25 Years of Purple

Stone Temple Pilots' second, and best, album, Purple, arrived 25 years ago to high acclaim and strong sales, but it made a bigger impact on rock radio and the direction of modern rock than most other albums released within the months following the death of Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain. After breaking through with their debut LP, 1992’s Core, STP had a great deal to prove with their second release, and far more than the standard sophomore jinx superstitions. Throughout the Core album era, the band simultaneously gained a strong rock and even pop following yet endured criticisms that elements of their sound, musically and vocally, recalled the first and second wave grunge rock bands such as Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, and others. While there were moments that could be compared, broadly or specifically, they were certainly not going to sound like anyone else on their next batch of songs.

Purple is almost the band starting over after experiencing the success of their first album and singles. Rather than ‘90s grunge and metal production styles, Purple reaches for tones and textures that are more at home in the classic rock of the ‘70s, which has always been the heart of STP in each of their album eras. Because the production on Purple was so strong and so successful, nearly all the band’s further work seemed to be filtered through the general feel of ‘70s-based music, such as Led Zeppelin, John Lennon, David Bowie, later Doors, and many others.

Late vocalist and lyricist, Scott Weiland, opens up in a new and very different way compared to the songs on Core, and a blend of honest introspection, diary-entry songs, and character-based metaphors weight each track on Purple in a realm of earnest seriousness and deeply personal, passionate honesty, whether positive or negative. Brothers Dean DeLeo (guitar) and Robert DeLeo (bass) contribute most of the music and additional percussion and vocal tracks alongside Eric Kretz’s consistently solid drumming throughout, and over the album’s 12 songs, up-tempo, mid-tempo, and ballads alike each are featured in a well-arranged order and flow. The album’s cover is STP’s most abstract, and the album’s title is not written anywhere on the cover or even the spine, leading many to believe the album was self-titled for several years. Even the album’s back cover had no added text or a track listing. (The band’s third album, 1996’s Tiny Music…Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop, didn’t have a track listing on the back either.)

“Meatplow” opens the album with a strong, rocking mid-tempo but establishes the overall tone of the album well in just a few minutes with wide-ranging changes between the verses and choruses. “Vasoline”, the album’s most popular and successful song, is one of the bands hardest and best rockers with a verse riff and guitar sound that helped to define ‘90s rock. “Lounge Fly”, where the band experiments lightly with electronic loops and jams with Butthole Surfers guitarist, Paul Leary, became the background music on MTV’s news breaks for almost as long as that wicked Megadeth bass line from “Peace Sells” could be heard at the end of those news segments. “Interstate Love Song”, aside from being a beautifully-written and performed ‘90s rock classic, was the album’s second-biggest hit and one of the first STP songs to feature a deeper, autobiographical introspection from Weiland, lyrically. That personal tone continues into “Still Remains”, one of the band’s most-beloved ballads, followed by the excellent acoustic jam, “Pretty Penny”, performed beautifully at the 1994 MTV VMAs.

Side two opens with the album’s hardest rocker, “Silvergun Superman” which also features a broad range of moods and sounds in it’s few minutes of length. “Big Empty”, which had already been released as a single from The Crow soundtrack earlier in the year, fits perfectly with Purple’s other tracks and matches the tones of those songs, as they were all written and recorded around the same time. That track’s slide guitar work from Dean DeLeo stands as some of the most memorable moments of STP’s entire catalog. “Unglued”, the grungiest or even punkiest song on Purple, was a radio single later in the year, and it got a fair amount of airplay on the strength of the previously-released hits. It was also featured on one of the best-ever performances from The Late Show with David Letterman. “Army Ants” maintains the hard rock vibe as the album winds down to its closing tracks, the haunting ballad, “Kitchenware & Candybars”, and the unlisted joke-track, “My Second Album”, the first song from another artist’s album who had recorded just prior to STP in the same studio.

While STP would continue to evolve in different directions and would continue to explore other sounds, styles, and instruments, Purple was STP at their absolute commercial, creative, and influential peak, and along with Core, they rode its success through the end of their classic line up, and they continue to ride on the success of those songs even now in a new incarnation (for better or worse). As Weiland began to run into a series of issues with substance abuse and related incarcerations near the end of the Purple album era, it became much harder for STP to function as well or as consistently in the years that followed. Purple is the band’s last collection of songs written and recorded before experiencing those difficulties, and despite those later dramas, and others, it is one of the best albums of the ‘90s and in all of rock history.

