Born Again

Back in the late 90's/early 2000, one of my favorite groups at the time was Creed. I have all their albums and had the chance to see them in concert. One of the outside venues here is called Cricket Pavilion and out of all the concert venues in the city, I have to say that this is the best place to see a concert. All the concerts I've seen at this place have been awesome. Lenny Kravitz being the best in my entire life, hands down, but Creed was real good, too. It was just like listening to one of their CD's...but live. It was even better when the lead singer, Scott Stapp, brought his then 3-yr-old? 4 yr old? son, Jagger, on stage with him during the first few chords of "With Arms Wide Open", a song he'd written when he found out he was going to be a father. All the females in the crowd just melted when they saw him, long hair like his father and wearing huge headphones to protect his little ears.

The group broke up in 2003? 2004? under a dark cloud of rumors that Scott was partying too hard. There were a few cancelled shows, a lot of pissed people. And then their Greatest Hits album came out--which I didn't buy--and that's always a telling sign. The remaining members of his group, well, re-grouped and formed a band called Alter Bridge. Their lead singer has a pretty good voice and interestingly enough, their breakout song sounded a lot like something Creed would have done. Nevertheless, had there been another Creed album, I would've bought it.

Then one day last year, while I was checking my Yahoo email, I saw a familiar picture of a familiar guy, on the cover of a new album.



Scott Stapp is born again. I'd heard he'd done a song for Mel Gibson's movie, "The Passion of the Christ", but never heard it. I think I might have Steven download it for me so I can hear it. I recently bought Scott's new album and have been listening to it at work. There are some traces of Creed, but this is all him. It's like one of those "ephiphany" albums. Y'know, where the artist has been to hell and back and now he's a changed man kind of dealio? After listening to it for a few hours, I have two favorite songs that I've repeatedly played over and over again: "Justify" and "Broken."

I always like when an alternative group mixes it up and uses a choir or an orchestra (i.e. Metallica) and this time is no different. On their final album, "Weathered", Creed used the Harlem Boys Choir for one of their songs, "Don't Stop Dancing", and it sounded fantastic. Again, this time is no different.