My Darkest Confession: Stone Temple Pilots Was A Great Band

Time for your weekly edition of the Defector Funbag. Got something on your mind? Email the Funbag. You can also read Drew over at SFGATE, and buy Drew’s books while you’re at it. Today, we're talking about bread heels, beer guts, gastropubs, Digger, and more.

PROGRAMMING NOTE: I’m off 'bag duty next week while I finish up a special feature assignment. But don’t worry; we’ll have a guest host ready to entertain your finest inquiries. Just hit up the funbag email address and they’ll be waiting for you.

Your letters:

John:

I was in a grocery store tonight and a Velvet Revolver song came on. I got a little bummed out at first, but then remembered, "Hey, that band rocked!" It was Scott Weiland and Guns. What's not to like? I'm not saying Velvet Revolver belongs on the Mount Rushmore of combined talent, but you, as a rock music knower, may have yours. What is your list of the best collaborations and/or new bands formed from existing bands?

The New Pornographers are technically a supergroup, only one that became more popular than any of its members' day job bands; fans of Dan Bejar’s Destroyer may disagree with me here, which is fine because Destroyer sucks. And let’s give it up for Them Crooked Vultures, the supergroup of Josh Homme/Dave Grohl/John Paul Jones that released one truly great album in 2009 and left it at that. If they ever release another one (and go on tour!), I’ll be on that like a loose fumble.

But let’s go back to Velvet Revolver for a moment. Forged from two original members of Guns N’ Roses (Slash, Duff McKagan), one latecomer to GNR (Matt Sorum), one outside rhythm guitarist (Dave Kushner), and the former frontman of Stone Temple Pilots (the late Scott Weiland), Velvet Revolver cranked out two albums that surpass anything that the original GNR members have done since the Use Your Illusion albums, including anything recorded under the GNR name, Chinese Democracy included. I remember listening to the first Velvet Revolver album and being like, “Oh my god, rock and roll is BACK!” That was incorrect, but still…good album. And do you know why? Because the surviving Guns guys found a perfect collaborator in Weiland, who was one of the best frontmen of his generation. If you have to replace Axl Rose, the best frontman of his generation, you’re gonna need someone who can at least approach Axl in terms of their pipes and stage presence.

That was Scott Weiland. Weiland died an ugly death (by overdose) in 2015 and never really got much in the way of artistic respect; not with STP, not with Velvet Revolver, and not in the afterlife. So consider this a fruitless attempt by me to revisit his legacy, particularly with Stone Temple Pilots. Because Stone Temple Pilots was a kick-ass band.

They were posers back in the '90s, latecomers to the grunge trend who were accused of biting off all of the Seattle bands who had birthed the grunge sound. Weiland could do the Eddie Vedder voice if he felt like it, and he did, to much profit. Throw in the band’s release of “Sex Type Thing”—the definitive “but it’s an anti-rape song!” song that sounds very much like a pro-rape song—and you get a band stuck with a reputation it would never shake.

But STP had songs, man. I still listen to a ton of STP, and every song sounds like a different album that the band picked out at the indie record shop. STP could play glam (“Big Bang Baby”), stadium anthems (“Big Empty”), cheesy Broadway rock (“Interstate Love Song”), and every rock genre in between. They stole from everybody, but they knew what to steal, and how to fashion a catchy song out of it. That’s a hallmark of any great artist. Led Zeppelin were even more brazen thieves, after all.

And Weiland’s voice alone was enough to make all of STP’s songs feel like his band’s own. The best songs in their back catalog are evocative in the way that all great songs are, and a lot of them still sound good years later. I still get fired up inside when I hear “Vasoline” lay down a fuzzed-out bass riff before exploding into a melodic chorus. I listen to “Still Remains” and it makes me long for unrequited crushes from decades ago. And “Plush” remains one of the best “sing along with it while you’re driving” songs in my library.

Some songs feel as if they were catered specifically to your brain’s specific wiring—songs you subconsciously wanted in your life, but never existed until someone else made them. Sometimes, STP was that kind of band for me. They weren’t a grunge band. They didn’t even come from Seattle (they formed in San Diego). They were just an extremely talented rock band with a real knack for hooks. I’ll never sneer at a band like that, even if lauding them makes me sound like the ultimate boomer.

