Newswire Creed insists fans “asked for” intimacy, announces dates playing two old records

Scott “blow jobs aren’t real sex” Stapp and crew are the latest has-been act to jump on the “let’s play an older record our fans actually liked” live trend. Creed has announced a series of six shows in three cities—Apr. 13-14 at the Chicago Theatre, Apr. 16-17 at Philadelphia’s Tower Theatre, and Apr. 19-20 at New York’s Beacon Theatre—where it will play its two “classic” albums in their entirety. The first night, unassuming concertgoers will be subject to the whining majesty of the group’s 1997 album My Own Prison. Second night sadists can look forward to the torture that is 1999’s mega-hit Human Clay, better known as the album that brought modern rock radio such total aural diarrhea as “Higher” and “With Arms Wide Open.”

Though the rooms the band’s playing seem pretty big, Stapp told Billboard the goal of the tour is to “[go] to small venues, [play] the albums top to bottom,” and that he thinks “it’s a great way for the band to reconnect to our roots and with each other and with our fans in a very intimate way that they’ve asked for.” The A.V. Club just asks that everyone be safe and use condoms. An unwanted Creed-based pregnancy is a scourge on society with which no one should have to be burdened.