It was one of the first CDs I ever owned, after my begrudging, but overdue, transition from cassette tapes. From top to bottom, it's a great album, featuring some of the band's signature songs, like "Core" (my favorite song from the '90s), "Wicked Garden," "Creep," and "Sex Type Thing."
But the very first song on the album fits with the macabre theme of Halloween week Rocktober songs. "Dead & Bloated" has one of the most memorable opening lines to a debut album, or maybe any album, for that matter. Singing a cappella through some mic that makes it sounds like an old timey radio show, Scott Weiland belts out "I am smelling like the rose that somebody gave me on my birthday deathbed / I am smelling like a rose that somebody gave me 'cause I'm dead and bloated," with the drums kicking in on "bloated." 32 years later, I'm still not sure what it means, and having read some more about the song, I don't feel bad about that. Weiland said the lyrics to the song don't really mean anything in particular, but were more of a stream of consciousness stringing together of words. Very James Joyce. But behind the strange and apparently meaningless lyrics is a plodding, brooding grunge song that immediately transports me back to my freshman year of high school, for better or worse.
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