And with that...beautifulgarbage bows out at #5:
COMPLETE GARBAGE: The Discography Rate (WINNER!)
- Thread starter NecessaryVoodoo
- Start date
Iconic!
Well, I can't say I'm really shocked, but it did great! I never heard of Laura Albert.
I was absolutely convinced everybody only likes RAWK Garbage. I think I forgot what this forum is about! One of the girls next to me when this happened – as in what I wrote about in the commentary – pointed at Shirley and asked me "did you see this?" Oh, darling, I did. One of the greatest moments of my entire life.
I also can't believe that @Filler who has given songs... um... questionable scores and made me try and fail to make puns about "filler score indeed" and me have the same 11!
How many of my scores have you even seen to question? I gave very boring scores, pretty much all 6s, 7s, and 8s, so I'm almost never on the lists of high and low scorers!
I think this has been my least controversial rate input to date. I have no extreme Garbage opinions. Not with a capital 'G', anyway.
D
Deleted member 312
Cherry Lips is fucking brilliant.
I'm surprised I'm one of the lowest average scorers for BG. I think that average belies my love for the album. It's artificially brought down by my intense dislike of just a few tracks (I'm sure my 0 for Can't Cry These Tears didn't help!)
I'm surprised I'm one of the lowest average scorers for BG. I think that average belies my love for the album. It's artificially brought down by my intense dislike of just a few tracks (I'm sure my 0 for Can't Cry These Tears didn't help!)
I just listened to Happiness Part 2 and it clicked and I went back to see when it got eliminated and was I in for a shock...
I'm sorry for bringing it up again but is there anywhere the band talks about their b sides or at least is there a Happiness part 1 or something? I've already learned so much trivia about the band throughout this rate so I'm being greedy at this point.
Happiness was a song they wrote for beautifulgarbage but couldn't get the tempo and key right so they abandoned it. When Butch was off tour sick he pulled the vocal out, sampled some lines, dumped all the music and remixed it. Which is why it's called Happiness Pt.2
In my head it's some sort of From Dusk Til Dawn/Kill Bill Vol 1 inspired mashup.
Ooh, that's good to know. Thank you!
MILK
AVERAGE SCORE: 9.364
HIGHEST SCORE: 11 x 2 (@LE0Night, @send photo) 10 x 18 (@A&E, @Andy French, @AshleyKerwin, @bichard, @blissteria, @DJHazey, @enjoy, @etienne, @marie_05, @NecessaryVoodoo, @nikkysan, @ohnoitisnathan, @Oleander, @Remorque, @Robsolete, @sfmartin, @Sprockrooster, @tylerc904)
LOWEST SCORE: 7 x 3 (@constantino, @heartmightmelt, @Ray)
Milk is just really fucking great isn't it? Flawless in conception and execution. The perfect album closer. In any other rate that didn't contain my 11, Milk would have been my 11.
The first song Shirley wrote independent of the other band members, it came about from her being inspired after reading the line "her throat is a kitchen" in Michael Ondaatje's book of poetry, The Collected Works of Billy the Kid. While the rest of the band were having a business meeting downstairs at Smart, Shirley was working on a guitar chord progression and vocal melody. Duke came upstairs and according to him Shirley was, "strumming two minor chords back and forth on an acoustic guitar and singing under her breath. The only words I could decipher were, "I am milk", it was lovely". Working out some additional chord changes, Duke insisted that they record right away and reconvened with Steve and Butch who both loved the sound of the song. The song was finished that night with Shirley recording her vocals with a hand-held mic while sitting on the couch in Smart's control room. Duke remembers it as "a memorable session, calm and exciting at the same time, and the mood and feel of that night is still in there, still in the song."
About what the song means, Shirley told Melody Maker, "It's a dichotomy, a paradox. The thing I really like about 'Milk' is the fact that it's been dismissed by people as the ballad at the end of the album. To me 'Milk' is the darkest, most hopeless of the songs. People say 'Oh, it's lovey-dovey, so therefore it's a love song'. But it's a very bleak song, it's about loss and the fear of loss; about things you can't have and things you will forever wait for."
