Stone Temple Pilots Pulling Their Typical STP Showtime Letdown

If you grew up in the late 80’s early 90’s you probably remember the death of hair metal or glam rock and the cross to grunge. If you were a musician this was a dark time. Not because everyone put away the lipstick and man thongs, but because almost all the playing went away. We traded singers that had really practiced and learned their craft (think Jani Lane) for Curt Cobain who showed us that pitch really didn’t matter all that much. We traded guitar players like Nuno Bettencort for … Well …. Curt Cobain. Granted, the 80’s thing totally got played out and a change was needed.

Now the grunge era wasn’t a total loss, we had Soundgarden, Alice in Chains and the first couple of STP discs to name a few. After that they really tried to embrace the retro just a bit too much for me. But in the end a lot of the sucky talentless bands start to die off and the STP’s and AIC’s which are still spun on the radio today survived. In my opinion because there was still musicianship in those bands. While Cantrell wasn’t giving anyone at the time sweep picking lessons he was showing us some of the coolest stripped down groove riffs on the radio. And when he did bust into a solo it was thought out and melodic and had some value. As a guitar player I had no problem appreciating players like Dimebag and Cantrell from the same perspective.

But, enough about my growing years. This is about STP sucking and doing what unfortunately they tend to do a lot live. In an article found at concertaddicts.ca they paint a pretty good picture of what a typical STP show is. It seems every year or so a story like this floats around the interwebs here is a clip below…

(“Scott Weiland is a fucking selfish asshole” proclaimed one very drunk and very angry concert-goer at last nights Stone Temple Pilots show in Abbotsford at the Abbotsford Entertainment & Sports Centre.

I think many attendees from last night concert would agree with this statement, it was a fucking train wreck. After the band delayed their start time by nearly 2 full hours, they came out and played a mediocre set. Weiland was never really present, he always seemed far away. He sang a mumbled mix of inaudible moans. Although a good portion of the notes he sprayed over the crowd were in tune and in time with the rest of the group, the real words were lost in his mind. It was like a really horrible cross-over between junky-rock and that Sigur Rós made-up-word approach to singing.)

It’s unfortunate, because when Weiland is on, he’s a total champ!! Remember how Velvet Revolver sounded at first?? Please take a minute to read the rest of the article at concertaddicts.ca HERE