WE SHOULD'VE BROUGHT SOME ROPE

oncerts are the greatest thing ever. It's probably a good thing I don't live in a major city because I'd have long since spent all my money going to shows. It betrays my indie cred to say it but I love the big arena shows best and I'll take a giant theatre failing that. The feeling as the floor crowd quickly melds into one organism is unlike anything else outside a cult compound. The whole experience also reaffirms my drastic love of music, which seems to be shared by fewer and fewer these days.

Last Saturday, my crazy Shirley Manson fan friend Kevin and I went to see Garbage (and opener Abandoned Pools) in Milwaukee. We'd wanted to make a day of it but brutal rains kept us from exploring downtown and post-show flatline pretty well put the kibosh on visiting the spy bar. Apart from the show itself, the only thing we really accomplished all day was to drink an heroic amount of Red Bull and vodka in the parking lot.

Red Bull and vodka make a beautiful combo. If you've never been so blessed, really, get yourself blessed as soon as possible. It's a cocktail for the 21st century. After Red Bull and vodka you'll wonder why you ever drank anything else, then later on you'll realize that you paid $7 for what amounts to a rail drink. You'll switch back to your regular drink, which will now taste like flavored water and not have any chemical effect on you whatsoever. Suddenly $7 doesn't seem like that big a deal. At one point the Red Bull and vodka so effected Kevin that, in the middle of describing the beautiful cage he'd built for Shirley, he calmly said, "We should've brought some rope."

But I digress.

We were still pretty happy when Abandoned Pools came on. They were hardly the worst opener I've seen -- that honor still belongs to the wretched Nashville Pussy -- but they didn't come close to the one-two punch of Jimmy Eat World and Tenacious D either. The music was decent but they fell into the trap too many young opening bands are swallowed by: terrible mixing. An opening act that no one in the crowd has ever heard needs to have a clear vocal mix, especially a would-be hard rock act that's decidedly lacking in hooks. The audience needs to hear the words in order to connect and buy the merchandise. A good singer helps, too.

When Garbage finally came out, the crowd was really riled up. Kevin started forward immediately, sliding his way almost to the front. I say almost because the last person between him and the front bar was a 10-year old kid. I've always sort of assumed Kevin had no conscience but something apparently stopped him from squishing the kid, even after Shirley singled him out for attention and gave him a pick. Kevin is a true humanitarian.

The Garbage set was interestingly put together. They didn't play either U.S. single from their current album or their first big hit from 1995 but they did play the little-known, 1999 b-side "Get Busy With the Fizzy." They also played "Cherry Lips (Go Baby Go!)," with Shirley wearing a feather boa and shaking her stuff, which pretty much made the night for me. "Cherry Lips" is among my favorite songs from last year and the show itself nearly completes my best of 2001 promotional checklist. I have a feeling that the Blake Babies and R.E.M. are going to keep me from actually completing it, however.

After the show it was still pouring out; it may have actually gotten worse. We were going to stop at the Taco Bell we'd visited after our last Milwaukee show but it seemed to have disappeared. By the time we got to Sheboygan County, desperation was setting in.

Let me tell you about Wisconsin's beautiful Sheboygan County, home of one of ePodunk's top 50 hometowns. Everything but the bars closes by 10 PM, even on Saturday. Fast food, convenience stores, truck stop diners. Everything. We went all over town looking for anything that was open, just someplace we could get something to drink. All we found were two pop machines outside a raggedly old gas station that -- get ready -- didn't take dollars. They were $0.60 each and, somehow, we had exactly $1.20 in change. And then I started hearing "Duelling Banjos," so we got the hell out of there.

So anyway, if you like Garbage, go see the Garbage show. Shirley's new hair isn't that distracting.

MILITARY INTELLIGENCE

held this column for almost a week so I could get a sense of where the story was going regarding the governments beforehand knowledge about the September 11 attacks. I value cynicism and my cynic's mathematics say we're getting about a third of the truth out of the Bush White House at the moment. Bear in mind that government's won't admit to this kind of thing unless forced, that they never admit to everything at once and that they are very obviously and clumsily trying to deflect attention with their repeated wolfcries over supposed new terror attacks that they claim they can't hope to stop.

The suicide bombers are coming! The suicide bombers are coming!

A lot of people have said the second Bush Administration looks a lot like the Reagan Administration and now it's clear how right they are. Reagan got re-elected in 1984, despite the majority of the population suffering terrible decreases in standards of living, because his demeanor made people feel good in the midst of the mess he'd caused. And now Bush officials are being praised by the common man for, essentially, claiming defeat. We can't possibly hope to keep suicide -- wait, sorry Ari -- homicide bombers out of the United States. The terrorists are going to shoot a plane at the Statue of Liberty and all we can do to stop them is wag a finger at Saddam Hussein. Don't look at that story about the 1994 Air France hijacking in which al Qaeda tried to use a plane as a missile, disproving our claims that nobody could have seen this coming, look at Bunker Command Chief Cheney's orders to cower.

Memo to Democratic Presidential candidates: whoever stands up to this the loudest gets my support. Kerry, I'm looking in your direction.

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Aaron Veenstra is the managing editor of Etc. House Productions.
The Fast Lane appears bi-weekly.