Stone Temple Pilots, Fillmore Audotorium, Denver, 10/13/09 (live show review) You know what makes a STP show so damn exhilarating?! It's because every time you see them it's like you we're the first one at the Pub, and you loaded the juke-box with all your favorite music before anyone else had a chance to. It is classic after classic song, stirring the emotions you get from a good, no, great melody, coupled with the feelings of nostalgia you get from realizing you are listening to the same band that made you love music this much when you were a young buck. May I make a motion to replace "Livin' on a Prayer" with STP's "Plush" as most all time rockin' karaoke and end-all bar sing along? We can do it people!
All-star front man and top notch character Scott Weiland come to the stage with a presence that begs, "I dare you to fuck with me." Bobbing side to side with the intensity of a tennis player awaiting his opponents serve, Weiland staggers around stage absolutely owning it as the band tears through a set of phenomenal tracks that include: Wicked Garden, Vaseline and Interstate Love Song. Twirling as if on a solo merry-go-round, Weiland moves between band-mates the brothers DeLeo (without whom this amazing music would not be complete).
If you imagine Stone Temple Pilots as a concrete sidewalk, cracking and torn apart from years of use (bare with me I DO have a point), the massive chunks remaining that you skip between to avoid falling in the cracks are hits like "Plush" and "Big Empty," but it is the music that slips into the cracks that you can really cherish about this band. The putty that makes the sidewalk whole again, as timeless as a broken wristwatch. As the band meanders through these chunky hits which gave them their name and recognition, they also stop to fill the gaps with songs like the Beatlesesque "Lady Picture Show," and "Crackerman" where Weiland dons a megaphone in the chorus, a signature move as iconic as Hendrix playing solos with his teeth. And as for the smoothed out "Sour Girl" well, this is the only band that I've seen pull off a light display of falling rose petals to a song and actually make it look cool.
This was the second time in under a year I have caught this act live, the first being just as memory-forging as this one and thus proving that it is not a fluke for this group to pull off a stellar show. They come with the lights, the attitude and of course the music to kill it every time, and they do it with a firm conviction that they know they deserve your attention.
As a favor to the child that still lives inside you, at least pick up a copy of the band's greatest hit's album Thank You, and give it a whirl. The nostalgia will knock you flat, and you don't have to thank me when you rediscover one of the band's that started it all.
Sincerely Dead and Bloated,
Chip
