I was in high school when Nirvana, Pearl Jam, et al exploded. And I couldn’t stand them. Not the whole cliche “why are you whining” and “sing about fun stuff” war cry of the 80s die hard guys. After hearing them a million times on the radio and MTV for a year or so, I started to really like them.
I saw Stone Temple Pilots open for Megadeth (worst concert I ever saw for both of them) before anyone really knew who STP was. We were all saying the Megadeth sucked, and STP was way worse. Their songs sucked, their performance sucked, everything sucked. We wanted our money back because of both bands. They were so bad that a die-hard Megadeth fan friend of mine stopped listening to them for quite some time.
Several months later I heard Sex Type Thing on the radio. I loved it the first time I heard it, thinking “this is awesome, who is this?” Then the DJ said “... that was Sex Type Thing by Stone Temple Pilots...” and me and a buddy of mine who went with me just started laughing. I said “I guess they don’t suck as much as we thought.”
STP’s Core is one of my all-time favorite albums. It’s one of the few albums I consider a perfect album - it doesn’t have to have the best songs ever, but every track is solid and I don’t ever skip a single track.
