It’s the 1990s and homogenization is spreading across the music industry, infiltrating MTV and further lobotomizing radio. The effects of major label subsidiary operations had all but dismantled and expunged independent labels from the market. In 1989 A&M Records, one of the country’s most successful indie labels, was sold to Polygram. A year later the World Wide Web was formed, and a couple of years after that the MP3 was approved as a new medium of storage for computer audio files. The record industry was turning a corner, and alternative music was beginning to drown. In 1993 grunge went vogue thanks to Marc Jacobs, and in 1994 Elektra bought 45% of SubPop for $20 million. Although albums were still the predominant form of music consumption, all of that was about to change.
By the time 1995 rolled around, a wash of soft-spoken, sweetheart songstresses were infiltrating popular music. Jewel had released her debut album and Mariah Carey had dropped v. Artists like Natalie Merchant, Paula Abdul, and Janet Jackson followed suit, all releasing records in 1995. American audiences were tricked into thinking they were given an alternative to the atypical representation of women in rock, as a semi-angry, somewhat rebellious version of the former was offered up with the likes of Alanis Morissette, Kay Hanley, Ani DiFranco, and Gwen Stefani.
As grunge was busy dying, popular rock music was staunch with repetition and testosterone. Bands like Sugar Ray, Everclear, and The Goo Goo Dolls dominated airwaves. Meanwhile, hip hop was experiencing its Golden Era. In 1995 alone, The Roots released Do You Want More?!!!??!, Raekwon came out with Only Built 4 Cuban Linx…, GZA dropped Liquid Swords, and Big L offered up Lifestylez ov da Poor & Dangerous.
For years, acclaimed producer Butch Vig had been working alongside legends in rock music, producing records for the likes of Nirvana, The Smashing Pumpkins, and Sonic Youth. By the time he had started assembling the pieces that would become Garbage, he yearned for something different. Heavily influenced by what was happening in hip hop music, Vig and fellow musicians Steve Marker and Duke Erikson began to experiment with samples, electronic production, and loops, toying with ways to create a version of alternative rock that would challenge the status quo and subvert the predictable, skewing the public perception of pop music.
Butch and Steve had known that they wanted to add a female component to the project. Rock music was largely male dominated, and the pair knew that having a woman involved would arm the band with a different set of fangs. What they found was a voice that could simultaneously dismantle the rein of cotton candy female vocalists dominating pop charts, while giving alternative rock a shocking injection of femininity, rebellion, and authenticity. Standing apart from Mariah Carey’s high pitched squeals, Jewel’s soft, pillowy voice and Alanis Morissette’s angsty whining, was the low, sexual intensity of Shirley Manson.
Their debut record, Garbage, became a cultural zeitgeist for popular music and met startling levels of commercial success, selling over 4 million copies worldwide. The album can sit alongside timeless classics like The Smashing Pumpkin’s Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness and No Doubt’s Tragic Kingdom, records that have forever altered the framework of popular music, and will continue to influence artists for years to come.
Garbage captured the chaotic and the wild within rock and roll and delivered it distorted and on loop, framed for mass consumption. They were edgy – heavily influenced by hip hop music and daring in their marriage of pop, rock, and sample-based production. They were provocative – drowning in the darkness of Shirley Manson’s sonorous, off-kilter voice, her rebelliousness, and tangible sexuality. They were intelligent – united against common causes like the denial of rights for the LGBT community, they became ambassadors to the queer, representing society’s outcasts on the covers of magazines, on the stage at MTV Spring Break, and on the red carpet at the Grammy Awards.
Where is Garbage today? Celebrating! This past August marked the 20th Anniversary of the album that started it all, and in October they launched the 20 Years Queer Tour, a five week run where they play their entire debut album as well as all of the b-sides. At first glance, it doesn’t seem like an unwise move for a prolific band to play their most pivotal album live. It’s a gift to the fans, right? And a walk down memory lane for almost everyone involved. Yet, fans don’t always realize why certain songs aren’t performed live until they are at the show actively listening to an entire album get played. It’s then that they begin to understand how and why a setlist is built around momentum.
Garbage playing Garbage? It just worked. Two things stood out. The first is that even today there is nothing quite like Garbage on the radio. If you were to play their first two albums alongside the other Top 40s, they would fit right in. The second is that Garbage was written when the idea of an album as a form of art was still very much alive. This album is not only timeless, nearly every song and all of the accompanying b-sides are hits records in their own right.
In Boston, the members took to the stage with the same punk rock energy as in days of late – Manson circling the set in between verses, Vig slamming at the drums with a piercing clarity, Marker and Erikson vamping to and fro, lurching at the whim of their instruments. The band opened the show hidden behind a curtain, with a video montage of their career playing along to the song “Alien Sex Fiend”. As the video winded to an end, and image of each member of the band flashed across the curtain. The crowd erupted into cheers, and Garbage launched right into “Subhuman” followed by “Supervixen”, “Queer”, “Girls Don’t Come” and “As Heaven is Wide”. Shirley guttered like a lioness during “Vow,” articulating certain words with a growl and giving the chorus even more of a “fuck you” attitude than it had originally been recorded with. She stopped briefly to inform the crowd that the song “Butterfly Collector” is a cover of The Jams. She had heard them play one night in Edinburgh, and after the set took one of the band members home and “fucked his brains out.”
The show ended a bit anti-climatically. B-sides “Kick My Ass” and “Trip My Wire” were followed by a couple of tunes from 2005’s Bleed Like Me. Nothing from the band’s second studio album Version 2.0 was played that night, which was surprising. 2.0was probably the last record to truly encapsulate Garbage’s breakthrough sound, and the album meant as much to fans as did their self-titled debut.
