{"id":6779,"date":"2019-07-21T05:00:29","date_gmt":"2019-07-21T05:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rpmonline.co.uk\/?p=6779"},"modified":"2019-07-15T21:08:15","modified_gmt":"2019-07-15T21:08:15","slug":"garbage-du-blonde-cardiff-university-great-hall-13th-july-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rpmonline.co.uk\/?p=6779","title":{"rendered":"Garbage\/ Du Blonde – Cardiff, University Great Hall \u2013 13th July 2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>\u201cWhat a difference a day makes,\u201d who was it that sang those very wise words?<\/p>\n

I mean 24 hours earlier I was packed like a sardine into a local pub listening to a shed-full of young (and some maybe not so young) punk bands who charged \u00a310 for a T shirt whilst supping lager at \u00a33 a pint. Tonight, I find myself in the University Great Hall in Cardiff where T Shirts are almost three times as much and you\u2019ll be lucky to get two pints for a tenner never mind three. This though by Garbage\u2019s standing is still what you would call \u201can intimate gig\u201d, they really do not HAVE TO play venues of this size anymore, in fact only the previous night they had played a huge outdoor show at London\u2019s Kew Gardens and having sold over 50 million albums worldwide I\u2019ll certainly not begrudge them any of their hard-earned success.\u00a0 In fact when Shirley Manson talks glowingly tonight about the University circuit being her bread and butter back in her Goodbye Mr Mackenzie days you know it\u2019s not the usual rock star bonhomie bullshit, she genuinely is excited to be able to for once see the whites of people\u2019s eyes, and it shows.<\/p>\n

Having witnessed Garbage live on the \u2018Version 2.0\u2019 tour first time around back 1998 (at the Newport Centre if I remember correctly) I\u2019m delighted to see the band still sounding as clinically lethal as they did two decades earlier, maybe even more so with the anniversary tour of said album now adding additional tracks from the two albums the band have recorded since 2010.\u00a0 Plus, unlike most anniversary tour\u2019s what Garbage do is play selected songs from the album mixed into the set rather than play the whole bloody thing in sequence, something I must admit I\u2019ve found pretty hit and miss when other bands do it.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

So tonight it\u2019s kind of like a greatest hits set albeit they don\u2019t play one of their biggest hits (\u2018Queer\u2019) and with the more recent tracks like the pulsating \u2018No Horses\u2019 the prophetic \u2018Blood For Poppies\u2019 and the almost ambient b side \u2018On Fire\u2019 adding some stunning musical light and shade to the minimalist yet hugely effective stage set up I\u2019m delighted to say this is miles away from being just 90 minutes of nostalgia for the jumpers around the shoulders brigade who tend to blight these kind of shows, in fact there aren\u2019t many of those types in attendance tonight, albeit perhaps a few too punters who could have reigned in their camera phone usage a bit. Still its not every day rock royalty play such an intimate show so I\u2019ll forgive them this once. Just don\u2019t be doing it when The Cult come to town this October, or there will be trouble.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>With a set packed full of songs as awesome as \u2018Vow\u2019, \u2018Stupid Girl\u2019, \u2018Push It\u2019 and encore \u2018When I Grow Up\u2019 you could almost forget that Butch Vig wasn\u2019t behind the kit tonight (he\u2019s been temporarily replaced once again by the returning Matt Walker whilst he undergoes surgery on his shoulder) especially with Manson, Erikson and Marker on such find form, the trio posing and preening like musicians half their age, and putting some younger bands (I\u2019ll come to Du Blonde in a minute) totally to shame.\u00a0 Having witnessed a few bands recently where I found myself watching the clock as they trundled into the home straight tonight was a full scale 90 minute musical adrenalin rush and if anything I wish they could have played for longer. Unlike it has to be said tonight\u2019s opening trio Du Blonde who not only looked like they\u2019d just fallen out of bed but also sounded so bloody nice I just wanted it to end, after just a trio of songs. People around me though certainly seemed to enjoy them, but for someone who has worked in the industry for well over a decade now I was perhaps expecting something a little bit more challenging from Beth Jeans Houghton.<\/p>\n

Talking of which is was Dinah Washington wasn\u2019t it who popularised \u2018What a Difference a Day Makes\u2019, now that was one provocative singer if ever there was one. Du Blonde please take note!<\/p>\n

Author: Johnny Hayward<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cWhat a difference a day makes,\u201d who was it that sang those very wise words? I mean 24 hours earlier I was packed like a sardine into a local pub listening to a shed-full of young (and some maybe not so young) punk bands who charged \u00a310 for a T shirt whilst supping lager at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6784,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[2697,2696,2695],"class_list":["post-6779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-image","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-live-review","tag-cardiff-uni","tag-du-blonde","tag-garbage","post_format-post-format-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rpmonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rpmonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rpmonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rpmonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rpmonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6779"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/rpmonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6779\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6786,"href":"https:\/\/rpmonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6779\/revisions\/6786"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rpmonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rpmonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rpmonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rpmonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}