I doubt STP ever makes the rock n’ roll Hall of Fame, and Weiland’s death means the band can’t ever do the stadium circuit the way that Oasis now can stateside. But Scott Weiland was a real-deal rock star, and history has a finite supply of those. The band itself is still a going concern as of this writing, but they never capably replaced Weiland, because no one ever could. Weiland made STP a great band, and he damn near did likewise with Velvet Revolver, a band that had no reason to exist otherwise.

Chris:

What is the probability that Marvin Harrison Jr. can redeem his draft slot?

Zero. It’s hard to believe that MHJ is irredeemable, given that he wasn’t merely the No. 4 overall pick, but the runaway No. 1 overall pick on most consensus boards. But almost every bust stays a bust, and so will he.

Now Jeremiah Smith? Holy shit, no one is ever stopping that dude once he gets to the league.

Pete:

I thought you'd appreciate that I was one slice of bread short for my PB and J yesterday and had to use the heel. One of my students asked if I needed money and today, there was a bag of pop bottles on my desk for the 10-cent deposit.

I might need a fact check on that last part of your anecdote. But given that you clearly live in Michigan, I’ll give you a pass. Life there is miserable enough as is. Also, using the heel of a Nature’s Own loaf is always a clear sign of desperation to the outside world. No worse feeling when you’re making a sandwich than realizing you’ve only got one viable slice to work with. I too have tried making a PB&J using the heel, and have always regretted it. Nothing worse than a sad desk lunch. If I saw you grubbing on one of those, I’d probably toss some spare tin cans your way, too.

This is only in reference to packaged bread, by the way. If we’re talking about a loaf of legit sourdough or whatever, the heel is valuable for dunking into soup, eating with cheese, or what have you. Still dumb if you attempt to use that heel to make a sandwich, but it’s not auto-garbage the way it is on a three-dollar loaf of Sara Lee wheat.

Zane:

I was skinny my entire life well into middle age, probably because I have three bikes and only the one car. But now that I’ve roared past sixty, I finally have a gut. As a long-time chub, are there any circumstance where you still try to suck it in, or are you long past DGAF?

I’m not as gut-conscious as I was back when I was an overweight middle schooler, but the scars still linger. That’s literally true, in the form of stretch marks adorning love handles and upper chest. But there are also psychic scars from that time that manifest themselves from time to time. For example, I often suck in my gut when I step on my bathroom scale every morning. This makes no sense. A scale has no eyes, and keeping my gut sucked in doesn’t change my weight. But even in that private moment, the kid who was teased on the school bus for being fat comes out of me. That’s also why I still suck in my gut when trying on new pants, and why I still feel like an ugly duckling whenever those pants are too small.

I’ll never be rid of this gut. I know that now, and I accept it. I suppose could go get lipo to have my belly fat sucked out of me, or I could go on the next generation of GLP-1s coming down the pike to dissolve it for good. But I’m not gonna go out my way for any of that shit. I’d rather just try to look good for my age than look like something I’m inherently not. My beer gut tells a story. It’s not always a fun story, but it’s mine. So I’d preferred to keep that story as is.

I could do without the stretch marks though, especially the ones on my boobies.

Dan:

Digger is a great movie. It’s the first time I have seen a movie in a theater all alone. I went at 10pm on a Friday because everything is fine in my life, thank you. Maybe everyone hates the message? I thought it was about the role of art when you know that the direction of humanity is just slowly limping along to our own demise. It’s depressing, but fucking great. In the future there will still be joy, happiness, family, and good things like art and satire. But absent changing the entirety of how society functions or human nature… we are totally fucked. I think (director Alejandro) Iñárritu captures the ennui of living in this time. Thumbs up, four stars.

I have not seen Digger. I was due to go to a screening of it two weeks ago, but it conflicted with Defector’s super ultra top secret annual meetings in Atlantic City. So my SFGATE arts editor Dan Gentile took the bullet for me, and came away from the film deeply unimpressed. Which bummed me out! I like Iñárritu’s work more than a lot of people do (The Revenant is a great dad movie), and I strangely want Tom Cruise to get back into the serious acting business, something he hasn’t done in literal decades. So when I saw the Digger trailer and it was like, We tried to make a Dr. Strangelove for the 21st century, and we forced Tom Cruise to play a character who actually looks like he’s Tom’s real age, I was game. I wanted to go to that screening, dammit.

I say that as someone who wasn’t even all that into Cruise’s Tropic Thunder stunt. So when the Digger reviews all said, “This movie is a piece of shit,” I was disappointed. But I’m still gonna watch it, if only because the studios have lowered my standards so low that I’m willing to watch any movie that at least tries to be different.

