprised by how many of their tunes I had to begrungingly admit,
WERE kind of catchy, when a very dear friend of mine,
some Meat Puppets fanatic from Boston who was producing my track for the
Boys/Hollywood Brats tribute Cd insisted I, at least, fast forward through
"Thank You", their Greatest Hits Cd. So for a moment, I got to thinking, that maybe the brothers in the
band STP were actually the frustrated frontmen brains of the operation and
that maybe they DID have talent, and at least some good taste in the music
they always chose to rip off, and it was just their dumb manikin of a
vocalist who was the one opportunistically imitating anyone who came along
with their own style and vision. But that was only until my producer
friend tried to make me sit through their band after the rehab-related
breakup with Weiland when they got an even worse singer, called TALK SHOW,
which was mostly still more unlistenable homages to each trendy target
market, demographic that existed at the time. I'd known a
few of these cagey little copycat plagiarists in my own little ultra
underground orbit- the copycat consensus takers who waited to see what
everyone else was doing, and then, feverishly, stayed up all night hacking
out their lackluster own versions. Wiley little followers who know they're
basically fakes, but are still just compelled to stay competitive and on
the cutting edge of next weeks fad. Whatever. Same Old Thing In Brand New
Drag. So, to me, it always seemed like this Scott Weiland fella was just
so desperate for stardom and addicted to reading his own press clippings
like he'd go to each and every length to try to stay vital, keeping up
with musical fashion trends, no matter which way the wind blew, kinda like
Tommy Lee and Courtney Love. Doncha get the sense that summa these big,
established mainstream corporate rock whores have wasted more time
re-reading old rock bios than even we have? I just wish I could still
AFFORD to buy rock bios! Somebody told me "Scar Tissue" by Anthony Kiedis
was good, and Alex Mitchell, the Outer Space Shaman from Circus Of
Power and FAT NANCY is apparently about to release a book, too. TINY MUSIC... |
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Another one of my many bass players in
the burntout bands was a few years younger than the rest of us, so he'd
grown up digging the Fluid, Mudhoney, Green River,
the Sub Pop singles club, the Dwarves, all that. He was more grunge
than glam, but somehow, he ended up playing in one of my excruciatingly
wretched Action Swingers/Jabbers/Pagans style drunk
rock bands. From time to time, he'd kinda try to interest me in Weiland's
latest post-grungey musical mutations, but mostly, I'd just nod glassily,
indulging him, cos he bought the beer, until it was my turn to monopolize
the stereo again, and we'd go back to American Heartbreak, the
Dragons, the Beat Angels, Dave Kusworth, or the Lazy
Cowgirls or something.
I got this job as a dishwasher across the street from a garage rock record shop that would never hire me, and I used to go thumbin' through the cheapo used bins, cos back then, I was still sometimes able to splurge on a $6 used CD every few months. |
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On my own, I came across this Blue Note jazz
looking album cover that reminded me of all the dusty artifacts my NYC
esoteric jazz snobs were always trying to turn me on to over many a
Ballantine Ale...only it was that poseur Weiland moving on to exploiting
the sacred iconography of yet another retro sub-genre. He was photographed
very artfully like some nameless 60's sub-Rod Mckuen type o' balladeer,
staring pensively at the floor like some deep and soulful tragic Chet
Baker Motherfucker-and y'know, it pissed me off. There, I was, slingin'
dishes for some bourgeois yuppie jerk in Birkenstocks and a Bob Marley
shirt who underpaid me and fucked all his waitresses behind his wife's
back. Here I was reduced to pickin' chickens in filthy kitchens for
cokehead pigs and Scott seemed like one more suck shit inferior plagiarist
cut 'n' paste copycat imitator who traded on any and everybody elses'
ideas and visions, poorly, but he got these big budgets to hire
photographers, acupuncturists, producers, and gurus and shit to help him
make lousy solo records. WHERE DID I GO WRONG? Oh yeah, I failed to
