On 29 November last year I saw Garbage in concert. I had a history of near misses in seeing this band. I was in Lisbon in 1999 and missed the concert by three days. I was in Hong Kong in 2001 and tried to see them, unsuccessfully, in Osaka. I missed them in Perth in 2006 and in Singapore by a week in 2012 when I was in town for the Singapore Air Show. So I was very pleased to see the band, after all of these years, in 2017.
I lived in Osaka from 1996-7, and was feeling a bit washed up upon my return home. I was aware of “#1 Crush” because “Romeo and Juliet” was insanely popular in Japan, but did not discover the rest of the songs until I came home.
I think a lot of the attraction of the band is the lyrics. Maybe it was just me and my headspace in the late 90s, but the angry/sad lyrics seemed to capture something quite contemporary which I wonder if anyone really noticed in between the end of the Cold War and 9/11: something about being introspective and lost, perhaps.
I loved the concert. Shirley Manson has, true to character, let herself age and has publicly referred to cosmetic surgery as dishonest. I was a little surprised to read after the concert that she has hit 50. During the performance she approached an audience member sitting in the front row who was blocking her ears and suggested, kindly, that perhaps the audience member should have thought about the volume before getting front row seats. Manson then noticed a young girl sitting next to the woman, and warned the girl about the perils of damaging her hearing at a young age. “I’m such a mum sometimes,” she said mid-chatisement, and stalked off to find them both a set of earplugs. (Manson’s faux masturbation during songs on stage stopped after that.)
A review in a local newspaper noted that Manson flubbed some of the lyrics, but I personally did not notice.
I thought I’d share this, wondering if anyone else has seen the band in concert, and more specifically if anyone else has seen the most recent tour and what they thought of it.