After Stupid Girl, the band were wondering which song to release as the last single from the album. It became a toss up between Supervixen, Fix Me Now and Milk all being considered. Enter: Tricky.
Ahhh Tricky... My pugnacious, contrary King. The band had heard through the grapevine that he was a fan of Garbage and they were mutually fans of his too. He showed up to one of their gigs in New York and they hung out backstage and hit it off, getting drunk together and sowing the seeds of a possible collaboration. This turned into plans to rework Milk together in the studio.
A session was booked at a recording studio in Chicago with Garbage flying Tricky in. By accounts from both sides, the session was...interesting to say the least. Tricky showed up with nothing but a small Yamaha sequencer and proceeded to do what Tricky does which Shirley thinks "totally freaked the band out" due to their very different ways of working and creating music. Tricky explained his working methods to Blah Blah Blah magazine, "they weren't into it at first 'cos I work backwards. I start off with a noise, and they were thinking, 'What's he doing?', 'cos I ain't started off with a drum pattern. I just try and write as simply as I can. I put one noise in every few bars, then I'll put another noise on top of that, then another noise, then a drum kick, then another drum kick."
A quote posted online, attributed to the engineer who worked with the two acts, saying Butch wasn't happy with the track led to Garbage putting out a press release:
"Tricky hung out with Garbage in the States at their New York show, where they agreed it seemed like an interesting idea to meet up and experiment with a track. Garbage and Tricky subsequently got back together in a Chicago studio and experimented with the track "Milk" from the Garbage album. The session went well and the situation currently is that both Tricky and Garbage are working on the results of this collaboration. Currently, there are no immediate plans to release the song since it is still in the 'work in progress' stage. More news on this front will follow once mixes and further production have been completed by both Tricky and Garbage."
The recording session was further besieged by technological problems, with malfunctioning tape machines and the mixing board catching fire.
Tricky and Garbage went their separate ways to work on their own versions of the remix. Ultimately, Garbage created two mixes; The Siren Mix and The Wicked Mix, the latter of which featured Tricky's vocals. His own dark take on Milk, simply titled The Tricky Mix, ended up only appearing as the G-side of the 7" release and the Australian single. A fact which put his nose out of joint as he complained to NME and other press articles from the time, "the management decide to put the other version out instead because mine's 'not commercial enough'. I mean, if you want a commercial remix, why d'you ask me to do it?" Despite the lacklustre collaboration, when reminiscing during the 20th anniversary of the debut album, Shirley said "I love him dearly and think he’s a phenomenal talent."
Other remixes for Milk came from Goldie, Massive Attack and Rabbit in the Moon. Of those, my favourite are Massive Attack's (which if any of y'all know me is probably no surprise), particularly the Classic Mix.
Gorgeous!
Continuing Garbage's tradition of limited edition releases for their first album singles, the remixes were spread out on three 12", each featuring a plain white outer sleeve with a die cut G logo revealing a flash of neon from the coloured inner sleeve, while the Milk 7" came with a lenticular cover.
For the music video, Stéphane Sednaoui was brought on again as director. Channeling the narcotic, seductive qualities of the song he created a simple but also very beautiful clip featuring plenty of gauzy, soft focus shots and close ups of a very glam looking Shirley. As much magazine fashion shoot as music video.
Both Shirley and Duke chose Milk as one of their five favourite Garbage songs, with Shirley saying, "It remains one of my favourite songs to sing live."
11's for Milk came from @LE0Night who didn't provide commentary and also @send photo who said, "holy shit this is gorgeous. I'm also lack toast in toddler ant", and also gave the song a bit of #promo when he hosted the monthly PJ charts a while back. Yas my #impact!
