Archive: September, 2025

Wednesday night, we saw Garbage at Hard Rock Live here at Universal Orlando. I am not sure of my math, but it was the eighth or ninth time that I've seen them live. It might have been the last.

I first saw the band on November 17, 1995, at Peabody's Down Under in The Flats in Cleveland, which according to their book, is only the 12th show they had ever played. The story goes that the band was conceived more as a studio project by the boys, but the record label insisted that they tour. I remember young Shirley Manson pacing around on the stage, something that she still does, but at that time she seemed timid and uncertain. She's talked about that in countless interviews since, about the way she was constantly being judged (along with every other woman in rock at the time), but she has long since run out of fucks. I think that's one of the reasons that the band endures.

Thirty years is a long time to be doing anything. The boys are all over 60, and Shirley is almost 60 with two hip replacements. Mind you, none of that is evident when you see them on stage, and they are more fierce and tight than ever. The lady up front is also singing better than ever. Still, she announced that after this tour, because of the shitty state of the music industry, this is probably their last headlining tour. More vaguely, she suggested that this was the end of... something. It's not clear if that meant performing, writing, recording or all of the above. I've since read that in the VIP Q&A they did earlier that day, one of them did suggest that they will probably not stop writing, but have no specific plans. This is why you buy albums from your favorite artists, and don't keep giving money to Spotify.

I remember hearing "Supervixen," the first song on their debut, a few months after I graduated from college, but I'm not sure where. It was not officially a single. But then I saw this video on MTV (yes, the "M" used to stand for music!) for "Only Happy When It Rains." There was this redhead with a ton of eye makeup in this blue dress and shit-kickers, and I though, "Who is this?!" My first wife, Stephanie, was still in school down in Ashland, and I remember that we brought some of her friends up to that first show. I think I took a little joy in having a bunch of college hotties meet at my house, where I hadn't moved out yet, wearing fishnets and club gear. I did not take joy in the fact that my car was leaking coolant into the passenger foot well, but my new friend was a good sport about it. Ah, to be a poor recent college graduate.

The videos for "Stupid Girl" (the chevron dress) and "Milk" (Shirley standing in the wind?) also stick out in my mind. The albums came three or four years apart after that, and I saw them on every tour, including them opening for Smashing Pumpkins in arenas. Bleed Like Me coincided with my separation, and the title track I recall felt like a reminder that everyone is going through their shit. Shirley was in a state of self-loathing, and the band wasn't getting along, and that's when they went on their hiatus. It would be seven years until Not Your Kind of People came out. In that time, I had moved coast to coast and back, remarried and had a child.

Of the post-hiatus albums, it was the sixth album over all, Strange Little Birds, that I like the most. It was noisy and weird relative to what I was used to, but still definitely Garbage. The last song on that one, "Amends," might be one of their best songs ever, to me at least. I mean, listen to it. It builds up, takes a break, builds up again and ends on this solo vocal that just hurts. And lyrically, I think it's actually kind of optimistic, the idea that you can reconcile parts of your life and move on. To me, this is the quintessential Garbage song. It uses all of their muscles. Oh, and this was during Shirley's pink hair phase, which I thought was pretty cool.

The last two albums are just OK. A few tracks on each stand out, but the albums struggle to compete for an unusual wave of great albums in the last few years. The lyrics in some of the songs are overtly political, instead of more "poetically political," like earlier work. Following the social media accounts of the band, which I think are mostly maintained by Shirley, it's not really surprising, because she is deeply frustrated with the world, something she referred to several times during this week's show.

It's hard to wrap my head around the idea that my entire post-college life has had Garbage in it. Other than Tears For Fears, who is also still making (really great) music, I can't imagine ever going to see anyone I listened to in high school. The only pre-2000 bands that I've seen after 2000 are Toad The Wet Sprocket (Epcot), Everclear (Epcot) and indirectly, Alanis through her musical (would like to see her though). The only thing that consistent in my life that I can think of is running the web sites, for 27 years.

The set list for this show had a lot of deep cuts, and it included 21 songs over almost two hours. I hadn't heard many of those songs live ever, and according to setlist.fm, three of the songs made their live debut at this show, the first on the tour. Only two from Little Birds, but that's two more than the last time I saw them in 2022 with Tears For Fears. I loved hearing "Not My Idea" and "Why Do You Love Me" because of their pronounced guitar bits. Some of the happier songs made it too, like "Parade," "Cherry Lips" and "When I Grow Up," which was Shirley's call to make your life extraordinary, and their last song.

I also deeply appreciated the lighting design, in part because I have a dotted line in my lighting journey to the designer. Almost three years ago, I pinged @gigilights on the 'Gram, because I learned that she had done quite a bit of work with the band. I asked the possibly ridiculous question, "Where do I start?" if I want to learn about design and programming. She referred me to MA Lighting's products, and after a year of experimentation and a very long wait for the German company to make more, I bought my very own console in April of last year. I haven't done as much as I'd like, as I also took a turn into CAD drawing lighting rigs in Vectorworks, but I really enjoy trying to figure out how to make lights do stuff.

I'm not sure what happens next to Butch, Steve, Duke and Shirley next, but their music produced a huge body of feels for me. I'm two decades-ish behind most of them in age (Duke is 74!), and it's encouraging to see people that age being so vital. Middle age seems less scary that way. Kinda like they made being alone during my "in between" days less scary. Whatever they do or don't do, they've had an extraordinary relationship with us fans.