STP’s Purple Turns 20 Today

I remember when Purple first arrived at the radio station ahead of its June 7, 1994, release.  We were expecting more grunge-like tracks along the lines of “Plush” and “Sex-Type Thing, ” so we were all a little surprised to find that STP had, well, evolved.  It was still grunge-y–sort of–but Scott Weiland had found his voice, something somewhat removed from his Eddie Vedder-like stylings on Core.

The staff didn’t quite get it at first, but after about a week, we realized that the Stone Temple Pilots were now their own band with their own sound.  The recorded ended up selling six million or so copies and spun off five singles from its twelve tracks.

Wait: twelve tracks?  Only eleven were displayed on the counter in the CD player, which seemed counter to the note on the back cover of the CD which read “12 Gracious Melodies.”  But if you explored the space beyond the final track, “Kitchenware & Candybars,” you were rewarded with a secret song called “My Second Album.”  But it wasn’t STP singing; it was the work of mega-Johnny Mathis fan Richard Peterson.

http://youtu.be/ET4dW4sHUSE

But if you bought the Japanese edition of the CD, you found something different: a cover of David Bowie’s “Andy Warhol.”