Dan:

We need a much better name for a decent bar/restaurant than "gastropub", right? Gastropub is such a gross word. It immediately makes me think of bloating and indigestion, and not the delicious craft beers and pork sliders I want to consume there… which will cause said bloating and indigestion a few hours later. 

I think you’re a bit too late to file that complaint, amigo. The term “gastropub” was coined way back in the before times, when foodies ruled the culture and the term “ghost kitchen” was reserved strictly for R.L. Stine books. Now “gastropub” is a permanent part of the lexicon, whether you want it to be there or not. Also, a gastropub is really just a regular pub, except that the burgers cost $10 more than usual. I can’t get too worked up over what we call it, not when I have to worry about all of the other, much worse shit out there.

HALFTIME!

Ross:

You mentioned Priceline in one of your answers last week which made me wonder: Why do people actually use those third-party travel sites? I've checked them in the past for comparison sake, and I never noticed a price break substantial enough to warrant the headache of them fixing a problem. If you've traveled even just once in your life, you know those problems arise all the time. Every time I'm at an airport or hotel, someone is trying to have a problem fixed only to be told, "You'll have to talk to Priceline/Travelocity/Capital One/whoeverthefuck." If you book directly through the airline or hotel, they can (in theory) fix the problem right then and there. Why take the risk of making travel even more soul-crushing?

And yet, I am a hopeless Expedia addict. It’s the first place I check whenever I have to book travel, and it’s where I usually stay throughout that process. You know why? Because I am LAZY. I could book my flight through the airline, and then book my hotel right the source. But that would require me to visit at least two whole websites, and I’m too lazy to bother with that. And I might have to do, like, actual research to find out the best place to stay before all of that! Why would I do that when I just consult the star ratings on Expedia and then look at the thumbnails to make sure a hotel is legit? Like most other Americans, I became exhausted from the tyranny of choice many years ago. So here comes Expedia ready to give me, the little travel piggy, all of that in one convenient spot. I should know better than to trust it, but I’m just that much in their thrall.

The kicker is that, like Ross, I have absolutely had Expedia cause me headaches when something goes wrong. You have a problem with your hotel room, you take your complaint to the front desk, and then they tell you, “Well you booked it through Expedia, so I can’t really help you here.” Same as if GrubHub fucks up your order and you try calling the restaurant that sent you the wrong pizza. Everything in the digital economy has been engineered so that the buck gets passed, over and over again; you, the customer, ultimately have no one out there who can actually help you when things fail. Then you call customer support and get an AI bot named Sapphira. It’s truly enraging shit. I’d do something about it, but I still have like $300 worth of One Key points in my Expedia account. Can’t risk those.

Dan:

I saw a post on my Instagram feed about how Mike Trout has only one career playoff hit. I feel awful for him that he’s wasting away in Anaheim, especially when the Angels had a team that had Pujols, Shohei, and Trout on the same roster at a point, so I thought of what a waste of talent Trout is. Therefore, who do you think is the biggest waste of talent in sports history?

OK so we’re talking about a team wasting a player, right? We’re not talking about an athlete who sabotages their own career by doing as bunch of stupid shit or because they got hurt, because that list would be endless. We’re talking about someone who performed brilliantly on the stage, but still got done dirty by their teammates/coaches/owners/leagues. In that case, the answer is Warren Moon. I’m sure I forgot like 10,000 better choices.

Gabe:

Probably, but those are not memories that I keep in the forefront of my mind. It’s not like I have an accessible, encyclopedic knowledge of every horrible weekend the AFC South has endured over time. Shit, I won’t even remember this collective NFC East weekend again until I have to write about those teams for Why Your Team Sucks.

I will remember that Commanders endgame performance for a while, though. That team is dumber than a Paul brother.

Craig:

I will submit that there is nothing more fun than tracking packages for stuff that I have ordered online. It doesn't matter what it is. I will order poop bags on Amazon and get a small thrill by seeing that it has left the shipping facility in Santa Clarita, CA.

Concur. The best is when I track the package and OMG IT’S ON MY DOORSTEP RIGHT NOW! Merry Christmas to one and all!

