The Agora hosted ’90s powerhouse Garbage on Friday night in a sold-out show on an aptly-named “Happy Endings” tour that proved once again the midtown venue is putting on some of the best shows in Northeast Ohio. Frontwoman Shirley Manson led her quartet in a twenty-one-song set in perhaps their last appearance in the Cleveland area.
The band, founded in Madison, Wisconsin in the mid ’90s, is composed of Duke Erikson on lead guitar (and bass), Steve Marker also on lead guitar and bass, Butch Vig behind the kit, and Manson handling vocal duties. It’s rare for an outfit to still have the core members, all founding, to be with a band after three decades, yet all four still take active duties within the quartet.
Manson, lamenting the current state of the music industry in her Scottish lilt, said that this will most likely be the last time they headline a North American tour. Changing attitudes and the mounting costs of touring has made it virtually impossible to be profitable. She also felt sorry for the younger musicians who, in an age of downloads and YouTube videos, don’t have the opportunity to sell albums.
If it is to be their last time through the 216, they’ve definitely left here on a high note, offering a show that people will look back at as a fine closing chapter to a band that had a string of hits throughout the mid and late ’90s.
They’re on tour in support of their latest studio album, Let All That We Imagine Be the Light, which was released in May of this year.
L.A.-based Starcrawler opened with a spirited Glam Rock throwback in a 45-minute set. Lead singer Arrow de Wilde led her quintet through an aerobically-aided light show as she strutted across the stage; keep an eye on her and this outfit.
