The concert was held on January 12th, 2012 at the House of Blues in West Hollywood, CA and featured a lineup of heavy hitters including Sheryl Crow, Maroon 5 and Tom Morello’s alter-ego The Nightwatchman. Yet the most notable performance of the night was a reunited Velvet Revolver. The “super group” shared the stage together for the first time since 2008 and performed a total of four songs. Highlights of the short set included Sucker Train Blues, Slither and a cover of the Pink Floyd classic Wish You Were Here.

Sucker Train:

Wish You Were Here:

When asked about the future of Velvet Revolver, Kushner told Rolling Stone the following:

We figured that the ridiculous album art and title of The Most Wonderful Time of the Year were enough to harm Scott’s image, and pretty much where he’d draw the line regarding actual promotion for this cash-grab. Seeing the video for Winter Wonderland, however, defies even our lowest expectations. Pretend we’re not just halfway into November, and watch the video below:

So now it’s not just a moneygrabber – it’s a moneygrabber that Scott Weiland takes very seriously. As Blabbermouth reports, the STP frontman said about this Holiday compilation: “They’re songs and renditions that I’ve listened to from a child all the way to my adult years. And they’re very special to my heart, you know. If you last long enough in this business, you have the ability to make the kind of music you want to make. And this is something I’ve wanted to do for a while.” Alright, then.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year can be ordered here.

Next Tuesday, Rhino will unleash The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year, the first Christmas album from Stone Temple Pilots frontman Scott Weiland. Among the assortment of endlessly aped standards on the record are takes on It’s the Most Wonderful Time Of The Year and O Holy Night. Weiland, backed by an orchestra, lays out his best crooner act, which you can hear courtesy of Spin.com.

The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year is out 10/25 on Rhino.

This set of songs are not new recordings, and some of them, namely, David Bowie’s Fame and Revolution by The Beatles have been previously released, either as Weiland’s solo act or with Stone Temple Pilots.

Here’s the tracklist of the simply titled A Compilation Of Scott Weiland’s Cover Songs:

1. I Am The Resurrection (Stone Roses)
2. Personality Crisis (New York Dolls)
3. Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge On Seattle (Nirvana)
4. Let Down (Radiohead)
5. Into Your Arms (The Lemonheads)
6. Dead Flowers (The Rolling Stones)
7. Waiting For Superman (The Flaming Lips)
8. Revolution (The Beatles)
9. But Not Tonight (Depeche Mode)
10. Reel Around The Fountain (The Smiths)
11. Fame (David Bowie)
12. Jean Genie (David Bowie)

You can buy it right here, though $15 is a lot of actual real money to pay for 12 tracks at mixed bitrates ranging from 128kbps to 160kbps. Eww.

When a band breaks up, there’s a part of me that respects the finality, and I revere the samurai code of accepting fate with dignity. It bothered me when the surviving members of Guns N’ Roses started a band called Velvet Revolver. It bothered me when surviving members of Rage Against The Machine and Soundgarden started a band called Audioslave- not that I kept myself from appreciating the music on silly principle- but I lose a little bit of respect for an artist when they can’t let go of the past and move on to something truly new. Billy Corgan doesn’t have the patience to re-build a new career from scratch, so after prematurely losing interest in several less-successful projects, he dug up the body of the Smashing Pumpkins and took it out on the road. Scott Weiland did the same thing, and now Gavin Rossdale is getting Bush back together. Alice In Chains is touring without Layne. By the way, I will not be seeing Blind Melon or Sublime anytime soon.

Mike Patton has always been one artist who, very obviously to me, never let success, or lack thereof, sway his artistic decisions. Hell, at the height of Faith No More’s worldwide domination, one of the biggest sources of friction was Patton’s dedication to Mr. Bungle- a far less lucrative enterprise, but one that he was inflexibly, artistically passionate about.

In the years since, Patton has explored more projects than Slash, Cornell, Corgan, Weiland and Rossdale combined, but they’ve all proved to be long-term commitments, none of which he’s abandoned. You never got the impression that he was ever comparing anything to Faith No More, and when the salad days would come up in interviews, he’d occasionally candidly admit they were good times, but he never took the notion of trying to rehash them very seriously.

