The Voices in My Head: Tiny Music… From The Vatican Gift Shop
I just spent an astronomical amount of money on new music. I’m sitting in my office, organizing my collection with the addition of another CD tower. I could be listening to any of the discs in the slab of music I just bought, but I got Stone Temple Pilots’ “Big Bang Baby” from their Tiny Music… From The Vatican Gift Shop stuck in my head, so instead of listening to the new I’m listening to this. Sometimes you just have to roll with it, and I am.
A great many chapters could be written about the wasted talent that is Scott Weiland. I know it’s easy to dismiss them as Clone Temple Pilots, and I’ve done that on occasion. They did toe that line between inspiration and derivation an awful lot, but somewhere in the middle of their muddle was some really interesting music.
Weiland, like Ryan Adams, was smarter than Oasis in choosing to obviously rip off more than one band. In a way, STP were like a rock version of Beck in the way they synthesized a wide swath of influences into their sound. Listen to an STP record and you’ll hear shades of Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and yes, Pearl Jam. You’ll also hear a lot of David Bowie and John Lennon mixed in there. There’s something about the way these — and other — influences were filtered through the Weiland prism that made them stand on their own. STP could be distinctive even if they weren’t original, and Tiny Music embodies that.
Filed under: Tags: Citzen Dick
I agree with your points on STP. However, Weiland is not the Sting of STP. Most of the classic riffs and music were courtesy of the DeLeo brothers more so than Weiland… his solo album was pretty weak, as was most of the material he was involved in post STP.
BTW, I love Wikipedia… I just learned that STP originally stood for “Shirley Temple’s Pussy”, before they settled on Stone Temple Pilots.
Whether it is true or not doesn’t change the fact that it is perversely hilarious.
The riffs may have been more a product of the DeLeos, but Weiland was the man with the melodies and the DeLeo’s album — Talk Show, was it? — didn’t have much life without him. These guys are better together.
The Shirley Temple’s Pussy story has been around for a long time. It is pretty funny.