Drunk and Bloated

What a show this past Friday night at the Rave with Stone Temple Pilots. Spectacular and certainly not dull. The band starts the show by ripping through Vasoline, Crackerman, & Wicked Garden. Weiland's dressed in a three-piece suit and doing his usual bizarre dancing and posing. It's obvious Scott's intoxicated, but he and the band are sounding great. He's slurring his words when he speaks in between songs, but his rants are short and the show's moving along at a decent clip. His drunken ramblings are actually quite entertaining. At one point, he introduces one of the new songs called Hickory Dichotomy by saying it has a "swamp music feel" and tells the crowd to "watch out for alligators." The show continues and the band is banging out hit after hit. They get to Dead and Bloated and by the time the song reaches its second verse, Weiland is completely off track with the rest of the band. He is lyrically nowhere near where he needs to be. Rob and Dean DeLeo exchange pissed off looks with each other, but they keep playing to see if Scott can get back on track. It doesn't happen. No clue what Weiland was singing but it certainly wasn't the lyrics to Dead and Bloated. They scrap the song, Dean switches guitars and they go into Lounge Fly. I'm not familiar with that song, but it's obvious that Weiland isn't at all in sync. I see Dean say something to Scott, then walk back to Eric(the drummer) and say something to him. Dean stops playing guitar, glares at Weiland for about 5 seconds and walks off stage. Rob notices Dean leave the stage, stops playing his bass and walks off. It's now just Eric playing drums and Scott singing. The funniest part of the entire thing is it looks like Weiland is entirely oblivious that he's messing up and that half his band has left the stage. He's still singing, dancing, posing for the crowd. Eric then plays this end of set elaborate drum type thing, I'm assuming to signal to Scott that the show's over, but it has no effect on Weiland. Eric walks off the stage, leaving Weiland to perform by himself. Weiland eventually leaves and I thought there's no way they're coming back for an encore, but I wanted to stick around to see what happens. They entire band comes out, they slop through Trippin On A Hole and end the show.

All things considered, I thoroughly enjoyed the show. The drama at the end made it that much more entertaining. It's almost sad to watch Weiland because he's such a great frontman. Even at this worst, he's one of the best. I wonder how great he could be if he sobered up. Then again, maybe that would take away from his theatrics. I did walk out wondering how the long the band will tolerate Scott's antics. I suppose they put up with him during the 90's. What's another decade.