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Forest Live with Garbage and Skunk Anansie

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We saw Skunk Anansie just over a year ago and I haven’t seen Garbage since the Version 2.0 tour in 90s - the best time to have seen them in my opinion. When the opportunity to see them both together came up, of course Charlotte wanted to go - despite it being half way across the country. Soon after we bought the tickets, Garbage announced a gig at the Roundhouse, which would have been closer, cheaper and far more convenient.

Support came from Ian Davies and Du Blonde. We eventually figured out that the DJ playing when we arrived was Ian Davies, he had some good tunes, especially when he kept to the 90s.  Du Blonde was quite good, the sort of Indie Rock band which were common in the 90s, singing about similar themes, such as the music industry.


Probably the best which can be said about Garbage is they were good. The two guitarists were lackluster, but of course Shirley Manson was great, marching around, in bright red boots, like she owned the stage - which of course she did. Great crowd interaction, especially given there wasn’t much of it, and it was still light. I was worried that, given I’ve not listened to much of their stuff since version 2.0, I wouldn’t recognise anything. However, they played plenty of the old stuff and the later stuff was really good. I’m not sure why they needed to play a Cure cover, but it was excellent, and at least one song was cut short after Shirley noticed something going on in the crowd. 


Skunk Anansie just blew everything else away. For a four piece, they have such a big sound. They sounded so much better than at the Roundhouse and Ace was much tighter. They played a range of songs from across their back catalogue, including all the “hits”, and Skin had the usual political rant and jumped into the crowd for a singalong. They ignored the usual rock star rubbish and didn’t bother to go off and come back for an encore. So we got more songs, including a brief burst of highway to hell. 


I imagine we’ll see them again before too long, and we’ll be seeing Mark with Little Angels later in the year.




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