Stone Temple Pilots

Yeah, that was it!

If NIN's "Closer" had been a quarter as catchy as, I dunno, "1999" by Prince or "Cars" by Gary Numan or a quarter as rocking as your average track by Big Black - hell, if Reznor came from Germany, which would have at least made his vocals amusing and weird, as everybody from Einsturzende Neubauten to Rammstein has proved -- I might have had a use for it. I was way past high school, so I really didn't care one way or another who their audience was. It was just a half-assed song by a half-assed band who didn't have the balls to be *really* pop. And thing is, I LIKE industrial rock. They just stunk at it. They weren't as good as all the bands they were ripping off, and they weren't as good as some bands (eg: Stabbing Westward) who ripped THEM off. (And oh yeah: "I wanna fuck you like an animal" is a dumb line.)

The "Closer" video contains my single favorite video moment--towards the end of the song, this seated older bald guy looks up at the camera with surprise and disdain. It's like half a second. I don't know why I love it so...

"Head Like A Hole", "Down In It", "Sin", "Terrible Lie", "Heresy", "Hurt", "Suck", "Gave Up", "Wish", "We're In This Together Now", "The Wretched", "The Fragile", and "Into The Void" to thread.

I like how in the "Big Bang Baby" video, when the song reaches the bridge, the visuals get all would-be psychedelic with swirling light patterns and such; like they're totally admitting "Yeah this is the part of the song where we inserted a little 'psychedelic' melody for the hell of it."

Yeurgh, can you suggest Linkin Park as a comparison instead? Stabbing Westward are freakin' nonentities. (Anyway, what Dan said, again.)

Actually, hold on, is this inverted snobbery? I see the whole point of the comment, it fits in with Chuck's pro-pop stance all these years, but this is a bit like willful ignoring of a situation -- obviously STP, say, had enough hits and people liking them for all the fact that I didn't and clearly were getting played on the radio. But so indeed were NIN, on MTV, getting people at multiband festivals all wound up and singing along, etc., just like STP. So is that Chuck is right or that they didn't have the balls to be pop like an individual listener likes, in which case we're just back to radical subjectivism (not a bad place to be of course).

I saw SW open for the Sex Pistols Filthy Lucre tour howevermany years ago. The crowd was booing through their whole performance and throwing things onstage.

The singer said, "C'mon! This is fucking punk rock show, people. Get into it!"

Some guy said, "Bring out the punk rock!"

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/9941/seward.php

Having said that, one of the best, most underrated songs in that vein is "Skin Up Pin Up" by Mansun & 808 State.

Well yeah, but pop isn't just that or we wouldn't be here in the first place (unless all we talked about was Gary Numan and Prince, which is quite all right by me). I mean, when NIN first surfaced all the industrial hyperbores were annoyed precisely because they WERE pop, among other reasons because they were getting above average (if not regular rotation) MTV play as early as 1990. And they had good beats you could dance too and all that -- if stuff like "Head Like a Hole" WASN'T catchy you can bet you wouldn't have heard much beyond that first album anyway, but it was that popularity that led to further attention, the Lollapalooza slot, the break with TVT for Interscope etc. etc. *shrug* I mean, stuff gets big that lots of people like that you might not! We all know this!

But unlike Nine Inch Nails, they had no delusions of being "original" or
being "artists" or whatever. They were JUST a damn pop band. Which may well be why they're being sneered at here.

Uh, refer to Dan's point. Chuck, I'm surprised you of all people are arguing absolutes here. There's no dividing line except the one in your head, but there's no dividing line anyone has except that individual one in their head anyway.

haha that was BOOM

Heh, true. Mind you, this was mostly based on their boring live shows opening up for among others Front 242 (who I KNOW you hate, I admit ;-)). I just remember the lead dude screaming while wearing leather chaps, which wasn't as cool to my mind as Carla Bozulich doing the same thing in Ethyl Meatplow.

the dividing line *always* exists

One can exist but it is never fixed. I think its fluidity is actually the best reason for its potential existence.

You already KNOW it's my opinion, right? Jeez.

Well, yeah, but if we're going to use words like 'pop' without specifying what exactly it means then all anyone would ever do is talk at cross-purposes, and maybe that's all that can be done anyway. You dislike a band for not being poppy, I think they're plenty pop, nobody is right and therefore we just...talk. Which, again, is no bad thing.

STP are one of the best singles bands of the 90's. BIG DUMB FUN. Purple was also pretty damn great and essential to my pre-pubescent experience. The lyrics are utter shit BUT THE RIFFS, MAAN... 'EY PUMMEL... The first rock band I fell in love with at the tender age of 9. SCREW ALL Y'ALL, BIYATCHES!

