Beautiful Sylvee

I saw Garbage at Madison WI’s new concert venue The Sylvee. It’s named after Sylvia Frank, the late wife of Herb Frank. They founded a family business, Frank Productions, that started off booking concerts at the Dane County Coliseum, and grew to booking live concerts all over the country. Still family run, at least until pretty recently, run by the kids – my generation, boomers – and the grandkids, millennials – although looks like they got bought by LiveNation earlier this year.

Anyways I was looking at the crowd and wondering how many of them had ever met Sylvia – I did; the record store my first husband Jeff owned was a ticket outlet for Frank Productions, and we often went out to their offices at the Coliseum. The senior Franks liked Jeff, I felt like he was kind of a 4th son for them, and I always thought they kind of liked it when he was dating Debby Shapiro, a nice Jewish girl (ha, not sure how Jewish or nice I really am, but as my dad said, “you’re Debby Shapiro, you can pass” … for a nice Jewish girl). I bet the guys in Garbage all met her; maybe Shirley too.

The Sylvee is pretty nice in a kind of heavy metal, industrial way. They’ve kept it minimal – no food, but easily accessible bars. Most beers in cans, drinks in plastic cups. Not much seating either, but relatively pleasant standing spaces. There are three levels and on the second level there are some seats, and lots of standing spots, where you’re leaning against metal fences. On the first and third levels it’s standing only. We ended up at the very back of the first level, next to the sound board, leaning against the fences, which all worked pretty well, because the stage is really high, so even a short person like me could see a lot. The main downside was that my feet really hurt by the end of the almost-three-hour show.

As an old Madisonian Spooner fan, Garbage has never been my fave band, but they put on a really good show in their own heavy metal, electronica, rock & roll way. I got a little tired of the dialog from movie clips at the beginning of songs. I felt like I recognized one, but can’t remember the movie now. And another one sounded like Ellen Page.

They did two covers that I recognized, more or less, anyways. The first was Big Star’s Thirteen, that Shirley Manson introduced as a great song we didn’t write by “name garbled” – and their version was so unlike Alex Chilton’s that I had to look it up later. Listened to it this morning – it is, as Shirley said, a great song. And then right after that, they did Can’t seem to make you mine, that I knew was not their song, I was thinking the Animals, but of course it’s the Seeds. And during one of their songs, I think one introduced as a newer one near the end, Shirley did a bit of a Stevie Nicks homage, and again, I’m blanking a bit on what the words she sang were … Landslide? or maybe Don’t Stop which is really more Fleetwood Mac than Nicks, I think it’s a Christine McVie song, and would make sense because it was after she’d done of bit of rap on just do you, and fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke.

The Garbage song that’s stuck in my head today is When I grow up – and I always thought the lyrics were, “when I grow up I will be single”, but it’s “stable”. And I see that Can’t seem to make you mine was the B-side, so no wonder they did that one.

The men’s and women’s bathrooms on the 2nd level are labeled “Herbees” and “Sylvees”, and the stall I went into had Motley Crüe logos on the door.

Here’s the setlist.