Other albums celebrating 25 years:

Bush-Sixteen Stone
Oasis-Definitely Maybe
The Cranberries-No Need to Argue
Toadies-Rubberneck

Pink Floyd Tribute, Wish You Were Here, rocks Jackson

Wish You Were Here, the Cleveland, Ohio-based Pink Floyd Tribute Band brought a night of hits, fan favorites, and deep cuts to Jackson’s Michigan Theater earlier this month and delighted the uninitiated and hard-core Floyd followers alike. WYWH have been at it for nearly 25 years and had not performed in Michigan in quite some time, so it was exciting to see them visit their neighbors to the north, whom they thrilled with an engaging light and laser show, props, costumes, and stage settings, and spot-on performances of many Pink Floyd classics, including a healthy dose of The Wall, celebrating it’s 40^th anniversary this year. While some area fans have been enjoying Michigan’s own Floyd tribute band, Echoes of Pink Floyd, and their recent annual visits to the Michigan Theater, it was nice to see and hear another veteran group of dedicated fans bring Floyd’s songs to the historic Jackson venue.

 Like many other Floyd tribute acts, Wish You Were Here structure their show with the same style and pacing of an actual Pink Floyd concert, with two full sets that have an intermission between them, followed by an encore to end the night.  Pink Floyd came up with this arrangement around the time they began performing songs from what would become Dark Side of the Moon and continued with it until retiring from live performances in 1994. The band consisted of up to 9 people on stage at a time, including two female backing vocalists and additional musicians who alternated between guitar, saxophone, percussion, and additional vocals as needed. Each did very well to represent their position and parts in each song, though the house mix could have brought the guitars and vocals up and reduced the volume on the drums, just a bit. One element unique to WYWH compared to other Floyd tributes is their inclusion of certain deep cuts that most others do not include, such as “Remember a Day”, from the 1968 album, A Saucerful of Secrets, which was included early in the show as a tribute to both Syd Barrett and Richard Wright (the two late members of Pink Floyd), and later-era favorites like “On the Turning Away” and “Coming Back to Life”, from Floyd’s late ‘80s/early ‘90s incarnation, helmed by guitarist/vocalist, David Gilmour.

Other notable and unexpected tracks included “Pigs on the Wing (pt. 1)” and “Dogs” from Animals to open the second set, and a beautiful transition from the very well-known, “Wish You Were Here”, to the Meddle fan-favorite, “Fearless” near the end of the show. A fair amount of attention was given to songs from Floyd’s biggest albums, Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall, as usual, but WYWH had fun with the arrangements, extending or amending sections of certain songs here and there, and they entertained themselves as well as the audience by performing sections of songs with complete or nearly complete sides of those albums, most notably sides one and three of The Wall.

 Overall, Wish You Were Here brought a professional, well-rehearsed concert to Jackson that featured engaging songs, performance, and visuals to a respectful audience that blended young and old, fans and beginners, and hopefully, they will visit Michigan to perform again before another decade or more passes!

Wish You Were Here set list:

Shine on You Crazy Diamond (pts. 1-5)

Remember a Day

(“Bike” end section only/transition)

In the Flesh?

The Thin Ice

Another Brick in the Wall (pt. 1)

The Happiest Days of Our Lives

Another Brick in the Wall (pt. 2)

Mother

(“Speak to Me” + samples/transition)

Breathe

Time

Breathe (reprise)

The Great Gig in the Sky

Goodbye Blue Sky

Empty Spaces (pt. 1)

Young Lust

On the Turning Away

---------------------------------(intermission)-------

Pigs on the Wing (pt. 1)

Dogs

Money

One of These Days

(sample montage/transition)

Hey You

Is There Anybody Out There?

Nobody Home

Coming Back to Life

Wish You Were Here

Fearless

Run Like Hell

Comfortably Numb

------------------------------(encore break)--------

Brain Damage

Eclipse

-----------------------------------------------------

25 Years Later: Remembering Kurt Cobain

Kurt Cobain, songwriter, singer, and guitarist for Nirvana, and accomplished multi-media artist in his own right, left this mortal plane 25 years ago yesterday, on April 5^th, 1994.  His work, his life, and its tragic end have been studied and analyzed since the day he died, and many theories and discussions with a range of validity and accuracy have been had and continue even now. Rather than revisiting the timeline of his final days or discussing drama with his family or band mates, I would just like to take a few moments to share my own thoughts and feelings, as Cobain truly introduced me to the world of modern rock music and culture, inspired me to become a musician, to attempt song writing, and to form many bands. If not for him and his music and art, my life, personally, and the lives of countless people around the world, could have been very different.

