Tag: stone temple pilots

House Of Blues Las Vegas 20th Anniversary

STP Live in Las Vegas, August 12, 1999.

Today marks the 20th anniversary of Stone Temple Pilots’ well-known show at the House Of Blues in Las Vegas on August 12, 1999. The show was recorded for MTV Spankin’ Live and parts of it were aired shortly after the concert in a tumultuous year for the band that ended with Scott Weiland behind bars.

Scott had spent the first half of 1998 as a solo artist touring his ’12 Bar Blues’ album, admittedly spiraling more and more out of control on heroin and cocaine as the tour went on, until his very public May 31 arrest in New York City. The tour was over. The solo career was over – for a while. He went off to Rehab.

STP reunited in January ’99 with a sober Scott and started writing and rehearsing for their next album. They were cautiously hopeful at the start, playing an unannounced invitation-only show at the Viper Room on March 16 to let the world know the band was back together. However, the work on ‘No.4’ stopped and restarted several times as Scott fell and got back up again.

STP was finally finishing the recording of the album over the summer when Scott overdosed on heroin on the 7th of July. It was near-fatal and he was hospitalized and detoxed in rehab. Surprisingly, STP played an unannounced 7-song set at the Dragonfly in Hollywood just ten days later on the 17th.

The overdose and hospitalization were a violation of his probation on a 1997 possession conviction and Scott had to appear in Judge Larry Paul Fidler’s Los Angeles County courtroom early in the morning of August 13.

Despite Scott’s legal issues, STP played the House Of Blues in Las Vegas on August 12, for Miller Genuine Draft’s “Blind Date” series, in which contest winners are taken to shows by surprise performers.

Dean DeLeo remembers the look on Weiland’s face at the final rehearsal: “It was obvious what was going through the guy’s mind. He was a wreck, and it takes a lot for Scott to look like a wreck. We threw the crew out of the rehearsal room and said, ‘Is there anything you want to say? Can we do anything?’ He just goes, ‘I can’t think of three people I’d rather be with on my last night of freedom.'”

Rolling Stone Magazine

Las Vegas 8/12/99 Set List:

  • Crackerman
  • Meatplow
  • Vasoline
  • Silvergun Superman
  • Tumble In The Rough
  • Creep (Acoustic)
  • Dancing Days (Acoustic)
  • Pretty Penny (Acoustic)
  • Trippin’ On A Hole In A Paper Heart
  • Plush
  • Down
  • No Way Out
  • Interstate Love Song
  • Unglued
  • Dead and Bloated
  • Big Bang Baby
  • Sex Type Thing
  • Piece Of Pie

At the time, there was only one fan review submitted to Below Empty. Jason said:

“Epic, what a great show. Tenacious D was booed off stage as no one really knew who or what was going on at that time. We were flown in from all accross the country and had rooms at Mandalay Bay. Miller provided free beer for everyone, a bucket full in our rooms, several at the pre party at RA followed by 5 beers at the show. One of the highlites was the parade of chaos as they walked us from RA to the House Of Blues. Over 1000 drunk people walking the tunnel from hotel to hotel had to be one heck of a sight.”

Jason, review on Below Empty

The day after the Las Vegas show, Scott was sentenced to a year in jail, of which he served 140 days before being released in January 2000. His time there has been expertly chronicled by David Fricke in the Rolling Stone article ‘The Needle & the Damage Done’ a year later.

Here’s the most complete YouTube video with recordings of this show:

Director Mark Racco uploaded unseen footage of the band arriving in Las Vegas and the song ‘Dancing Days’ on his YouTube channel in 2010:

The Vatican Gift Shop (1992)?!

A couple of weeks ago my eye fell on a newspaper clipping from the Detroit Free Press from September 9, 1992. A small section in the ‘Upcoming Music Releases’ list for the fourth quarter of 1992 listed a release for a band named ‘Stone Temple Pilots’. Here it is:

Detroit Free Press, September 9, 1992, page 180.

‘“Vatican Gift Shop,” Stone Temple Pilots (Atlantic)‘ it says. You can check any other release listing in any other publication and it will say “Core” as the album title. Of course, “Core” is STP’s debut album, released through Atlantic Records on September 29th 1992.

Front cover of “Core” (1992).

At the time, this could and would have been dismissed as a typo, an error. It was not until early 1996 that the name ‘Vatican Gift Shop’ was heard again, when STP announced the release of their third album, “Tiny Music… Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop”.

Front and back cover of “Tiny Music… Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop” (1996).

Not so much a typo in 1992 after all. “Vatican Gift Shop” was a title coined by guitarist Dean DeLeo, who also came up with the name “Core”. Dean has since told me that “Vatican Gift Shop” might have indeed originated at that time, but was never really officially going to be the album title for their debut. “Core” as the title was solidified by the whole band pretty quickly. How the other title ended up in publication, remains a mystery.

The band was at that time still called Mighty Joe Young and they actually approved the album artwork for “Core” before they had to change the band name to Stone Temple Pilots for legal reasons. Not a whole lot of details are known about the band’s time around the name change. Should be a good research subject for future posts.

Scott & Eric’s “2 Meter Sessie”

I just recently found out that the February 26, 1993 performance for “2 Meter Sessies” (a 90’s tv show in The Netherlands) is the same as the one for “Countdown Cafe” (radio show). I had been looking for years for a separate set of ‘Creep’ and ‘Plush’ from the latter show, but was unable to find it. Now I know why.

Also found out something even more interesting. This session was recorded when Scott and Eric were on a promotional tour of Europe, the band was not touring there at that time. There’s more than a handful related European music magazine interviews with either Eric or Scott or both, none with Robert or Dean.

Now about this “2 Meter Sessies” performance, I have never been able to find video footage, even though I know it has aired locally back in 1993. It must exist on some Dutch person’s old VHS tapes from ’93.

I read about it again in an article from a Dutch magazine Aardschok Metal Hammer (full article here). Eric says:

AMH: You also did an acoustic performance for ‘Countdown Cafe’.

Eric: “Yeah, that was fun. I played guitar instead of drums. A song like ‘Plush’ was written on acoustic and it’s always refreshing to be able to play a song for people in its original form. If it sounds good on acoustic, it will sound good through amps as well. It can be quite different the other way around. I love Ministry, but feel that any one of their songs won’t have the same effect when it’s done acoustically.”

https://belowempty.com/articles.php?p=1993&s=story&id=117

I quickly looked up the audio recordings from this performance. And immediately I noticed something that totally went unnoticed before: The guitar. It’s not Dean’s style of playing. Not Robert’s. Hell, even some of the chords are not totally right. But it’s Scott singing. And also Scott singing the backing vocal overdubs usually sung by Rob (on ‘ Creep’). I Still have to check out the details of the guitar work on Creep. Must be Eric also.

Check out the performance of ‘Plush’ and ‘Creep’ here:

All in all something worth mentioning on here. What do you guys think?