Justin:

I’m for whatever reason having trouble reconciling your audible voice with your written voice or perhaps the character I’ve constructed in my head that carries your written voice. Do you run into this sort of problem? I listen to a lot of podcasts/video essays and prefer not to ever see the face of the person I am listening to. Is this normal or do I sound crazy?

Nah it’s normal. The first time I met a blogging acquaintance in person many years ago, the first thing he said to me, “I thought you’d have a beard.” I guess I write like I’m Jeremiah Johnson. I felt bad disappointing my new friend, but I wasn’t like offended. If I craft a distinctive voice on the page or on the mic, and it gives the audience their own mental image of the face behind that voice, then I’ve done my job. In fact, I hate spoiling the illusion for people who hope to see someone cool when they look me up online and end up looking at Gawky White Guy No. 592 when they lay eyes on me for the first time.

To that end, here’s a fun fact about me: I hate seeing voice actors do their characters in person. Like when the Simpsons cast goes on a late night show and Harry Shearer does his Mr. Burns? No, I don’t want that. When I hear Mr. Burns’s voice, I want to see Mr. Burns. I don’t want the magic trick spoiled. If I were a famous voice actor (there’s still time!), I’d never let anyone know what I looked like. And I’d perform under a pseudonym, perhaps the one I used for my fake ID back in college: Knox Bryant.

Art:

I work at a big tech company. Not one of the worst ones. But it's a chipmaker, and we directly supply pretty much all of the worst ones. Life as a worker bee is precarious, which I do not like, and so I'm thinking of ways to get away from it. One of the ideas that keeps coming back to me is that I could cash in my company stock and buy a rental property, like a duplex. This would bring in enough money that I could work a job that I'd actually enjoy—like IT for the library or community college—but still afford to pay my bills and send the kids to college, etc. The wall I keep running into in my head is the moral hazard inherent in becoming a rentier…moving from being a person who makes a living from working to a person who makes a living by owning things. Is it possible to be a landlord and be a good person at the same time?

A lot of progressives will tell you no, their case being that the advent of private property has proven to be, over the course of history, one of mankind’s most damaging ideas. Once people were turned onto the idea of owning land, they never wanted to share anything else with anyone ever again. It’s a perfectly cromulent argument, but you and I have to work with the world we’ve been given. So personally speaking, I’m not gonna get on you for becoming a landlord. If you suddenly morph into Jared Kushner after the fact, we’re gonna have to have a little talk. But if you treat your tenants the way you’d like to be treated*, and you fix shit in a timely manner for them, I say go with god.

(*The odds say that you WILL have a bad tenant at some point in your tenure. I know because my in-laws own a rental property and one time, a bunch of drunken lawyers painted some boobs on the dining room wall. So prepare yourself for that little test of character.)

Alex:

Just watched the Rams kick an extra point to tie the Bills at the end of the fourth quarter. While I guess it's better that XPs got pushed back to the 15-yard line overall, it caused us to lose the glorious fake XP attempt. I miss those. I'm still waiting for a galaxy-brained coach to try it from the 15. Who would be the first?

You’ll be waiting forever, amigo. Even a coach who thinks analytics are the work of Satan knows that the odds of converting a fake FG attempt from the 15 are significantly lower than running a normal offensive play from the 2. Hence, not even Dan Quinn would be stupid enough to attempt a PAT fake under the current rules. I get your wistfulness, but consider the tradeoff the NFL made by moving the PAT line back. Now more teams will go for the two-point conversion, and the standard PAT is now more than just an afterthought. That’s good stuff. No need to go back on the mere chance that you’ll get to watch a failed swinging gate play twice a season.

Email of the week!

Jamie:

I'm a 6'2 white guy from Ohio. I have been to NYC twice, and the last time I went to visit friends was a few years ago. I was walking down the sidewalk and absent-mindedly made eye contact with a passing stranger and said "hey," as one does while walking down the sidewalk in rural or urban Ohio. My Brooklyn-resident friend immediately pulled me aside and was like, "Hey, you can't do that shit here, you're gonna get us stabbed." I'm not questioning whether or not he was justified in this; he had been living there for like 15 years at this point. So, give or take a few gradations of paranoia, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt that he knew what he was talking about. I guess I am asking if that kind of reaction to "ope"-ass Midwestern behavior is applicable anywhere else, or if that's specifically a New York thing. 

New Yorkers will not stab you for saying hi. They’ll just keep on walking. I’d probably hold off on the pleasantries if I were visiting one of 57 countries we’ve bombed, though.