Garbage
Garbage hit the Fox Theater in Oakland for their “20 Years Queer Tour,” a celebration of their self-titled debut album. This Wednesday night found the sold out venue packed to capacity and when the intro video started with some flashbacks from their early days on a giant drapery across the front of the stage, people pretty much lost their shit.
With the curtain still in place, the band launched into Subhuman … the shadows of the back-lit band teasing the frothing crowd. Expecting to hear Garbage in it’s entirety, some in the audience appeared thrown-off by the rarity which was originally released as a b-side to their debut single, Vow. When the curtain finally dropped for Supervixen, it was on … Shirley Manson revealed, standing behind a mic stand draped with a feather boa, defying age and looking as young as ever.
Both the band and the room were on fire as Garbage ripped through side one before stopping to let Shirley introduce a handful of rarities including Girl Don’t Come (according to Shirley, “a song about the lack of a female orgasm”) and Trip My Wire (about losing her virginity). Rarities done, it was back to side 2 of the album which wrapped up the main portion of the set before an another set of rarities for the encore wrapped the two hour set.
The material was polished, the band on-point and Shirley couldn’t have sounded any better as she oozed enough sexuality to turn some of the gay guys straight. And if there was any concern that this tour was a prelude to the band’s farewell, drummer Butch Vig reassured the room, “this is not our swan song,” before promising a new album and another tour. No doubt there are ~3000 people anxiously awaiting both.
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Setlist:
- Subhuman
- Supervixen
- Queer
- Only Happy When It Rains
- As Heaven Is Wide
- Not My Idea
- A Stroke of Luck
- Girl Don’t Come
- The Butterfly Collector (The Jam cover)
- Trip My Wire
- Sleep
- Vow
- Stupid Girl
- Dog New Tricks
- My Lover’s Box
- Fix Me Now
- Milk
–Encore–
- Kick My Ass (Vic Chesnutt cover)
- Driving Lesson
- I Think I’m Paranoid
- When I Grow Up
- #1 Crush
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