Review: Taking out the Garbage

Geoff Carter

Wednesday, Oct. 7, 1998 | 3:18 a.m.

"Hey, Carter," my friend Tiger called out. "You're late, man. You missed Girls Against Boys."

"Yeah, I know. How were they?"

"Let me tell you, brother, they kicked (double expletive)."

"Terrific. Mind if I quote you on that?"

I may have arrived at the Hard Rock too late to catch Garbage's opening act, but that didn't matter. Garbage's set was girls against boys personified: sexy lead vocalist Shirley Manson versus the three producers - Butch Vig, Steve Marker and Duke Erikson - that complete the band. With tour bassist Daniel Schulman thrown in, it almost looked like the scales were tipped toward Mars, but from the second Manson swayed up to the microphone (she is snake-hipped like no one you've ever seen) and belted out the opening lines of "Temptation Waits" -- "I'll tell you something / I am a wolf but / I like to wear sheep's clothing" -- it was all over but the shouting.

And shouting, dear reader, was all there was. In three years of reviewing shows, I have never seen an audience like the one that greeted Garbage. All the worst cliches one might associate with the crowd at a live show -- vomiting frat boys, topless girls sitting on their dimwitted boyfriend's shoulders, thugs knocking people over just for the heck of it -- all those elements were absent.

In their stead was a crowd that, for the most part, stood in one place -- occasionally hopping, hip-shaking or waving their arms as the song dictated. They were well-scrubbed, adult (there was a veritable convention of Seattle-style van dyke beards going on) and well-behaved -- just the crowd you would expect for a band whose mean age is 36 or so. Save one catfight ("Ah hate ta see girls fight together," Manson reprimanded), it was the nicest mosh I've ever been in.

The band rewarded that good behavior with some of the sweetest pop-rock I've ever heard at the Joint. Garbage has never made any bones about being a studio construct - it's made up of three producers, for crying out loud, that hired their vocalist over the phone after seeing her in another band on MTV. They take months to complete a track, laying one instrument on top of another until Manson knocks their heads together and tells them to finish the damn album, already.

It wasn't too surprising, then, that every sound they made at the Joint was treated, rounded off and buffed to a sheen. Even the nastiest feedback sounded like a babbling brook, all part of a sterling mix that was probably decided upon by advanced mathematics.

The only element they couldn't scrub clean was Manson, probably by her own edict. Her thick brogue put a fresh spin on the usual inane stage patter (although she became difficult to follow when she made long speeches; I believe one of them was about the male reproductive organ, but ah canna be sure). Her sexy, desperate delivery never failed to spark the material.

"#1 Crush" shot up like a rocket, propelled by Manson's firy menace. "You will believe in me, an I will never be ignored," she cooed, leaning backwards as if supported by the pulsing funk. Killer versions of "Stupid Girl" and "Vow" followed -- a three-punch combination strong enough to level all competition.

All told, a surprising set from a group I'd considered soulless up to now. Much like early Eurythmics, it took a woman to tame all that equipment, to put the ghost in a machine so uptight it called its sophomore album "Version 2.0" and felt compelled to put its Internet address on its T-shirts. What was a sheep in wolf's clothing now has real teeth, and the girls, thank goodness, have won the day.