Stone Temple Pilots

You have to feel sorry for Boy Hits Car tonight. With the audience reaction being deader than the current grunge scene, the band hardly manage to rouse polite applause. That is except for when the singer tries to scale the walls at the Academy, making it as far as the top of the P.A. system before lunging into the crowd below. You have to wonder if this was an act of intensity or if the man was trying to make a quick retreat with his band going down like the proverbial lead balloon. It’s not for the lack of effort, every member seems to have swallowed an entire crate of Red Bull. However, while they are mildly entertaining and occasionally inspired, they are the wrong band at the wrong time.

Things could easily have gone well and truly pear-shaped for the Stone Temple Pilots tonight. After a disappointing return to record with *Shangri La-Dee-Da *, tonight could have flopped more than Roy Evans genitalia. Suffice to say, it doesn’t. Watching STP tonight is the equivalent of stepping into a rock ‘n’ roll time-warp. It’s all 1975 glamour, with every single member managing to look like a superstar. Dean De Leo has all the guitar hero poses, hell even bassist Robert De Leo manages to look cool but there’s never any doubt over who the star of tonights show is. Camper than Dale Winton on a bout of Supermarket Sweep, Scott Weiland is the most enigmatic and captivating frontman seen for a very long time. It’s how you’d imagine an energetic Jim Morrison would perform and watching the band run through a greatest hits set is a breathtaking sight. Even more amazing is how alive the crowd manage to come when the band hit the stage, being louder than any in recent memory. From ‘Plush’ through ‘Interstate Love Song’ and ‘Sour Girl’, the sound of 4,000 voices in waves of anthemic bliss even outnumbers the P.A., no mean feat considering how deafeningly loud the Pilots are tonight. ‘Crackerman’ is pure adrenaline-fuelled ferocity while ‘Creep’ manages to sound as fragile and colossal in this environment as the first day you heard it. Even the likes of ‘Too Cool Queenie’ and ‘Hollywood Bitch’, that sound dull and lifeless on record, manage to explode in bursts of neon colour in front of our very eyes.

Leaving us on an encore of ‘Dead and Bloated’ and a gazelle-like ‘Sex Type Thing’, the Stone Temple Pilots prove that they’ve still got what it takes to create the ultimate rock ‘n’ roll show. Now, I’m going to head back to 2001.