No. 832 – Plush

Performer: Stone Temple Pilots

Songwriters: Robert DeLeo, Scott Weiland

Original Release: Core

Year: 1992

Definitive Version: None

No one was more shocked by my musical transformation after discovering Pearl Jam in 1992 than my sister, who had always been hipper than I was. Now, I was telling her about things she was aware of but hadn’t heard yet.

So it was with some amusement when I drove over to help her move in the fall of 1992, and she asked me if I had heard the new Pearl Jam song? Which one? This one, she said, when Plush came on the radio while we were out and about.

Ummm … yeah, about that “Pearl Jam” song …

So, yeah, STP when they first hit the scene owed something of a debt to their Seattle brethren, particularly with this song. I didn’t buy Core right away, as I mentioned, but I didn’t turn this song off when it came on the radio. In the fall of 1992, faux Pearl Jam was better than no Pearl Jam.

And this song was on the radio quite a bit when I helped Jin move into what would turn out to be her final Chicago apartment. She didn’t know it at the time, of course, but she did know that she was ready for her first solo Chicago apartment.

Jenna and I had just split, so I had nothing better to do than drive over and lug some boxes and furniture with a few of Jin’s friends. The two things I remember most about that day—besides hearing this song on the radio, of course—is that in the evening, after it was over, Jin found a cockroach in her bathtub and fell apart after taking care of the problem. At that moment, she wondered about the wisdom of her move, and she looked very lonely and vulnerable—two emotions I don’t associate with my sister, who’s as tough as they come.

The other came earlier in the evening when we went out for post-moving pizza. Jin’s female friend who had helped—and whom I knew from years before at Torch Lake—and I were chatting. She said something that sounded slightly flirty, and Jin said from the front seat of the car. “Hey. I don’t want to lose another friend.”

That was directed at me and was a reference to Melanie, of course. I wasn’t even thinking along those lines after having just been put out to pasture, but I never forgot it, and I never have dated another of her friends—even long after she said she was only kidding.

All the same, I’m not interested in taking any chances.