A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the...

I had a nice lazy Sunday.  I was fliiping through the tv and came across a Stone Temple Pilots concert. Flip no more for the next 30 minutes or so.

It wasn't because of the music. Although I enjoyed the show, it made me think about being 10 years-old and thinking, "this is what rebellion sounds like." I remember my cousin bought the STP CD, Core when we were on vacation in New Hampshire. We didn't have cable up there and this is about 2-3 years after CDs came out, too, so I thought my cousin was bad ass because he had a CD player. The first song was [lead singer] Scott Weiland screaming into a bullhorn, "I am/ smelling like a rose/that somebody gave me/ on my birthday/deathbed. I am/ smelling like a rose that somebody gave me/ 'cause I'm/ dead & bloated...[guitar pounds in WAH-WAH/BA-DA-DA-DA/BA-DA-DA-DA...]"

What the fuck? This is what angst, talent, and heroin sound like, huh?

That's at least how I remember my introduction into grunge music. So whenever I hear bands like Pearl Jam, Blind Melon, Soundgarden, Rage Against the Machine, Radiohead, etc I almost start laughing because I think about how awkward everything was when I was younger and trying to figure it all out. Don't worry, heroin was definitely not involved. That grunge era was my soundtrack growing up. Most of my firsts probably have those bands in the background.

ahhh, the 90's

Quick related tangent:  Fast-Foward 10 years later. My sophomore year at U-Miami. The local radio station announced that STP was having a free impromptu concert on South Beach that day. 2pm.  So my friends and I jump in my buddies Ford Probe ( the poor man's super shitty mustang on Ford's product line) and head towards the show. The driver has so much ADD that 1.3 miles into the trip we rear-end a Jeep Grand Cherokee and the hood actually goes underneath the Jeep, lifting it up! We lose one friend.

Not in the accident, but afterwards.

Turns out that in the chaos following the accident, he casually walked away from the scene because he had pot on him and the knew the cops would be showing up soon.

Cops show up, they move the cars out of my way, my friend who's driving starts going through accident details, insurance swapping, etc. and tells us to go on without him. We say, "There's no way we could do that, bro" as the ride that we had arranged two minutes prior to that statement pulls up.  Keiver's already riding shotgun, laughing. We pile in and see a great STP show literally on the sands of South Beach.  Weiland was singing through his bullhorn, the crowd sung along to "Plush", and although I thought I was the coolest thing since Don Johnson, I actually let down my layer of douchery and embraced the giddiness of a 10 year-old discovering himself. Again.

Wise men, by the name of the Doobie Brothers, once sang, "Whoa, oh, oh, Listen to the music. All the time"