Stone Temple Pilots are vying to be the first band in space.
They donned red astronaut suits on Thursday for their “Days of the Week” video, in which they play door-to-door salesmen who escape their monotonous lives by blasting into space and rocking out on an unidentified planet.
“Who looks better in a spacesuit – me or Ben Affleck?” singer Scott Weiland joked during a break, referring to the actor’s astronaut role in the 1998 film “Armageddon.”
The “Days of the Week” clip, directed by Kevin Kerslake – who also helmed STP’s “Interstate Love Song” and “Vasoline” videos – opens with Weiland’s character leaving his suburban home in what could be Anywhereville, U.S.A., though it was actually shot in a nondescript neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley.
Dressed in a suit and tie and horn-rimmed glasses, Weiland sports a look of misery as he waits for his carpool on the sidewalk. The car pulls up, and Weiland climbs in to join his salesmen associates, played by guitarist Dean DeLeo, bassist Robert DeLeo and drummer Eric Kretz, who are all dressed identical to him.
Unable to face the bleakness ahead, the foursome devise a fantasy – suddenly, their car morphs into a spaceship, and they take off toward the sun.
Though Kerslake came up with the concept, Weiland said it wasn’t so far out that he couldn’t relate to it, having worked as a salesman himself before he became a rock star.
“One of the better paying of my many jobs when I was 19 was as a door-to-door salesman,” he said.
Released to radio this week, the catchy power-pop number “Days of the Week” is the lead single from the band’s fifth album, Shangri-La Dee Da, due June 19. The disc, which follows 1999’s platinum No. 4, brings together hell-bent rock and roll, classic pop melodies, and shades of glam, punk and even bossa nova.
In other STP news, the band has announced eight dates for its first European tour in over six years on its Web site. No U.S. dates have been announced other than STP’s headlining slot at the Rolling Rock Town Fair in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, on August 4. But the band is still eyeing a fall run on Family Values, pending how the rest of the lineup shapes up.