It's funny that this comes up, because this week I pulled out the old NIN cds for the first time in at least a year and a half, and I was happy that all of my favorites ("Closer," "Into The Void," "Suck," "Heresy," "March of the Pigs," "The Perfect Drug," "Where Is Everybody?") still sounded pretty good. I can't listen to NIN for more than a half hour at a time, though. I reach my threshold very quickly, and I probably won't listen to NIN again for another year probably. But it's okay. It's good stuff. Sometimes it feels nice to feel 14 again, the further you get away from that time.

I mean, it's not like I've been defending LIVE or anybody. (Now THERE'S a band who deserves lots of blame for '90s alt rock radio...)

If only they were Sparks.

Though I'll take "Jeremy" over all the early STP bloaters, it's got more drama & crescendo-action.

Well, my point wasn't merely predicting that they'd HAVE a best of album! It was in my 500 (really 600) top metal albums book; I said that once STP put one out, it would probably DESERVE to be in the book (at least if it included four specific songs, two of which, as I mention above, it DOESN'T have by the way). But they had no albums at the TIME that I thought were good enough. Hope that makes sense....

Hey, I live with some very extinct books, I know the feeling!

how much walking shoes worn thin would be acceptable?

I didn't realize they've now had two entire albums with their post-Bennington singer. Maybe they should have resurrected Talk Show instead.

this post came up randomly on my timeline

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlQKPwmw_Zs

a different scott. really sad to think what happened to him after

i was reading a bit about him and had no idea he was actually abused as a child

Agreed. It's very sad to think of just how much he degraded in the span of 25 years. A cautionary tale in what addiction can really do to you.

When Weiland passed away, I made this post on my Facebook and this thread reminded me of it...

I am pretty sure that I did the first major interview with Scott Weiland. I was writing for Creem and the label flew me out to interview Stone Temple Pilots when they were supporting Megadeth in the midwest. I forget the itinerary but it involved flying into one place, traveling for a night with the band and flying back to New York, with most of my time being spent in Missouri.

I was able to use the hang time with the band to flesh out the story of the band coming out of the chute and breaking right when Sex Type Thing was starting to get massive radio play.

I have fond memories of the trip - drummer Eric Kretz was a really great guy, I introduced those West Coasters to the wonder that is White Castle (the tour bus stopped by and we ordered like 100 of them at my suggestion - with the unheeded warning that it was the only food that would give you a hangover, man did that bus reek the next day) and I got to hear an amazing story in catering from Nick Menza about the line of cute Asian groupies at the Japanese hotel room of Marty Friedman and how he needed an ice pack on his balls afterwards.

And of course, it was cool to be right in the middle of a band exploding into the mainstream living their dreams.

The key part of the story was breakfast in a Shoney's near the band's hotel with Weiland by himself. He let me pick the Shoney's because I used to work there as one of my earliest jobs when I was a teenager.

We had a really nice chat, which made up most of the piece if memory serves. At one point, we got onto what the whirlwind was like, what he would call success.

As if on cue, some dude came by the table to say hi to the singer. The guy mentioned how he played in a cover band and they were working out "Sex Type Thing" to add to their set.

After he left, Weiland turned to me and laughed and said "I think that's a sign you've made it, when someone in a Shoney's in Missouri says he's covering your stuff." Which would up being the endtro to my story.

The band wound up becoming huge. My guess is that the trappings of that success is one of the reasons he was found dead at 48 (just two years older than I am) on a tour bus yesterday.

I was never a huge fan of the band, personally - they had a few good songs but were more derivative than I cared for - but it was cool to be a small part in helping them succeed even if it seemed that Weiland kind of lost the path a few times there.

I hope that somewhere along the line he was able to remember what it was like when having someone in a midwest breakfast chain telling him that they were doing one of his songs was one of the coolest things in the world.

I did a big piece on him for Kerrang! just as Velvet Revolver was happening, got flown out to his studio in LA and got the whole spiel on his drug addiction and losing his family and almost dying and so on. The studio was lovely, but he'd thrown a bin at the glass between the control room and the studio and it was intact but shattered, and he'd spray-painted "fuck" across it. He told me he was clean and would never stray again, because he didn't want to lose his wife and kid again. But it seemed pretty clear to me that he was in no way okay. I was supposed to meet up with some friends in LA bands that night but I felt so depressed afterwards I cancelled and just took a long bath in my hotel room that night. He seemed so sad.