People remember where they were when they heard Cobain had died the way they remember hearing about John Lennon or even JFK, depending on their age. I was on a spring break trip to Washington D.C. with my dad and brother, and while I had only been introduced to Cobain’s music two-and-a-half years prior, with the release of “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, I understood his passing had a massive weight and gravity to it. After digging in to Nirvana’s catalog, many bootlegs, and several books about Cobain that were published during and after the time of his passing, I discovered more depth, talent, and creativity than I ever expected, and along the way, it became very clear to me how significant Cobain was to the evolution of rock music, gen-x culture, and as a representative of his audience.

Kurt Cobain was an absolute enigma of a person.

He was known to say one thing but do another, for lack of a better phrase, almost his whole life, and this appeared in his songwriting and lyrical contradictions and in the way he managed Nirvana’s image compared to how he truly felt about how their work was being presented, on recordings, on stage, and in music videos. Cobain seemingly loved most animals and hated most people, but he had deep bonds with friends and family throughout his life as well, in addition to starting a family of his own. He demanded privacy but also craved attention. He dismissed things others deemed important and held what some might regard as useless in very high esteem. He was staunchly pro-choice and a champion of women's rights and especially gay rights at a time when being so was still viewed as controversial by some.

While he only reached the age of 27, he explored all corners of art to express his ideas.  In addition to writing music and lyrics, Cobain was an avid painter, both on canvas and with graffiti art, and experimented with collage art, including print-based, video tape, and audio tape projects. Cobain was also an avid collector of old toys and junk he would find at garage sales and flea markets, sometimes using some of these pieces in his art projects. Occasionally, some of them were even featured in Nirvana artwork or were lyrically referenced in one of their songs.

 As a songwriter, Cobain is best known for Nirvana’s biggest hits, aside from “Teen Spirit”, such as “Come as You Are”, “In Bloom”, “Lithium”, “Heart-Shaped Box,” and “All Apologies”. The band only created three albums, 1989’s Bleach, 1991’s Nevermind, and 1993’s In Utero, yet their cemented legacy is a permanent staple of rock radio and iconic representation of early 90’s pop culture. In addition to Nirvana, Cobain attempted additional projects with other friends which never got off the ground, most-notably, The Jury, with members of Screaming Trees. Cobain also experimented with home recordings, tape manipulation, sampling records from his personal collection, and creating shrieking noise and feedback with his guitar, which also happened in professional recording studios and onstage alike. Inspired and influenced by the cornerstones of punk, metal, pop, and classic rock, Cobain’s work reflected 30+ years of rock history from a disillusioned, 90’s perspective, and sometimes, his reflections were not always well-received or well-intentioned.

Kurt Cobain’s influence is immeasurable. Aside from the millions of fans of his music around the globe, both during his final years of life and since his death, the fact that he inspired so many to pick up an instrument, write a song, or start a band means that even non-fans still encounter his spirit, sound, or style when they see or hear some of the artists they may love the most. He holds a place on the rock and roll history timeline among the likes of Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and Ramones, among the other greats. He is arguably not only the final major rock star of the 20^th century, but possibly ever, which is its own sad addition to his story, in a way.

Cobain means so much to so many because he introduced people to rock music that existed outside the ‘70s and ‘80s mainstream of pop, classic rock, and especially hair metal, when those very styles of music had previously dominated the charts for over a decade. There were younger people playing, listening to, and buying rock music, and MTV and radio alike took notice after the smash success of “Smells Like Teen Spirit”. This allowed the world to be introduced to a whole generation of grunge and alternative rock music that came in waves each year in the early ‘90s and stopped about a year or two after Cobain’s death, not-coincidentally. He made punk rock music, fashion, and attitude marketable and big business after its dismissal and disregard going back nearly 20 years prior to Nirvana. While many regard Cobain as the voice of his generation, akin to Bob Dylan or John Lennon in the ‘60s, he is notably a classic rock archetype. He represents the same rebellion, youthful energy, and lust for freedom that all the great rock artists from the ‘50s on also represent, but from his own time, place, and perspective. He is regarded as a guitar hero, as a genius songwriter, as an experimental musician, and as the most significant individual person in rock music over the past 30 years (or longer). His songwriting, performance, and production styles were imitated for over a decade after his passing and still make up a portion of rock music that is recorded and released today. Above all, Kurt Cobain’s music and lyrics appeared to be honest and sincere within the context of his art, and they represented his thoughts, feelings, and outlook in a way that listeners, especially of his age and younger, could understand and to which they could relate. He was up there representing you.  Your thoughts. Your feelings. Your emotions. As long as rock music, distorted electric guitars, and angsty teens still exist, Cobain and his influence will always continue.