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Story and photos by Matt Schwenke In a much anticipated reunion that broke up the supergroup Velvet Revolver, Stone Temple Pilots took over the Marcus stage at Summerfest for a Fourth of July performance amidst plenty of murmurings about whether or not frontman Scott Weiland would show and in what state he might arrive in. Not to disappoint visually, Weiland took the stage draped in an American flag, gradually peeled off layers of clothing and had two sailors in uniform sing with him in the encore. And, despite his heroin-figure looks, Weiland's voice didn't disappoint either.Without a new album to promote, the setlist was a bit of greatest hits offering. Brothers Dean and Robert DeLeo delivered the definitive crunch on guitar and bass, respectively, and Eric Kretz the heavy drums in earlier tunes like "Wicked Garden" and "Dead and Bloated" and smoother sides in later tunes "Sour Girl" and "Interstate Love Song." But the attention was undoubtedly on Weiland throughout the night as he drifted about the stage, unleashing a surprising fury for his frame in "Down" and "Sex Type Thing." The band certainly didn't seem to have lost a step during their hiatus, sounding like a well-oiled machine, but without any new material adding some sort of timely relevance, the band is relegated to be compared to the memory of the excitement they created in the grunge era, which, once the nostalgia wears off, is almost always more powerful than their show could ever be today. Opener Black Francis, or Frank Black of Pixies fame, was quite the opposite in his performance touring in support of his 2008 release Svn Fngrs and offering up a host of new material. But, whether unknowing of the opener's connection to the Pixies or uninterested, the amphitheatre sadly remained mostly empty and mostly unmoving through the brief opening set.
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