Death of Scott Weiland

It great risk of beginning a cavalcade of my generation doing some navel-gazing (through flannel shirts) about what the death of Scott Weiland signifies, I’m doing to try to avoid all that and say that was one of the last of an extinct breed: a true frontman. And for what it’s worth, acoustic “Plush” is somewhere on the best of the summer 1994 list forever.

This was my favorite STP video because of its knowing, loving wink to the early aesthetic of MTV’s first videos. It recalls the train wreck that is Blondie’s “Rapture,” the blank white background of Toni Basil’s “Hey Mickey,” green screen aesthetic with the studio rafters showing of early MTV VJ sessions, and the excessive light from sparklers overwhelming the primitive cameras of the day.

I, of course, had now way of knowing that a “knowing, winking” to the past would come to so define the aughts in the humor…