Background
In 1983, Butch Vig and Steve Marker founded Smart Studios in Madison and Vig's production work brought him to the attention of Sub Pop. Vig's old band Spooner reunited in 1990 and released another record, but disbanded in 1993 as Vig and Marker's career as producers gained strength. In 1994, as Vig become "kind of burned out on doing really long records," he got together with Duke Erikson and Marker, and they started doing remixes for acts such as U2, Depeche Mode, Nine Inch Nails and House of Pain, featuring different instrumentation, and often highlighting new guitar hooks and bass grooves. The experience inspired the three men to form a band, where they "wanted to take that remix sensibility and somehow translate it into all of the possibilities of a band setup." An early comment that their work sounded "like garbage" inspired the band's name.
Vocalist Shirley Manson had been performing with the Edinburgh rock band Goodbye Mr. Mackenzie since 1984. In 1993, several band members, including Manson, changed their name to Angelfish. Their only release, the self-titled Angelfish, did not do any better than the preceding albums by Goodbye Mr. Mackenzie, selling only 10,000 copies.
Initial sessions with Vig on vocals, and the member's past work with all-male groups led to the band's desire for a woman on lead. Marker was watching 120 Minutes when he saw the music video for Angelfish's "Suffocate Me". He showed the video to Erikson and Vig while their manager Shannon O'Shea tracked Manson down. When Manson was contacted, she didn't know who Vig was and was urged to check the credits on Nevermind, the popular Nirvana album which Vig produced. On April 8, Manson met Erikson, Marker and Vig for the first time in London. Later that evening Vig was informed of Kurt Cobain's suicide. Garbage was put on hold, until Angelfish were touring North America in support of Live. Erikson, Marker and Vig attended the Metro Chicago date; and Manson was invited to Madison to audition for the band. The audition did not go well, but Manson socialized with the men while there and they found they had a similar taste in music. Angelfish disbanded at the end of the Live tour. Manson called O'Shea and asked to audition again feeling that "it would work out".
Read more about this topic: Garbage (album)
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In the true sense one’s native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)