The Severed Cortex

Link: http://www.armyofanyone.com/

If you had told me that on a night when the Shins were playing at The Pageant I would be attending a hoosier rock and roll show at Sauget's infamous Pops I would have laughed at you. But it's true. My buddy Matt doesn't get a whole lot of chances to attend a show and he really wanted to see this one. Since I'm about the only one he knows that would attend and actually have the cash to do so, he asked me if I wanted to go. It's just as well. The Shins sold out minutes after the tickets went on sale and I missed out completely.
I know I'm a music snob. I freely admit it. Army of Anyone is not typically the music I listen to. Sure I grew up on this kind of music, but I rarely listen to it anymore. I've got to learn to stop being so musically judgmental because this was a much better show than I was willing to give it credit. In my defense, the fact that Army of Anyone is made up of the two DeLeo brothers from Stone Temple Pilots who weren't on heroin, it really didn't look good on paper. Their lead singer is the guy from Filter, a 90's alternative band who had a hit and miss CD called Short Bus back in 1995. While a good chunk of that CD was what I'll call 'miss', it did contain Hey Man Nice Shot which is arguably one of the ten best songs of the nineties. Oh, and there's the guy who is the drummer. That's at least how it seems like he's billed, but for a guy like me that generally doesn't like drummers, this guy is fantastic. His name is Ray Luzier, and although he spent most of his time as Diamond David Lee Roth's drummer over the past couple of years, he certainly deserves to play with better bands than DLR.

But like I said, it turned out to be a pretty decent show. At least the Army of Anyone part did. It even included something I haven't seen in 20 years or better which I'll elaborate on later. The show was actually one of those sponsored tour things from Snocore (whatever that is), and it was also part of KPNT's birthday bash. I stopped listening to The Point somewhere around 1998 when they shifted towards playing more Korn, Tool, and Nine Inch Nails than I could stomach. Today they are billed as Everything Alternative which is too bad because Alternative hasn't been the music buzzword since 1998. In fact, since that time we've moved on to indie, which by the way is about to give way to something else. I did have one beef about the show format. If you are going to have four bands perform, you need to make them all use the same sound equipment. I hate it when they spend 30 minutes tearing down and setting up between bands. But I digress so here's the skinny on the bands.

Neurosonic: Nothing to see hear. Ten minutes into the set Matt turns to me and says, 'Good call on bringing the earplugs'. I think he really meant from the loudness standpoint, but truthfully it could have been a comment on the band. The drummer did look an awful lot like the guitar player from The Charms. The guys mainly played Paul Reed Smith guitars, which I know are good quality guitars, but they just aren't my thing. These guys switched instruments a lot.

Dropping Daylight: Definitely nothing to see here. The lead singer plays keyboards which in a hardcore band is just wrong. His little brother played guitar, and while he played with reckless abandon, he wasn't all that great. He did play an absolutely sweet looking Sheraton Archtop Epiphone with a sunburst finish. Great guitar. I will give these guys some props for not switching instruments any, which in this day and age seems like a cooler thing to do rather than showing off the guitar collection.

Hurt: Five minutes into Neurosonic's set and I spy this guy on the right. He was wearing a blue bandanna and generally just looked like a heavy metal kind of guy. Turns out his name is Paul Spatola and he's the guitarist for Hurt. It took extra time for Hurt to get set up because the drummer had a massive drum kit with 12 cymbals. This is why I hate drummers, and this guy was like most of them; full of himself. But overall, these guys looked like a band. Five minutes into their set I realized that the crowd had come to see Hurt, not Army of Anyone. It stands to reason since this is the type of music The Point plays these days. Hurt wears out the old soft/loud/soft hair ballad routine on pretty much all their songs except they just do the soft then loud thing without ever returning back to soft. These guys were not really all that interesting to me from a music standpoint, but I do have to give them props for a couple of things besides just looking like a band. The lead singer played a violin on one of their tunes, which is pretty unique. While their music didn't appeal to me, you could still tell that this is a band that will be around for a little while. Mr. Spatola played two different Les Paul's, one was a kick ass looking black and chrome one and the other was a natural finish one.

Army Of Anyone: If you look back at Stone Temple Pilots, you'll quickly realize that the DeLeo brothers were the brains of the operation. While it wouldn't have been a true rock and roll band without Scott Weiland, he was just the eye candy. The meat and potatoes of the band were Dean and Robert. While Richard Patrick will never be Scott Weiland, he does a decent job. AofA opened with a bunch of tunes off their new CD before asking the crowd if they wanted to hear any old STP. Of course we did. They played Vasoline and a filler tune off of Purple ... I forget which one. Then they played a Filter song I was unfamiliar with, but some in the crowd knew it. Overall the band was extremely polished and everything would have gone off without a hitch if it weren't for the typical crowd at Pops. While it's not an official Pops show without the obligatory devil horns hand gesture and the Hell Yeah screamed from the usual idiots, it's also not an official Pops show without someone yelling Freebird. AofA took offense and picked the offending fat guy out of the crowd and shouted the totally lame, 'Hey, we don't come to your job at McDonald's and heckle you'. Everyone knows the comeback is I don't come to your work and knock the dick out of your mouth, but I'm not going to fault the band for not being up to date on heckler comebacks. All would have been fine if said fat guy had let it go at that, but he decided to start yelling back. Robert DeLeo put down his bass, went into the crowd and proceeded to yell at the guy inches from his face. After a couple of minutes of band and crowd awkwardness, he got back up on stage. Unfortunately fat guy wouldn't let it go and he continued to bait them. Robert dropped his bass this time and came out into the crowd and appeared to punch the guy. Security, who apparently had their thumbs in their ass for the entire episode realized there was a problem and stepped in. By this time the band was kind of pissed and although they did one more STP filler song, followed it up with a somewhat lackluster Hey Man Nice Shot, and closed with a song off their new CD, it was clear that the show ended earlier than scheduled. First time I've seen a band member in the crowd in a very, very long time. They clocked in at an hour and fifteen minutes by set's end. Last night I thought the fight was pretty cool, but today it looks more like 'roid rage by Robert DeLeo. It's still not something you see every day though.
So, how can you tell the difference between an STP and an AofA song? Find out what guitar is being played. All the AofA songs were played on Fenders while the STP songs were played on Les Pauls. Dean DeLeo does have some nice guitars which included two double neck Fender Strats (one white, one blue), a blue glitter Custom Telecaster, a white Fender American Strat, a tobacco burst Deluxe American Strat, and of course a burgandy Les Paul.