Stone Temple Pilots released their second album Purple on June 7, 1994. It debuted at #1 on the Billboard Music Charts and I purchased one of the copies that helped put it there. I was on board with STP after just one listen to “Sex Type Thing” so it was a no-brainer to pick up Purple on the day it came out. More than 25 years later I was excited to revisit an album still fairly heavy in my personal rotation by witnessing a livestream of the album performed by the band. Scott Weiland would be missing of course, but having seen Jeff Gutt front the band through its set at Aftershock 2019 I was confident he could help keep the spirit of the songs alive. Below are some expansions of notes I jotted down as I was watching the livestream:
“Meatplow” – still rockin’ with that killer riff.
“Vaseline” – made me think of Scott’s sad performance that went viral near the end of his life where something was clearly wrong. At this point I also started questioning how “live” this livestream was. There was no talking to address the audience up to this point and it seemed a little too produced.
“Lounge Fly” – my suspicions about this being live were further escalated before the band played this song after a still image of the original recording log came onto the screen and Dean told a story of how the song was written on the record label’s private jet on a particularly turbulent ride getting from the Grammy’s in L.A. down to San Diego for a show. He said the slide extremes in the guitar were meant to represent the plane going down. “New guy” singer Jeff Gutt sounded slightly Scott on this song.
“Interstate Love Song” – the still image of the recording log combined with narration continued between practically every song after that, this time with a story about how Interstate Love Song came about. It was during this song I realized that both Jeff and Robert were wearing their sunglasses inside throughout the whole performance. Rock ‘N’ Roll.
“Still Remains” – made my nipples hard. This is not just one of my favorite songs on the album but one of my favorite songs ever. Melodically the song is just gorgeous.
“Pretty Penny” – perfectly exemplified what made STP so special.
“Silvergun Superman” – also one of my favorites on this album and they nailed it.
“Big Empty” – definitely suits Jeff’s voice well as his timbre most similarly sounded like Scott during this song.
“Unglued” – during the pre-song narration it was revealed that this song was built off a riff that Scott brought to the band, which made me smile and miss Scott even more. Banger.
“Army Ants” – The intro riff sounded a little weird because everything up to that point had been played pretty much note for note with the album but then the song hit and all was well.
“Kitchenware & Candybars” – very tender song that shows both extremes of this album.
After “Kitchenware & Candybars” the stream very abruptly switched back to the image of the album cover that was there before the stream started and that was that. No nod to the hilarious “hidden track.” All in all it was exactly what I was hoping for. They drew me into their world despite being on a computer screen. Just the thought of it being live changed the experience for me and although it pales in comparison to seeing the band at the Gorge less than two months after the album was released it was still pretty cool.