This afternoon Garbage’s One Mile High… Live DVD showed up in my mailbox, courtesy of Eagle Rock Entertainment… I was pretty sure it had been more than a decade since I’d actually heard Shirley Manson and the boys play their electro-trip-hop alt rock… live or on CD. Before watching it, I asked my friend what he had thought of it when he watched it on Palladia. His reply? “I thought it was okay, but it didn’t make me miss seeing them. I really wanted it to.” After watching it, I sort of concur… I mean, it didn’t make me wish I’d gone to their recent performance at the modernist mega-monstrosity that is the Electric Factory or that I’d picked up their recent Not Your Kind of People “reunion” album… But it did make me miss the role they played in my youth. It made me miss being in fifth grade and, while the other little boys were busy wondering if Baltimore really would get a football team, my friends and I were all wrapped up in the world of the likes of Ms. Manson and the Langdon bros. It made me think of Version 2.0 and my awkward middle-school years when all I listened to was Bob Dylan, The Velvet Underground, Joy Division, The Smiths… and Garbage. It made me think of my high school years, being driven to school and having my mind blown listening to beautifulgarbage for the first time (one of the most underrated albums of the century) and finally being able to see them live “all by myself” (two nights in a row at the 9:30 Club), wearing clothes I had “went out and chose for [my]self” (I believe tattered/safety-pinned-back-together shirts, a faux fur vest, red jeans, and probably something that glittered around my neck.) I’m not going to say that Garbage in 2012/2013 is just as badass, progressively relevant, and hip as ever… They’re not… and they know that… But until this week, it had been quite some time since I just considered how fucking brilliant of a band they actually are.
(Check out a three-song preview of Garbage’s One Mile High… Live DVD, out now, and three of pop culture’s most potent contributions to my formative years.)
[youtube http://youtu.be/jALS3a5KZis]
[youtube http://youtu.be/IVwxLYs0Wuw]
[youtube http://youtu.be/MaKjhHBRNrw]
