Two languages in one head?!

So yeah, we made it happen. sylvaine accompanied me, S drove us to the venue, and I even got all gussied up for the occasion*.

This morning, I'm paying for it with a massive headache, but I have a scheduled rest day and man was it ever worth it. I clearly didn't realize exactly how formative that album was for me, and experiencing it performed live was a treat. I have SO MANY HEARTEYES for Shirley Manson, and I spent a good amount of the time leaning on the railing of the wheelchair podium**,chinhands-ing at her existence. Combine that with the genius house music playlist before and between sets (when we arrived, Massive Attack's Dissolved Girl had just come on, quickly followed by Beastie Boys and dEUS, some Britpop,...) and the video intro to the main set, and I nearly drowned in all the 90es nostalgia.

The opener (The Dutch Uncles, from Manchester), was adorable and really didn't suck. I have a hard time placing them, sonically, which makes them an excellent opener for out-of-genre weirdoes like Garbage. Vocally, their singer reminded me a bit of Brian Molko and a bit of JJ72. Visually, he kinda reminded me of Dave Elsewhere. Very unique and striking style of, ah, dancing ^^

We managed to avoid the queue, but still arrived plenty early, so there was time to visit the merch stand and now sylv and me have a matching set of monochrome shirts reading "I'm only happy when it's complicated" (mine) and "This is not my idea of a good time" (theirs****) respectively :DDD

As this was an anniversary show for their debut album, the main set was exclusively songs they'd toured from 1995-1997, but for the encore we also got a couple more recent songs because, as Shirley said, we'd "earned it" by being an awesome audience despite major technical difficulties at the start (which we were hardly bothered by, because her banter covered for it just fine ^^). Here's the setlist, so far the internet can be trusted with these kindsa things.

As concert experiences go, this was markedly different for me than the other shows I've seen in recent years, not better or worse, just really a different style, idk. Part of it may have been the audience, which predictably skewed older than an FOB show would, part of it was the production (so. many. lights. O__O ). But also the contrast between Shirley (who was all over the stage, twirling and mugging and generally being the center of attetion with her pink hair) and the rest of the band, who mostly kept to looking cool in their suits, focused on the music, with the occasional dramatic pose when a moment required it. Or maybe I just had a hard time seeing the guys through my massive crush on Shirley, that's entirely possible ^^ The times I did notice them, it was mostly because I was impressed by how well they recreated the sound of the original album where it worked, or where they'd embellished / improved it in the live versions. And when they took their own sweet time to leave the stage, waving and bowing and looking adorably happy and grateful.

There was a lot less reckless dancing and headbanging on my part. For one thing, it's not so much that kind of music and for another, my costume discouraged it. I'm glad, because my muscles are less fucked up than they would have been otherwise.

I'm having a really hard time putting into words what it was like to see these songs -that I've listened to so many times, that mean so much to me- performed live, by someone who clearly also has a very strong connection to them. FEELS, lots of them. Add the vibrations from the bass and drums, and the intense light show...*fans self* Yup, it was good ^^

And that's all the words you'll get out of me today :P Have a good one!

* I thought "hey, it's Halloween, and a Garbage concert crowd is sure to contain plenty of weirdoes who'll go in costume"...in an audience of thousands, I was one of maybe a handful of individuals. Oops ^^ But whatevs, I looked fab, and got a chance to wear some of my handcrafted stuff and a dress that hadn't been out in public for ~ a decade. So *shrug*

** entry to which was a lot more easy this time around, since I finally have my shiny*** card to wave at people. And I was far from alone up there, this time around.

*** it's actually really cheap-looking peasoup-green plastic, but it does state in bold letters that "the holder of this card is severely disabled", and it's official and has the power to make bridge trolls go away.

**** for one thing, their idea of a good time includes a lot less flashing lights, and the light production for this show was INTENSE

In other news, I got a bunch of crochet projects finished, in the name of charity and stashbusting, and I'm glad to be back to it after September's unpleasantness had cast me into a rut for a while.