There’s a legendary story from 2002. Patton was playing a show at the Astoria in London with Tomahawk, and before the gig, a big meeting was set up. It turned out to be a nü-metal intervention of sorts. Chino Moreno, Brandon Boyd, Fred Durst, Coby Dickface from Papa Roach, Joey Jordison from Slipknot, Gavin Rossdale, and Billy Gould were all there. They had a multi-million dollar offer for Faith No More to reunite and tour. We won’t know exactly what immediately transpired until we interview one of those guys, but what we do know is that at some point, Patton stormed out, complaining to a bandmate about a drunk and unreasonable Moreno, among other things. An Astoria security guard with big nü-metal balls attempted to intervene, telling Patton to get “his skinny little ass back in the meeting and make it happen.”

Later that night, Patton pulled his dick out onstage, and urinated all over that security guard. At least that’s what the witnesses said. Upon being arrested backstage, Patton revealed a fake penis filled with water.

But the point had been made.

Faith No More was an amazing band, massively influential to every band represented in that meeting obviously, and to every spin-off and wannabe Godsmack and Disturbed clone of a clone to land a record deal in the late 90s / early 00s as well. But Patton wanted no part in that legacy. In an interview with Metal Hammer shortly after that meeting, Patton was quoted as saying, “Nü-metal makes my stomach turn. Don’t blame that shit on us, blame it on their mothers! Do you think I listen to any of that stuff at all? No, it’s for 13-year-old morons! Believe me, we’ll all be laughing about nü-metal in a couple of years. Heck, I’m actually laughing at it now!”

My hero.

So in a bulging, mutant nutshell, that’s where my head is at when I see a reunited Faith No More headlining the Download Festival with Korn, Limp Bizkit, Slipknot, Staind, and Papa Roach.

But that doesn’t mean I didn’t watch the live webcast. It’s the Album Of The Year lineup (Jon Hudson being the only suitable, proven replacement for Jim Martin), and despite all of my mixed feelings, Faith No More was one of the best bands to come along in my lifetime. Even the “professionally” shot videos I saw of them playing live growing up were produced with 1990s technology, and delivered to me through a long, strenuous chain of VHS duplications. The webcast was even more up-close and personal than I would have been if I was actually at the clusterfuck of a festival in person yesterday, let alone compared to anything I had experienced as a little teenage shit sneaking into arenas.

The performance was amazing. It spanned the band’s entire catalog, including the albums the band recorded with vocalist Chuck Mosley, before Patton joined in ‘88. They opened with Reunited (the Peaches & Herb song), before blasting through The Real Thing, From Out Of Nowhere, Land Of Sunshine, and Caffeine. I was blown away. Here’s one of the best clips to make its way online so far, Ashes To Ashes, from 1997’s Album Of The Year:

They did the Commodores track Easy, which has been well-documented as one of the best cover songs of all time here. They closed their first set with Mark Bowen, a cut only the most hardcore of fans have heard. For an encore, they did Stripsearch before closing with We Care A Lot, title track from their 1985 Patton-less album.

Not that I expected anything less, but they played the set entirely on their own terms. If the worst case scenario was reality, and the reunion was little more than a cash-grab, it would have been obvious to me and anyone else watching that grew up with the band. But judging by their performance at Download, Faith No More is back not because they ran out of money, or because the Peeping Tom album didn’t sell as many copies as Angel Dust. They’re back because they’re ready, and apparently still very fucking able.

Faith No More is pushing their luck. If they tour the states with fucking Brokencyde or some lame shit, or if they record a new album and it isn’t amazing, I’ll be seriously let down. And now Refused is my only perfect example of a band that quit while they were ahead and never looked back.

But… And I’ve been reluctant to say this since the initial announcement in February… Faith No More is back, and this is a good thing.

Faith No More
June 12, 2009
Donington Park, UK

Setlist:

01. Reunited (Peaches & Herb)
02. The Real Thing
03. From Out Of Nowhere
04. Land Of Sunshine
05. Caffeine
06. Evidence
07. Poker Face (Lady Gaga) / Chinese Arithmetic
08. Surprise! You’re Dead!
09. Easy
10. Last Cup Of Sorrow
11. Midlife Crisis
12. Introduce Yourself
13. The Gentle Art Of Making Enemies
14. Take This Bottle
15. Ashes To Ashes
16. Malpractice
17. Cuckoo For Caca
18. Be Aggressive
19. Epic
20. Mark Bowen

Encore:

21. Chariots Of Fire / Stripsearch
22. We Care A Lot

Thanks to Gareth for the setlist & live Twitter support.
Clips from the webcast are being collected over at Blabbermouth.

Fast forward 15 years, to long after the death of GNR as we knew it. We’ve since seen the rise and fall of Velvet Revolver, the multiplatinum, Grammy-winning but ill-fated Scott Weiland-fronted remains of Axl Rose’s grenade-toss into the Guns gears. While VR twists in the leather-clad winds of their inability to settle on a frontman, Duff is actively doing his own thing, which includes a regular column in Seattle Weekly, another in Playboy (a financial column, no less) and kicking ass with his other band, Loaded. He’s hitting the road with the group to support their second album, Sick, which dropped last month.

We caught up with Duff to talk all things music, including an update on VR’s vocalist search, the state of the music industry today and the great whoring of radio programming.

Antiquiet: Something most people don’t know is that you’ve been singing and fronting a band since your early Seattle punk days. Weren’t you in about 30 bands before GNR?

Duff McKagan: Yeah. The thing is, I could never really figure out what I actually wanted to play. I was a drummer, and a bass player and guitar player starting from the age of 12 or so, so a lot of times I’d be in a bunch of different bands at once. So by the time I got to LA… Well I still haven’t figured out exactly what I want to do.. (Laughs)… but I met Slash and Steven Adler first, and then Axl & Izzy, and in the band that we kind of formed right away, I was suddenly the bass player. So that’s what I really focused on for the next seven or eight years.

Antiquiet: So what about the punk rock purists who say you can’t go back?

Duff McKagan: People say it’s hard to go back to my quote-unquote “hard rock roots-” and I don’t really know about that, you know? It’s just a band dimension, not just me but the other three guys, and our motives, and we wrote what really, truly is a band record, and I’m pretty happy with this record. It was really inspired- so you can label it whatever you like.

Antiquiet: You’re quick to point out that Loaded isn’t a side project, that your whole heart is in this…

Duff McKagan: Oh it is, yeah, it’s been a band for ten years, and obviously Velvet Revolver has been on the front burner for the past five or six years, but with Loaded we still played. We knew we were gonna make another record. We didn’t know it was gonna take us seven fuckin’ years, but you know, music happens when it’s supposed to happen, and I do realize that. I don’t try to force it. This record came at a perfect time for me. I was pretty beat down from all the drama & crap that was circling around with VR…

Antiquiet: The drama being Scott (Weiland)…

Duff McKagan: Right. Right. I was pretty bummed about the way that whole thing went down, so the Loaded record came at a perfect time.

Antiquiet: So what’s the Velvet Revolver vocalist update? Where do we stand? Tell me you’re not hiring the dude from fuckin’ Buckcherry. Please.

Duff McKagan: (Laughs) There’s no news to share yet, man. Trust me, nobody wants that ball rolling more than I do- but it’s gotta be the right guy. We thought we had him, but it didn’t work out. It’s just gotta be right.

Antiquiet: Alright. As long as we’re all in agreement that Josh Todd aint that guy. But anyway, how do you plan to promote Sick?

Duff McKagan: Well, we’re out right now, doing some warm-up shows before we go to Europe. We’ve got a lot more exposure over in Europe, the UK and Japan. We’re playing some pretty big festivals, and we’ll see what happens. Loaded’s kind of a weird animal though. It should be played a bunch over in Europe this summer… but will it? I dunno. I’m not sure what the deal is with the States, maybe it’s the geographical breakdown, but radio is just bland, and sucks, and there’s no penetrating it these days. I mean who knows, we could blow up. We could get to a point where we’ll sell out 500-800 seat clubs- that would be great. I just have a really fun time. And we’re really good live, you know? We give a shit about what we’re doing. Vocally, it’s the best band I’ve ever been in. All four guys are singing, it’s funny all the time, and there’s no drama.

Antiquiet: I read your Seattle Weekly piece talking about song testing and radio programming, and how the music business is evolving into a place where the middleman is history. Bands being directly in touch with their fans automatically kicks the middleman right to the fuckin’ curb… We couldn’t agree more. But there’s a problem with FM radio, where the real gems that we’ve gone to for years are disappearing. Indie 103.1, 89x in Detroit, even 94.9 in San Diego isn’t what it used to be. They play Creed now. [Correction: FM 94.9 SD is vehemently denying that they ever played Creed. We were hardcore fans of the station in its earliest incarnation, so we'll give them the benefit of the doubt.] Any thoughts on how to save FM radio’s respectability?

Duff McKagan: Look, I just went out to every radio station in the state. Did the morning shows, the afternoon drive shows, and I went on and played acoustic and sang. The program directors and DJs come and go… there’s a few old school stations that can’t be touched- like the one in Detroit (WRIF), and there’s some really great satellite shows popping up. But I don’t think it’s ever going to go back to the call-in request-your-favorite-song type thing. KISW in Seattle has this chick at night, Jolene, she’s pretty killer- she plays hard rock and kinda does what she wants to. But I don’t think that radio as a community that we grew up with… it’s gone. It’s already gone. You’re gonna hear the same ten songs, and that’s gonna be it.

Antiquiet: Wouldn’t you say that’s the reason we still have any idea who Creed is? Or Disturbed, for that matter?

Duff McKagan: There’s definitely an argument to be made for that. But the radio stations, they’ll have a quarterly meeting, then they’ll add one song to the list. One song! And they’ll cut the lowest performing song to make it that magic ten once again. The DJs absolutely hate it, and I don’t think listeners really like it, but it’s interesting how they set that bar. They don’t want you to touch the dial. It’s just like the mall mentality- go to any mall in America, it’s the same. Fucking. Stores. Every single one.

Antiquiet: Complacency has become the market target. If you just follow blindly, you’re not going to think about where your money’s going and where your attention’s being pulled.

Duff McKagan: If you listen to the ads that come on, about car insurance and Budweiser and whatever else, they’re all the same. You have to find a way to make sense of what’s real.

Antiquiet: What’s your take on the state of the industry now?

Duff McKagan: I dunno… look: Unless you’re a country artist, you’re not going to see big sales. Unless it really crosses over into pop, like Nickelback, you won’t see those big sales like rock bands used to. Even Metallica records now are doing a fraction of what they used to. AC/DC did really good, but it was a fraction of their previous albums. You get that first week pop, then it’s kinda done. We’re touring the South, where the economy’s arguably the worst, and it seems like people are still coming to gigs, you know? We can’t charge very much money- all ticket prices have to come down these days. We charge $15 for a ticket and try to keep the t-shirt prices low, but you know, you can’t give your shit away. You’ve gotta make money to pay for the gas for the bus and the bus driver…

Antiquiet: Sure, but there are more ways to make money now, where the artist isn’t entirely reliant on the label…

Duff McKagan: Dude, I could do this whole thing right now, all this, without a record label. I could even call the dudes at Total Assault, or hire a PR firm, press the records ourselves, go through our own distributor to put the record out. Then we could print up our own shirts, book shows and go.

Antiquiet: Yeah, but that’s not really a viable option for total unknowns. By the way, I see you set up a Twitter account, but haven’t done much with it…

Duff McKagan: Yeah, my daughter set that up for me, and I don’t know how to get into it. I think she put in the wrong email address, so I don’t know the password. But I’m trying to tap into that whole scene a little, figure out what’s up.

Antiquiet: It’s addictive, for sure, but it can be a great tool for talking directly to your fans & getting direct feedback. There’s no bullshit fabricated image to hide behind. There’s no mistrust between the fan and artist, because they know that they’re getting a direct message and actually contacting a real person, instead of this figure that’s spoken for. It can really lead to greater, new ways of interacting between fan and artist.

Duff McKagan: Yeah, for sure. That’s more important than ever nowadays too- I don’t care who you are in the scene.

Live photo by MetalTraveller.

Which brings us to Stereophonics. I remember hearing the name over the years, but never had an identifiable reference point for them- or cared to have one. They were part of a tapestry of bands (specifically UK bands) with catchy names, snazzy haircuts and leather wristbands. Until a week ago, I couldn’t name a song of theirs with a gun to my head.

Is it a good idea to use a band’s Greatest Hits record as an introduction to their body of work? It’s an arguable point, but the b-side and deep-tracks fetishist in me says no. For every Man In The Box, there’s a Right Turn. For every Welcome To The Jungle there’s a Rocket Queen. Where Even Flow and Jeremy ended, Given To Fly and W.M.A. began. And so on. The hits are rarely my favorites.

If there were ever a possible exception to the rule, however, I’d say Decade In The Sun fits the bill. Pulling from 5 number one albums and 25 top 40 singles, Decade is a surprisingly potent sampling of the band’s 12-year history, collectively shining bright enough to finally get the attention of musical ADD sufferers like myself. 

Opening with the band’s only number one single, Dakota, Decade bounds through an impressively diverse collection of tunes that makes short work of recruiting this humble listener as a fan. The 20-song collection is all over the  atmospheric map, seamlessly running between whining, sticky-sweet flippancy (Have a Nice Day), skinny-dipping in the political pool (A Thousand Trees) and timeless magnificence (Local Boy In The Photograph). Somehow, strangely, it all bears the vague familiarity of old friends making music from a mindset you can relate to. 

Step On My Old Size Nines is an endearing folk-pop ditty that’s a soft pitch for a hangover morning, followed by Devil, the chorus of which soars like the Gutter Twins on a good day. More Life In A Tramp’s Vest has a lo-fi, high energy eighties bar rock band feel to it. And that’s not a put-down, despite the fact that it’s the lowest-charting single the band’s ever released. The gentle gravitation of groove in Maybe Tomorrow makes me wanna pick up a guitar or even a damned tambourine, and THAT is exactly, precisely what I love about music. The rhythms that momentarily hijack the network of muscle and nerves that set the pace of your body movement. 

Superman sounds like Scott Weiland and the Cure got together and tried to sound like Queens Of The Stone age, while Handbags And Gladrags is an unabashed, full-throttle Rod Stewart piano ballad. It gets a lot of shit from critics, but if a band can pull this kind of jam off with a straight face, you better make sure your girl’s still holding your hand at the end. Cause if not, she’s probably reaching for this guy’s zipper.

Look. Any band that’s got the balls to do a full-throated version of You Sexy Thing deserves at least an honest listen. It’s not on the album- they recorded it for a Radio 1 Established 1967 compilation CD, but it’s worth a listen:

There’s a delicate balance of many flavors on Decade In The Sun (at least the first disc- there’s a deluxe edition with another 20 tracks), but the variation doesn’t overwhelm the musical palette, even for a newcomer like myself. The two new tracks on the album (You’re My Star and My Own Worst Enemy) are uncelebrated afterthoughts, but hold their own on an impressive collection that’s won Stereophonics at least one new fan.

Decade In The Sun
November 10, 2008
V2 Records

1. Dakota
2. The Bartender And The Thief
3. Just Looking
4. Have A Nice Day
5. Local Boy In The Photograph
6. Maybe Tomorrow
7. Superman
8. Pick A Part That’s New
9. My Own Worst Enemy
10. I Wouldn’t Believe Your Radio
11. You’re My Star
12. Mr. Writer
13. Step On My Old Size Nines
14. Devil
15. It Means Nothing
16. A Thousand Trees
17. Vegas Two Times
18. Traffic
19. More Life In A Tramp’s Vest
20. Handbags And Gladrags

Weiland’s first solo offering, 1998’s 12 Bar Blues, got a bad rap- and rightfully so- it’s a goddamned mess. But there’s a pained, delicate elegance to it that still resonates after all these years. It’s a beautiful mess, shrouded in a haze of dependance. And damned if we don’t just love our fucked-up rock stars.

So where does that leave us? Well, put simply, Happy In Galoshes is a ridiculous album, but that’s not altogether a bad thing. It’s a chemistry-set explosion of artistic self-indulgence that proves the troubled singer is much better off the junk. I’ve got no idea if he’s actually dropped the needle or not, and this recent Rock The Vote PSA seems to indicate the latter. But Galoshes has the presentation and even keel of a stone sober album. It’s dynamic and more than a little fascinating, the sound of a man who’s climbed all the mountains and couldn’t be less interested in making a market splash anymore.

“There’s no rules, I don’t have to worry about radio playing it,” Weiland recently said in an interview. “At my age, I just do what I wanna do. There’s art and there’s commerce, and I’ve already accomplished the commerce part of my career.” Sellable sex rock it’s certainly not, and many a Velvet Revolver / Stone Temple Pilots fan will surely step right back out of these Galoshes, none the happier for it. But Weiland’s dedication to songwriting and arrangement is profoundly more colorful than its decade-old predecessor. He takes sharp lefts right out of the gate with the forgettable Brit-pop love jam Missing Cleveland. To be honest, it sounds like shit, and is a discouraging opener on an album I’ve already got an eyebrow cocked for. But I didn’t expect to like it all- this is definitely a Baskin Robbins type of record.

The production, done by Weiland and Doug Grean (Velvet Revolver, Sheryl Crow, Crystal Method) with select tracks by Steve Albini, sounds mostly raw and naked, serving Weiland’s supposed newfound clarity well. Killing Me Sweetly is actually a pretty fantastic slow jam- a soft cello under spanish sunset guitars and a sweet, loving melody. Big Black Monster is, somehow, more Gnarls Barkley than Weiland. There’s not a shade of STP or Axl’s old band to be found here.

It’s clear that Weiland’s riding his own wave this time around, playing with all kinds of fucked up colors and ending up on the impersonation side of the artistic scale. He does a great Costello impression on Blind Confusion (watch out for the chorus), twangs a little country Dylan on Tangle With Your Mind, and dabbles in straight-up choir boy on album closer Be Not Afraid. The swaying drunkenness of Beautiful Day carries Weiland’s delicate ascension to full Lennon impression, and two and a half minutes in, I’m tempted to check iTunes to make sure I’m not listening to the Beatles.

There’s more than a few self-sabotaging sections of songs on Galoshes that leave you wishing someone had reeled him in a little bit- whether it’s a chorus, breakdown or bridge, there’s something every so often that slips a wedge into the flow and drains the atmosphere. The digital bleepery and synth atmospherics fit nicely with Weiland’s delicate and slightly Yorke-ish falsetto at the onset of Crash, but the chorus ruins everything. 

Arch Angel is a strange but heartwarming dose of feel-good Christmastime coziness. There are simply no excuses, however, for the steaming pile of Paralysis:

Adrian Young, Tony Kanal and Tom Dumont of No Doubt lend their talents to this one, which speaks for itself, I’d say. (After further consideration I feel the need to apologize for making this hot batch of ass the only sample sounds from the album- I’d stream more, but people can go to jail for that these days, from what I hear.)

As far as shameless self-indulgence goes, you don’t get much more of a living definition than track six, a devoted cover of Bowie’s Fame. With Paul Oakenfold, no less. Scott’s professed his Bowie love many times over the years, but the cover was entirely unnecessary. Ashes To Ashes or Panic In Detroit would’ve been much less obvious.

Weiland’s trademark vocal slither is unrecognizable on the somber dedication hymnal Be Not Afraid, rounding out a much more solid solo album than its predecessor.

Happy In Galoshes sounds like exactly what it is: an album by a guy who’s been to Hell and back enough times to know all the trackmarks landmarks along the way, is taking some time to stretch out his formidable musical versatility, and could give a shit about what you think of it. 

I finally got around to hitting YouTube, and you know what… It’s not really that funny. It’s sad. The obvious question had crossed my mind: Is it worth some commentary on Antiquiet? And, well, by itself, no it isn’t. But there’s been so much talk about it- maybe not on music sites, but around the nation’s water coolers, and on the radio- yet, Steven Adler was not the biggest human spectacle this week. At least not in my opinion. Check out these two competing disasters that Johnny dug up, and tell us what you think.

First up is Bill Cosby on ESPN. I’m from Philadelphia, and I often forget I’m white. I wasn’t really into the Cosby show, but I grew up watching Picture Pages and Fat Albert, and listening to Bill Cosby’s records (at least before discovering Richard Pryor). So naturally, I’m a fan. But once again, I’ve got to call out one of my heroes: What the fuck is wrong with Bill Cosby? What’s that about… chitlin legs?

Next up… American politics have become nothing more or less than the most fucked up consumer craze ever. Everyone has gone completely fucking scary psycho over it. While celebrities are threatening to leave the country if McCain gets elected, I want to leave the planet every time I see a fucking Prius covered in Obama bumper stickers or a minivan covered in Yes On Prop 8 ones. ”Vote Or Die” wasn’t shit compared to the hype surrounding this year’s election. To me, it smells like the VMAs; an insipid, meaningless circle jerk, sold as the event of the century, while delivering nothing. I’ll head down to the polls next week to chime in on state propositions that will affect my life, but McCain and Obama both suck ass, and I’m fucking tired of completely uninformed ignorant sycophants telling me to vote and giving me fucking stickers. The only candidate capable of changing a goddamn thing is Paris Hilton, and I swear to you I would vote for her if I could.

Anyway, here’s a video of Scott Weiland promoting his new album. By telling people to vote. God, it makes me want to blow my brains out. I don’t know who thought this up, but if American Idol was as big as the election right now, that same person would have his or her hand up Scott’s ass, and he’d be telling you how important and patriotic it is to call in on Tuesday.

Good God, what’s with the editing? There’s a cut after every single word! It looks like one of those parody videos, where some dude makes George W. Bush rap Straight Outta Compton or some shit by cutting a million single words and syllables out of miles of campaign speech footage and rearranging them. This is worse than that Phil Anselmo interview, and if you ask me, it’s sadder than Adler and Cosby put together, because unlike Weiland, at least they know what the hell they’re talking about- even if noone else does.