What’s This Post For? 
Apparently Alter Bridge decided to get another singer, hired Scott Stapp, changed their name to Creed, and recorded a concert for Palladia some time in 2009. It aired tonight and I just had to watch.
I was a big Creed fan in college (I also liked Hootie back in high school so all of you haters can suck it) and learned how to play most of their songs on my yellow Ibanez. I lost interest when Scott Stapp went all crazy (inviting Fred Durst to a boxing match) and the band didn’t seem to be growing at all. Then there was all the controversy with Pearl Jam and Creed broke up. The instrumentalist from Creed found another singer and formedAlter Bridge. While sounding similar to Creed, Alter Bridge seemed to grow past the Christian undertones and developed a heavier sound. Me rikey.
Well I’ve done a lttle research and found that Creed and Alter Bridge are both still on. Apparently the singers will take on other projects when they’re not on tour. I can’t wait to hear about that scheduling mixup. “Hey Scott–what are you doing backstage. Wait–who’s opening for us? Darius Rucker? We’re Creed tonight, aren’t we?”
Anyhoo, back to the story. I watched the entire show. The band was really tight and had a nice amount of energy. They’re using a second guitar player and that helped to fill out voids in the arrangements.
Speaking of voids, there was one area that didn’t need any additional filler. That would be the chunk of real estate reserved for Scott Stapp’s ego. I know that there are always going to be performers that believe they crap roses. That’s part of rock and roll. Look at the burned out geriatric version of Ozzy Osbourne. To this day he claims to be the Prince of Darkness. The difference is that even though Ozzy saunters about like a crippled T-Rex, he can still rock. Stapp, on the other hand, cannot.
The vocal performance was spotty at best. I’m not sure what he was doing with the shape of his mouth but the end result sounded like Don Corleone shouting through a rectum. It was really bad and definitely detracted from the rocking that the band put on. All in all, I give the show a B-.