As anyone who watched the video of her admonishing two punters who were having a brawl in the crowd towards the end of last year can testify, Shirley Manson likes to keep a close eye on what’s going on in the audience at a Garbage gig. Perhaps that’s because she knows how strange things can get out there. A few years ago, she recounted to this writer some of the oddest sights she’d witnessed from the stage.
“I’ve seen some right weird shit,” she stated. “For a while, people used to come to our shows dressed as animals. I believe that’s a sexual thing, I can’t remember the name for it now. There was that going on for a bit, which I always found a little disconcerting. I once thought two boys were gonna kill me cos they had bandanas up over their face and they just stood totally immobile looking at me. I had to stop the show and ask them if they were gonna kill meI couldn’t bear the suspense any longer, I had to stop the show. I was like, “listen, you guys, you look really scary, you’ve got bandanas on your face, are you gonna kill me?”. They were like, “no!”. It turned out they were straight edgers and up until that point I didn’t even know what straight edge was.”
