Hang on a second, I just need to recreate the experience of seeing Garbage live for the first time in fifteen (FIFTEEN?! Oy. Fifteen.) years via shaky YouTube videos. (Watch Cherry Lips if you only watch one, just to hear the crowd sing along. It was like that for every song.)
Supervixen, aka what I imagine it says on Shirley Manson's business cards.
Temptation Waits. Shirley comes over to our side of the stage at about 1:00. She made eye contact with my friend Cathy meaning they are now BFFs, obviously.
Shut Your Mouth. The kids in the front looked like they were having the time of their lives.
Queer. Y'all, can we talk about how great Shirley looks? I want her arms. Seriously, I would buy Shirley Manson's Sassy Scottish Punk Rock Workout, wouldn't you?
Stupid Girl
Control
#1 Crush. She actually walked off the stage and into the crowd for a verse. And the crowd gave her space to sing. It was amazing.
And I have to talk about the crowd, because in my mumblemumble years of concert-going, I'm not sure I've ever experienced a nicer, more enthusiastic group of fans. At a tiny venue like the Paradise, the crowd can make or break a show, and I'm sure we've all experienced Flaily Drunk Girl and Needlessly Aggressive Guy in our time, but there was absolutely none of that. If this group of people had a collective thought bubble, it would have said, WE'RE JUST REALLY HAPPY TO BE HERE.
Examples: I, like an idiot, walked into someone in my quest for a good spot near the stage, and he was like, "Oh my god! I'm such a klutz! Sorry!" Meanwhile, I was like, "I...uh...I have lived in Boston so long I've forgotten how to respond to an apology?" Then the tallish guy standing in front of us while we heckled the (HORRIBLE) opening "magician" laughed at something we said and was like, "I'm not eavesdropping!" and when he saw that we were shorter than him he said, "Hey, you just let me know if you can't see, okay?" I think at that point I decided we'd been dropped into a parallel universe.
Cherry Lips. I can't even tell you how fun it was to sing along to this song. This was pretty much the point where the concert hit its Awesomeness Peak, so I'll just link y'all to the set list for the rest of it on the off chance you've actually gotten this far into the post!
Shirley Introduces the Band.
The last song of the encore was Vow, their first single, which came out in 1995. It's one of very few songs where I actually remember the first time I heard it. I clearly remember lying down between the speakers of my stereo to get the full effect of the echoing guitars and closing my eyes to concentrate on Shirley's brutally beautiful voice. I was seventeen and, to put it mildly, A Goddamn Mess. I mean, I had it together externally, but my brain was like a bad Hoarders episode.
I didn't know that what I needed was a loud, ballsy redhead to grab me by the hair and sneer I came to shut you up/I came to drag you down/I came around to tear your little world apart like I should do the same to anyone who dared to fuck with me.
It took a few years, but eventually I managed to do that very thing, after a couple of nervous breakdowns and probably way too much red wine. I'm an old lady now, and a bad bitch, if I do say so myself. But when Vow started up? Seventeen-year-old me made a cameo appearance. I got teary. It was vaguely embarrassing, but also wonderful to know that I've still got that connection to the Goddamn Mess of a girl who grew up to be so Goddamn Fine.