My #impact also spread to @constantino who thought buttering me up by mentioning one of my past rates would make me forget he only gave Milk a 7, "a dreamy moment of whatever. The soundscapes here are not dissimilar of those from the iconic 90s Bristol rate." Speaking of Bristol, @Ray was the only one to mention Tricky in his commentary, "I like trip hop. I really do. Especially the Tricky remix which is totally not a remix at all and I hope he didn’t get paid more than two spliffs for it. Oh well, it is a nice song. I like it. OK, I ran out of niceness. Seriously? It's a really nice album track."
Meanwhile, @magictreehouse might want to check those lyrics a third time, "it took me years to figure out that Shirley was singing ‘red hot ketchup’ and not ‘rent-a-kitchen’. Serves them right for not putting the lyrics in their CD sleeve." Speaking of ketchup, @etienne was it Beale's Caff where you first heard Shirley's dulcet tones or the Queen Vic? This is a very important question, "this was the track that got me into Garbage and weirdly the first time I heard it was on EastEnders….. was also used to great effect on the American version of cracker (TV crime series) to accompany a serial killers handiwork scenes."
Otherwise, we had a whole lot of praising going on with both @Sprockrooster and @digitalkaiser mentioning what a perfect way Milk was to close their debut with, "one of the best album closers of all-time. It feels like the whole album leads up to this dramatic cinematic epos. Trip hop done right, like in this song, is nothing short of a fantastic rush that always ends to soon", "this is such a cool vibe for Garbage, one they explore a lot on the next album. It’s a great album closer."
@sfmartin summed Milk up perfectly, "wow. Sublime. Just heavenly lyricism, delicate delivery of the verses and this aching chorus that just conjures up passionate longing mixed with desperation. I identify with this perhaps a little too well depressingly. Another worthy contender for the crown", while @tylerc904 added, "this hypnotic jam!", and @AshleyKerwin, "this is a beautiful song. You can definitely connect the dots from alternative R&B to trip hop through this song."
I would have hoped for a surprise victory for Milk. But it did better than expected. Definitely team You Look So Fine now.
D
Deleted member 312
Milk is great. I loved it even more in the mid-90s, but it's still glorious now. I always struggle to decide whether I prefer the album version or the more lively Wicked/Siren mixes. Fuck it though, it's great to have all the versions!
I've told this story before, but Milk was released as a single when I was in the midst of Garbage obsession. There was no internet back then to pre-order things, and also no HMV in Doncaster (my home town). As such, the only way to guarantee the acquisition of the three pre-release 12" singles was to call HMV in Sheffield and schlep over there the three Wednesdays in the run-up to the main single's release, being as they were an HMV exclusive (why they were scheduled to be released on a Wednesday I'll never know). This meant I had to skip these Wednesday's at school and get the train/bus to Sheffield.
Of course, this being the 90s and Garbage, not once did any of the 12"s actually materialise on the day they should have done. Nobody from HMV bothered to call to let me know, so I had to keep calling/returning to Sheffield to ensure I actually obtained the fuckers!
I think I barely went to school that month. Still, the difficulty I had getting my hands on them makes them one of my pride possessions to this day! The Rabbit In The Moon disc of mixes is particularly brilliant.
I've told this story before, but Milk was released as a single when I was in the midst of Garbage obsession. There was no internet back then to pre-order things, and also no HMV in Doncaster (my home town). As such, the only way to guarantee the acquisition of the three pre-release 12" singles was to call HMV in Sheffield and schlep over there the three Wednesdays in the run-up to the main single's release, being as they were an HMV exclusive (why they were scheduled to be released on a Wednesday I'll never know). This meant I had to skip these Wednesday's at school and get the train/bus to Sheffield.
Of course, this being the 90s and Garbage, not once did any of the 12"s actually materialise on the day they should have done. Nobody from HMV bothered to call to let me know, so I had to keep calling/returning to Sheffield to ensure I actually obtained the fuckers!
I think I barely went to school that month. Still, the difficulty I had getting my hands on them makes them one of my pride possessions to this day! The Rabbit In The Moon disc of mixes is particularly brilliant.