The 17th Best Album of the 90s: Stone Temple Pilots - "Core" (1992)

At my announcement of this countdown, I warned you there would be a hefty helping of grunge. Well, there hasn't been much that (yet) apart from Nirvana at #30, so let's dig the flannel out of the closet, don't shower for a week and wear the ugliest hat you can find.

Formed as Mighty Joe Young in 1986, later changed their name to Shirley Temple's Pussy and finally, at the record companies insistance, changed it to Stone Temple Pilots. Probably wise.

Core was their debut album and they were immediately labelled imposters and were accused of just jumping the grunge bandwagon. Scott Weiland's Eddie Vedder-esque vocals didn't help. And perhaps they did jump the bandwagon. So what? As I've said countless times on this blog, an unoriginal good band is always better than an original bad band. And if you were willing to dig a little deeper, underneath all that grungification, Stone Temple Pilots were most definitely a good band. Unlike other grunge posers like Bush, Silverchair, etc.

Both musically and lyrically it's rooted in the late 80's/early 90's Seattle scene, and while they never quite reached the heights of, say, Alice In Chains and Pearl Jam, they had one great song after another that would crawl under your skin and you'd never get them out of your head.

By 1994 they had found their own voice and the Seattle traces were a little harder to detect on the follow up Purple. Also a very good album, but it doesn't have the raw (if not downright sexual and perverted) quality of their debut.

(mp3) Stone Temple Pilots - Sex type thing
(mp3) Stone Temple Pilots - Piece of pie (recommended!)
(mp3) Stone Temple Pilots - Plush

Buy Core @ Amazon.com, why don'cha.

Wicked Garden live on Letterman in '93: