I was talking with a buddy the other day. He can’t hear shit anymore and went completely deaf late in his teens, but we love to talk about 90s-era alt and rock. Dude would be the first to tell you he doesn’t remember half of what he used to, factually, about that period. Yet, when we’re talking about specific sound quality or the tone of vocalists or side projects, his knowledge and memory are sincerely on point. But I’m biased because I think this guy is kinda cool.

Cue Scott Weiland and 12 Bar Blues. I gratefully obtained a copy from Strictly Discs in Madison, Wisconsin, per the 2023 Record Store Day release (1 of 7,500 copies total) and immediately was on a trip down my own memory lane. Listening to it in the current day makes me ponder why it wasn’t more commercially successful at the time despite receiving pretty darn good reviews then. It’s classic Weiland.

And it should be. To my buddy’s point, he remarked on not having enough appreciation for what other members of a band brought to a proverbial table; parallel to Scott Weiland as a vocalist and performer, he’s one of those special people who really made music belong to them. Stone Temple Pilots was not STP without Weiland.

Even Velvet Revolver has been noted to be disjointed and essentially was Scott Weiland with everyone else from Guns N’ Roses backing. It’s not like, for example, a band like ACDC who absorbed personnel change, still rocked, I might add, but it’s all ACDC. Scott Weiland is Scott Weiland is Scott Weiland, and his 12 Bar Blues truly could be any number of his side projects. 

It matters not, because he’s fronted it, and as Jeff (played by the amazing Jason Lee) says as a war cry to the ripped-apart Stillwater in the Cameron Crowe classic, Almost Famous, “I work just as hard or harder than anybody on that stage. You know what I do? I connect. I get people off. I look for the guy who isn’t getting off, and I make him get off.”