Stone Temple Pilots deliver night of bland grunge-pop

Stone Temple Pilots

Itâ€™s a pretty sad commentary about the state of popular music in 2008 that the Stone Temple Pilotsâ€™ current reunion tour is considered such a big deal.

Sure, the band had a whole mess of radio hits during its â€˜90s heyday. Yet, the Pilots were always seen as imitators, not innovators, and their best songs sounded like watered-down Nirvana and Pearl Jam. In the grand scheme of things, was STP ever an important band?


The Pilotsâ€™ lasting legacy is the popularization of grunge-pop, which paved the way for Matchbox 20, half of the bad music of the late â€˜90s and, possibly, the decline of western civilization. OK, so maybe Iâ€™m overstating things a bit _ perhaps they didnâ€™t pave the way for Matchbox 20.

Despite those things, or maybe because of them, STP managed to draw a capacity crowd to the 8,500-capacity U.C. Greek Theatre in Berkeley on Friday night. Curiosity was also surely a factor: Many of these fans had probably never seen the band, which last toured in 2002. Along that same line, people wanted to know if Scott Weiland, the bandâ€™s famously troubled vocalist, could keep it together during an entire evening of music.

The group _ featuring the original cast of Weiland, guitarist Dean DeLeo, bassist Robert DeLeo and drummer Eric Kretz _ didnâ€™t disappoint its fans and put on as good a show as one could have reasonably expected. The music sounded bland and derivative, but the band was professional and energetic. And Weiland, although his vocals have weakened considerably over the years, did manage to keep it together.

The 40-year-old Santa Cruz-born singer, whose rap sheet includes several arrests and some jail time, appeared onstage wearing a tightly fitting suit, a flamboyant red hat and goofy white boots. If he was trying to look like a pimp-daddy Pee-wee Herman, he definitely succeeded.

Opening with a slowed-down version of â€œBig Empty,â€ the quartet didnâ€™t hold back on the hits and delivered â€œWicked Garden,â€ â€œBig Bang Babyâ€ and â€œVasolineâ€ within the first half-hour on the stage. The crowd, which came into the building looking to party, ate up these songs and sang along at top volume.

The show was well-paced and focused on the hits, which was one upside of the band not having a new album to promote. The three instrumentalists all sounded fine, but Weiland often had a hard time holding up his side of the bargain at the microphone.

His deep, resonant vocals, which propelled STPâ€™s best early songs, were mostly missing. In their place was a higher-pitched nasal attack that came across like Janeâ€™s Addictionâ€™s Perry Farrell on a bad night. Weiland seemed to be aware of his limitations and coaxed the material accordingly. For example, he turned the former tour-de-force â€œCreepâ€ into a less-demanding power ballad that even a Journey fan might have found wimpy.

Again, the crowd loved â€œCreepâ€ _ just like it loved â€œVasoline,â€ â€œPlushâ€ and the other big radio hits performed on this night. The question is whether the audience loved them enough to buy a ticket the next time STP comes to town?

That could prove to be a moot question. Given the history of this band, and especially its lead singer, we might never see another STP tour.

Jim Harrington