concentrate on my abs ambitiously enough. zzzzz. Anyway "12 Bar Blues" was on sale for $5 or $6, and even as I left the store I kinda KNEW I should've bought either Three Colours Red or U.S. Bombs, instead of this remorseless millionaire charlatan's whiney piece of shite his well paid publicist duped some Entertainment Weekly paycheck hack into touting as struggling addict, Scott's "Plastic Ono Band". Immediately, ensconced in my office, I popped it in the boombox disc player EXPECTING to be pissed-sometimes I'm a glutton for punishment I suppose--and he seldom disappoints--Weiland always manages to at least succeed at pissing me off. Green Day and their non-committal, pseudo political, only vaguely anti-war video statements almost put me to sleep-even when they sample Smiths riffs and Hanoi Rocks titles and Social Distortion's songwriting formula, they still only seem to have this Vicodin-like effect on me. Boring. Whereas Weiland's gratuitous Bowie worship and lameass junkie romance self destructive publicity posturing always succeeds at getting under my skin. "He's got money for miles-his girlfriend's out of Vogue-when he acts likean ass-he's treated like a rogue..." (-Iggy) All the copycat kid bands with the money and the gimmicks get harder to take, as all our own options continue to narrow in this blood hungry, money crazed, every man for himself cultural climate. Shit's gettin' real spooky, cold war, like pre-Holocaust where I live. So it's especially irritating that only the goon squad with nothin' to say, the refried, fully poseable grunge figures and Gap clad, pursed lipped, garage rock opportunists are on top, and no one cares about anything real or artistically valid, anymore. It's like that Demolition 23 song, you know it, right? "Scum Lives On". Ritchie Manic's long gone. Andy Wood. Joe Strummer. Bill Hicks. Stiv Bators. Hunter Thompson. But this country can never get enough of Weiland or Green Day. Ian Astbury's been reduced to performing Doors covers for the money. The Lords Of The New Church "reformed" with a horrible substitute vocalist/imitation. Last I heard, Zodiac Mindwarp was in the hospital. Adam Ant was in the loony band. Killer Kane died. But Kid Rock and the Strokes still have careers. Mark Lanegan wastes his time with those Queens Of The Stone Age guys. 60 Ft. Dolls quit making music completely. I have no idea whatever became of Chick Graning or Black Moses, but Hit Parader magazine counted both "Core" and "Purple" as two of the 100 Greatest Heavy Metal Albums of All Time. Who you gonna believe - me or Hit Parader? He's on the cover of Metal Edge this month, too. "EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH WEILAND". "Yeah, man, I never do interviews...I've been wearing this nazi uniform on tour in Europe...it's a statement about my beliefs that the president's involved with the private sector." Go get 'em, Scotty! I wasn't at all impressed with Velvet Revolver (*see my Buck Cherry entry) but one more voice publicly decrying this evil imperialist empire's only to be encouraged. I just wish his big statement made more sense. Scott Weiland's kinda like Lenny Kravitz-he's got some ability, he wants to rock, he just don't fully get it. Sleazegrinder forever assures me that real rocknroll aint in nearly as dire straits as it seems like to me, but I, personally, know of NO ONE who's in the process of making record albums anymore with the intention of releasing them commercially. It just costs too much to produce and promote them independently. All the little punk rock single labels are drying up. The underground print media (Flipside, Hit List, etc.) has died. All that's left's like, this website, the eightball devil-horn crackpipe bands, the Diamond Dogs, and Fat Nancy! Maybe Z and Cobalt will put another album out-I LOVED "Jane In Blue" (Cars, Bowie) and "Helsinki Motorcycles" (Iggy,Lou) off their last one few people heard, "I Am Rock". Buck Cherry's releasing another album in Japan. The new Hanoi Rocks record wasn't as bad as the last one. I like some stuff by Super Eight Cum Shot, Tsar, the Supersuckers, and Snatches Of Pink and the new Billy Idol ("Cherry Runaway", "Romeo's Waiting") but the point to this longwinded tirade is that I think Sal from Electric Frankenstein was right about their being an Anti-Rock Conspiracy. The Evan Dandos and Scott Weilands and Ryan Adams and Gavin Rossdales of the world are always enabled and given access to make all their shitty, boring, brazenly derivative music, Kid Rock and Sheryl Crow-but almost everybody I ever fully dug, respected, loved or believed in's been silenced, shut-out, retired, dead, or chased into seclusion by the merciless lumpen herd who never get it. Where's AXL? He's wisely staying the fook outta the frey. Lettin' all these fraud star Mister Microphones
and obedient INXS auditionaires have at it. Back in Allston Rock
City in the oily 90's, when 90210 glamsters Thee Elevator Drops
ruled the Boston Rock Scene, we used to throw these ridiculous David
