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Stone Temple Pilots: Core
10/06/11 || Daemonomania
I’m imagining a bunch of you grimmer types knotting your pale fingers in despair as you read this. “My pressshusss Global Domination, ruined by these grunge review hobbitsesss, PRESSSSHIIIITTTSSSSS!“ Sorry dudes. Please believe me that I hardly ever listen to any of this stuff anymore, but the other night I put my GuyPud on shuffle and was greeted by “Wicked garden”. First time I’d heard STP in about 5 years. And you know what? For all the problems with the era the band embodied, snippets of “Core” ain’t that bad.
Sure, Scott “Pincushion” Weiland did his best to look and act like Layne Staley and sound like Eddie Vedder. Indeed, the riffs seemed borrowed from just about every other Seattle outfit at the time. Without doubt, this is music written to be played on the radio and in the stadium to legions of flannel wearing layabouts who would then try semi-successfully to strum the chords via tabs they downloaded from the web in mom and dad’s basement, hoping to impress the poorly dressed girl in first period math. But guess what? Whether they were products of their surroundings or tried to turn their surroundings into a product, the amount of dough Starbucks Template Profits spent on intoxicants in the mid-90’s probably eclipses the GNP of several third world nations. Proof is in the heroin pudding. Sales figures aside, for many this was one bridge into the land ‘o harder rock and roll, and we all know the harder the better. Penis.
So, the music. Attempts to be edgy (“Sex type thing”), attempts to be epic (“Where the river goes”), and attempts to just get on heavy rotation (“Plush”). On the subject of the airwaves, ‘tis pretty amazing that a song as boring with lyrics as absolutely sophomoric as “Creep” could become a big hit. Then again, they had a video for it. The production for all these teen-angst inducers is made for radio. Warm guitar tone with the rhythm section mostly faded into a bit of a mush. The imitative talents of Mr. Idiot Drug Buy given center stage.
I’m not going to rehash the whole fucken deal, don’t worry. My suggestion would be to edit “Core” down to about 4 tracks. Be sure to include the instrumental “No memory”, then pat yourself on the back (while moping). You’ve recreated a slice of the soundtrack to 1992, a year when Daemo was blissfully unaware of the blackened mass of awesome slowly rising from the Scandinavian landmass. Soon it would billow forth and obscure all, but prior to that day I thought STP was serious and heavy stuff. Embarrassing. At least I wasn’t born later. Then I might have thought the same shit about Creed.
- Information
- Released: 2002
- Label: Relapse Records
- Website: www.stonetemplepilots.com
- Band
- Scott Weiland: vocals
- Dean DeLeo: guitar
- Robert DeLeo: bass
- Eric Kretz: drums
- Tracklist
- 01. Dead & Bloated
- 02. Sex Type Thing
- 03. Wicked Garden
- 04. No Memory
- 05. Sin
- 06. Naked Sunday
- 07. Creep
- 08. Piece of Pie
- 09. Plush
- 10. Wet My Bed
- 11. Crackerman
- 12. Where the River Goes
