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Music to their ears
Kid Rock, Stone Temple Pilots and more will rock Zephyrhills this weekend at Livestock 12.
By Staff, wire reports
© St. Petersburg Times
published April 25, 2002
ZEPHYRHILLS -- It's time again for that mud-splashed musical mayhem known as Livestock. Now in its 12th year, the two-day event boasts another strong lineup of hard-living hard rockers, including Kid Rock, Stone Temple Pilots, Puddle of Mudd, Rob Zombie and Jerry Cantrell.
The music starts Saturday morning, but the party begins Friday night when overnight campers from as far away as California arrive at Zephyrhills Festival Park off U.S. 301.
Organizers expect as many as 15,000 people per day, and traffic backups are legendary. One senior citizen got so frustrated at the traffic last year, he tried driving in the turn lanes -- earning status as the oldest (and possibly least inebriated) of the dozen arrestees at Livestock. Another dozen concertgoers were taken to hospitals with drug overdoses; one young man died after overdosing on the pain medication oxycontin.
Conceived by Tampa Bay area radio station WXTB-FM 97.9 (98 Rock), the festival has earned a reputation for giving future stars their start, as well as for drawing acts that already have hit it big.
THE HEADLINERS
KID ROCK
Kid Rock makes the papers most often these days for his engagement to Pamela Anderson, but his fans love the 31-year-old Detroit rap-rock star for his high-powered, high-impact, often high-profanity music.
After a recent Texas show, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram's Andrew Marton remarked, "Kid Rock could have provided the soundtrack for the decadent last days of the Roman Empire," describing how young women in the audience were baring their breasts before the show even started.
"These do-it-yourself strip-club moments evaporated as soon as Kid Rock arrived, descending from an elevated ramp like some Norse god accessorized in a neo-Valhalla porkpie hat," Marton wrote.
But, the critic noted, there's a lot more to Rock than just stage effects.
"Rock was at his most musically impressive when using one song to illustrate his prowess on a number of instruments, bouncing from rhythm guitar to lead guitar to turntable scratching to organ and, finally, to the drums, showing a striking proficiency on all of them."
STONE TEMPLE PILOTS
Stone Temple Pilots is another band that makes news for more than its music. Especially with the travails of lead singer Scott Weiland (heroin addiction, drug arrests, recent conviction on domestic battery charges), more than one critic has remarked that STP's various dips in fortune make it perfect for a made-for-VH1 movie.
But for all that, the band, which once was dismissed as a classic rock version of Pearl Jam, is enjoying a kind of elder-statesman status in the rock world, headlining arena shows such as the Family Values Tour, aimed at younger audiences.
"I just like to bend people's minds, especially when you get a lot of young boys pounding their fists in the air and moshing," Weiland told the Orange County Register in November. "Our female fan base has grown like crazy, partly because we're not afraid to show emotions, write something like Sour Girl. There's nothing wrong with a broken-hearted love song."
PUDDLE OF MUDD
Puddle of Mudd guitarist Paul Phillips has heard critics claim that his group isn't much more than a prefab boy band on steroids.
"The more I get that the better, man, because I need a good laugh in life," the Jacksonville native told the Montreal Gazette in March. "Yes, this band got lucky and it happened really fast, but man, if you could have been there for the last 10 years of our lives, you could not say that anybody in this band didn't pay their dues."
After a long chain of dead-end groups, Puddle of Mudd found a fairy godfather in Limp Bizkit's Fred Durst. At a concert, singer-guitarist Wes Scantlin slipped a demo to Durst, who called a few weeks later with a record offer. Scantlin didn't have a band at that point, but he moved to Los Angeles and assembled one.
Its debut, Come Clean, is the first release on Durst's Flawless label.
JERRY CANTRELL
Jerry Cantrell first came to prominence as a member of Alice in Chains, one of the prototypical Seattle grunge bands. The band, which rose to the top in the early '90s, faltered as lead singer Layne Staley's substance abuse problems escalated. (Staley was found dead in his Seattle apartment April 19, likely of a drug overdose, according to People magazine.)
So band members went looking for other work. Cantrell appeared as a solo artist on the film soundtrack for The Cable Guy. And in 1996, Cantrell began work on his first solo album, with some help from other Alice in Chains alums.
Boggy Depot was released in 1998. His next, Degradation Trip, hits stores in June.
ROB ZOMBIE
There isn't much that Rob Zombie, he of the dreadlocks and scary eyes, hasn't done.
At 19, he started the cultish metal band White Zombie -- working simultaneously as a bike messenger, porn magazine art director and production assistant for the TV series Pee-wee's Playhouse. He's tried animation (a hallucinatory sequence from the film Beavis & Butt-Head Do America) and directing. But in 1998, he found a new focus when he put out his first solo CD, Hellbilly Deluxe, and it sold better than White Zombie's discs.
His latest, The Sinister Urge, features superstar support (Ozzy Osbourne, Slayer guitarist Kerry King, Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee and Limp Bizkit's DJ Lethal). Popular with critics and fans, the new record has kept him on the road awhile. Zombie, now 36, also is seeking distribution for a film he made, House of 1000 Corpses, which apparently many studios find a little too creepy.
PREVIEW
Livestock 12, 10 a.m. Saturday and Sunday, Zephyrhills Festival Park, Zephyrhills. $44.98 for both days. (813) 287-8844 or (727) 898-2100.
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