Articles Bands on the Rise: 1997 Garbage
From Circus Magazine (Issue 65)

Special thanks go to Soulchaser for sending me this article.

Ever hear of an album named Nevermind by some band named Nirvana? Of course you have. Well, Garbage drummer Butch Vig produced that very famous record. He was the man who tweaked the knobs just right for Smashing Pumpkins' Siamese Dreams too. His list of credits go on and on, but in 1996, Vig finally got credit for the music he's been making in bands like Spooner and Firetown with fellow producers bassist/guitarist Duke Erikson and guitarist Steve Marker for more than a decade.

Joined by a sultry, mysterious, and sharp-tongued Scottish singer named Shirley Manson, the quartet took the radio and MTV by storm with disquieting post-apocalyptic pop songs like "Only Happy When It Rains" and "Stupid Girl." Shirley Manson even ened up posted seductively with Bush's Gavin Rossdale on the cover of the music issue of Details this summer.

Garbage started in 1993 as an idea by the trio of producers that it becomes a band only when Shirley Manson quit her band Angelfish to join them.

"We didn't start out to have a band," Vig explained. "We were locked in a room with cheap beer and potato chips and this is what it turned into: A record for pop geeks who dance by themselves with the lights out."

The self-titled Geffen album that spawned this title-wave of attention was written by the four members of the band, who locked themselves in a cabin in Wisconsin near where Butch Vig grew up to record.

The resulting sound was "natural selection applied to chaos - the strong overpowers the weak," according to Steve Marker. "But when it sounds too clean, we mess it up."

Is it any surprise why the band is called garbage? One thing's for sure though. With people immersed so long in the finer details of making music sound addictive to the ear, the music this band makes is anything but what their name suggests.