Lee Roth style parties, on a Mummies budget, and whenever my
shady ruffian roommate Nasty Bastard would commandeer D.J. duties, some
crap STP song like "Creep" ("half the man I used to be...") might,
embarrassingly, slip onto the playlist, mostly dominated back then by the
Manic Street Preachers, Humpers, Pandoras, Mini-Skirt Mob, Jeff Dahl
Group, Lazy Cowgirls, Devil Dogs, 16 Forever/Campus Tramps, Two Saints,
Voodoo Dolls, and Slash and Mike Monroe's cover of Steppenwolf's "Magic
Carpet Ride" from the Coneheads soundtrack. Needless to say, this
egregious abuse of our borrowed P.A. would abruptly result in me having to
abandon my post as host on the red carpet to set everything right again
with some Circus Of Power or classic Van Halen. CRACKER MAN... |
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I realize I'm waffling a bit here, and
I hope our English correspondant, Stu "The Ray Zell Of Our
Generation" Gibson, and you will both forgive me, but let's face
it-it's kinda challenging to stay that focused on Scott Weiland's
shamefully derivative oeuvre for that long, cos well, it's all thoroughly
redundant even dissecting his heavily sampled, cut 'n' paste, xerox'n'roll
cos all his best stuff's predominantly montages of other people's sounds
and visions turned upside down and pedaled off to a sadly programmed
generation and a half of kids who don't know any better-and we also have
Scott, and Eddie Vedder to thank for Staind and Papa Roach and Candlebox
and Live and Creed and Days Of The New and Lit and a million other
post-grunge-lite angsty kid bands with major label contracts I'm thankful
I don't know the names of. I can't stand the nerd punk, OR the fake
grunge that's dominated the media for the past ten years. On "12 Bar Blues", Weiland and his stylist, and probation officer, and personal masseuse, use all their money and available resources to basically attempt a remake of "Hunky Dory", with various Beatles, Donovan, Lou Reed, and "Scary Monsters & Super Creeps" imagery thrown in here and there. |
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"Barbarella" and "Son"
were almost acceptable as chunes, but what did we need this guy for when
we had Jellyfish and Imperial Drag, and Earth 18, and
Redd Kross, who were so much better at marrying the Beatles and
Bowie? The Often Great & Terrible Sleazegrinder once lamented about how
the poseurs don't always KNOW they're poseurs-they just figure soul
patches are in, heroin's fun; that their shrink, pet psychic, dietician,
and booking agent all agree the work they did with their personal trainer
really seems to be paying off, and s'long as the money keeps rolling in,
what the fuck-there's fifty some years of rock history to steal from-it's
apparently, good work if you can get it! Besides, the kids are all
clones-the Hot Topics don't know no better-they can't remember the real
stuff, cos they've hardly ever been exposed to it! The hippest kids I work
with think Bowie's some lame old guy who tries to copy Trent Reznor and
uses too many big words. They think Marilyn Manson and STP invented
everything. ____________________________________________________________________________________________ PLUSH... Scott Weiland usually DOES manage to pull off all these shop-lifted melodies and appallingly-"influenced" pop culture pastiches in an aesthetically pleasing, nearly tasteful way-he's marvelous really, at sewing everyone else's shit together and passing it off as his own. He's a little more subtle than Puff Diddy. At least the guy does have an eye, or ear, for what WAS cool, and authentic, even if he probably realizes deep down, that it ain't him-that deep down, there's no deep down, just a cool t-shirt, some tailored leather strides and rock candyTM mascara. At least he's hip enough to WANT IT, savvy enough to gravitate TOWARDS IT, instinctively, and dumbly brave enough to even occasionally GRASP FOR IT! Hell, I'd probably be a bit charmed by W if he was some kid who was just discovering the Misfits via Blink 182 or something. Problem is - he got the millionaire figurehead rockstar gig me and a zillion other bitter rock ranters all wanted and it hurts to see the winners all suck so bad. He does remind me of some mildly gifted, and clever young punk geeks I meet sometimes who ain't sorted it all out yet, but know the Velvet Underground were supposed to be cool if only cos some shite band they like, likes them. Scott's radar's always up, you can see him searching, but aside from his struggle with drug addiction, and plush, purple lifestyle, you can see how he has really yet to develop an identity of his own. It's always struck me as if poor Scott's really such a timid follower, with a spine