This Situation Makes Me Sad

IRS Seeks To Recover More Than $800,000 In Unpaid Taxes From Estate Of SCOTT WEILAND

STP Revived

Stone Temple Pilots have announced a concert in Cedar Rapids on Wednesday, May 16th, which is

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Someone's Being a Jerk

Over the last year, maybe even back two years, I've wrote about how ex-bandmates need to shut up when asked about their ex-bandmates. Specifically, I remember how Dave Mustaine (ex-Metallica) is always asked what his opinion of Metallica is and Kirk Hammett was asked what his opinion of Megadeth is. Instead of saying, "they are a great band" and ending it, Hammett had some weird / odd opinion that ignited a conflict that was carried forward through the press. I remember writing that there needed to be a canned response so that all these things ex-bandmates say in interviews are not blown up. It's not just Metallica & Megadeth that have fallen into this trap. Off the top of my head, current & former members of Dream Theater, Slayer, Black Sabbath, and Sepultura have fallen into this rut.

Add White Lion to the list as Blabbermouth posted this article just under a week ago - 9/20/17 - about how the former lead singer would not play with the band's guitarist for anything in the world. Vocalist Mike Tramp comes across as a guy who desperately WANTS to play with Vito Bratta, despite his words. Why would I say that? It seems as though he's trying to distance himself from the material he created with Bratta in White Lion as a means to heal himself. I think the best way to heal himself would be to play with Vito Bratta.

As I wrote about the other aforementioned bands, Mike Tramp needs to be quiet and say that he hasn't spoken to Vito Bratta in a long time and doesn't know where his head is at as far as playing together, which would be a much nicer way of respecting the past. Read the article here: Ex-WHITE LION Singer MIKE TRAMP: 'I Would Not Wanna Play With VITO BRATTA For Anything In The World'.

While I'm on this subject of bands that flirt with the idea of reuniting, I have this to say. There will come a day when a band's "classic" lineup cannot reunite. I'm thinking about

1. Slayer, due to Jeff Hanneman's death
2. Pantera, due to Dimebag's death
3. Audioslave / Soundgarden, due to Chris Cornell's death*
4. Alice in Chains, due to Layne Staley's death
5. Linkin Park, due to Chester Bennington's death
6. Quiet Riot, due to Kevin DuBrow's death
7. Stone Temple Pilots, due to Scott Weiland's death
8. Led Zeppelin, due to John Bonham's death
9. The Who, due to Keith Moon's death
10. Ratt, due to Robin Crosby's death

Right there are 10 bands that I like who cannot reunite, due to death. Then I think about these 10 bands:

1. Black Sabbath
2. Sepultura
3. White Lion
4. Dream Theater
5. Queensryche

who COULD reunite, but have not or will not, for various reasons which all can be boiled down to being human. The members are alive, today, unlike the first list of 10 bands. What I wish would happen is for the members of the second list of bands to realize that they are unlike the first 10 and that someday, they will join that list. Thus, wouldn't it be great to reconcile whatever issues separate them now, before they have to do it at a grave?

* After publishing this post, came across this article: http://www.blabbermouth.net/news/tom-morello-reveals-abandoned-audioslave-reunion-plans/

Rejecting the Theory

We worship the dead and under-appreciate the living. This comes as rock star after rock star has come out to comment and mourn the death of Scott Weiland, former lead singer of Stone Temple Pilots. Words and phrases are being thrown around like the scene in "Big" in the Italian restaurant where the cook comes out with a birthday cake and then throws dough into the mouths of Tom Hanks. It's reckless and seems death-defying to do it, but it also has its reward of making all of us not dead being able to rationalize in our heads that a) Scott Weiland is dead and b) for me, maybe I didn't appreciate him while he was on the earth.

I can definitely relate to the idea of this as the anniversary of my mother's death approaches. After all the wishes of "you are in my thoughts and prayers" become fainter and fainter, the brutal truth is that I am left with the reality that Mom is dead. I'm not saying Scott Weiland's death has now made me appreciate Mom more than anything else in the year since her death. Instead, Weiland's death has triggered in me the realization that I didn't really appreciate Mom while she walked the earth in the same way that I didn't appreciate Weiland when he walked the earth. I'm going to focus solely on Weiland's death and how it makes me feel. That may seem like an odd choice, since I brought up Mom's death anniversary, but after rereading what I wrote here, I'm not sure what else is worth saying.

I always have liked the simplistic way the Shrek character summarized himself in the first movie. While walking with Donkey, he explains that "ogres are like onions," going on to explain that ogres have many layers. It's not just ogres that have many layers. Weiland's layers are particularly interesting as more and more details come out about his life. For example, I heard a DJ on Sirius XM talk about when Weiland and Slash visited the studio in 2007 when they were both members of Velvet Revolver. The DJ said that they both smoked and that smoking is not allowed in the studio but he wasn't going to tell them they couldn't smoke. He went on to describe Weiland as a wonderful person and used the phrase "one of the greatest ever" in his impromptu eulogy.

It's good that people can share memories like that because it would be very tempting for me to dismiss Weiland's creative contributions to the world. After all, the lyrics he wrote were, I'll say it, strange and too abstract for me. I'm not planning to scour all the websites that post lyrics and then assemble all of his lyrics into a single collection and then painstakingly analyze them. I will leave that task to a die-hard STP fan.

Editor's Note: this is the first time "Stone Temple Pilots" has been used as a tag.