of éclair, that all he really ever does is regurgitate whatever someone else has already said better, and first. ____________________________________________________________________________________________ TRIPPIN' ON A HOLE IN A PAPER HEART.... Now W's the singer of Velvet Revolving Door and you can pay your father's hard-earned money to see him ape alla Axl and Iggy and Stiv Bators and Peter Murphy's old moves twenty years too late, but even that no-name Wasted Youth goatee in the group has more gravitas afforded to him by their SlashCo. bandmates-who all seem well aware that this group ain't never gonna measure up to many of their former glories. I liked Slash's Snakepit better. Let alone, the Ju-Ju Hounds. I'd be surprised if Adler's Appetite sucked much worse than the grunge goon braying for the former Guns and Cult-ists. It's sad really, the way even all his own bandmates seem to secretly hate him. I DO know how that part feels! Since joining SlashCo., this shameless poseur's emerged as well, the underdog, almost. I mean, I can't shed many crocodile tears for the guys with the mansions, studios, and jukeboxes, but ever since this dumb sap was tricked into trying to step into Axl Rose's snakeskin spotlight, I've been feeling sorry for him. My girl calls him, "Slash's bitch" and she don't even know that much about real rock'n'roll-she's a member of the Grunge Generation, and even she knows. I know I'm not the only one who despises all these dime-a-dozen pretenders to the rock throne. I mean, who's ultimately, more widely reviled, and held in more universal contempt (*at least in our scrappy little half-lit, heavy-lidded rock'n'roll circuses) than the pouting zero from STP? Even Bush, Bin Laden, Jose Consenco, Ann Coulter, Sammy Hagar, Motley Crue,and Phil Collins all have their faithful constituencies! Who'll fuckin' ownup to really digging friggin' W? _____________________________________________________________________________________________ SHANGRILLA DI DA.... I was readin' some glossy NY fanzine awhile back-either Cheap Date, or Aquatulle, and there was this Kitty Kowalski scene report from some Ramones Memorial where she took issue with the Ramones fans who all booed poor, dumb Sebastian Bach (W's chief competition for the SlashCo. position) when he appeared on a video to rap about his love of the Ramones. Sagely, Miss KK insightfully asserted how that act was a betrayal of Joey's inclusive spirit on the part of his fans. GABBA GABBA HEY applies to all dorks and losers-even the rich, unimaginative, supposedly good looking ones! Joey Ramone's message of love was about accepting ALL of God's pinheads and retards--so I guess it's gotta be me! I'm the one who's gotta be responsible for finding something to like about STP and Scott Weiland. Hmmmm...well, at least he's been an effective irritant! I have, at least, always perceived and acknowledged W as a worthy nemesis-a frustrating opponent, an engaging oppressor...AND his lacklustre works have been teaching me, and reminding me of the disingenuous, lazy, hackish, charlatan, plagiarist, jiveass parts of myself. This allows me to shore-up my own lines, edit out my own songs that are too much like my idols, and challenges me and my rogue bunch of failed, aging misfits to carry ourselves better and to try to be better examples. To avoid my own cliche's and seek to find my own authentic voice, to keep striving to always be more original! Hats Off, W! So fuggit, let's all go downstairs now and make some "ALTERNATIVE" music of our own! -FIN- links to wherever... (-L'Pepsi Sheen still hopes Axl and Izzy can find a way to sort out their differences!)
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First
time I heard Stone Temple Pilots, I liked their tune "Sex Type
Thing" well enough, and while I wasn't totally enthralled with his
grunge-y vocal style, I wasn't half as sick of it as I am now. Then, that
"Conversations Kill" song won me over- I thought it was Pearl Jam
probably, but I remember liking that one, too, until the scourge of modern
programming practices played it to death- so y'know, I didn't start off
reviling those guys with the immediate contempt many of my former peers
would feign. Their other big radio hit sounded exactly like Cobain,
though, and in them days, I wasn't much impressed with even him, so I
kinda viewed the band once known as Shirley Temple's Pussy with as
much skepticism as any right thinking rock fan would. Over the years, I'd
hear something like "Sour Girl", or "Big Bang Baby", and
find myself nodding along to the DeLeo Brothers catchy pop hooks,
but for the most part, these Pilots seemed like bandwagon jumping con
artists to me.
