Pitchfork

[Posted Tuesday, September 30th, 2003 01:00:00 Pitchfork Central Time]

Brian Howe and Will Bryant report:
On the morning of September 10th, a 15-ton backhoe ran a red light, crashed into a van, and careened into the Madison, WI studio of Butch Vig, producer of such classic albums as Nirvana's Nevermind, Smashing Pumpkins' Siamese Dream (Gish too) and Sonic Youth's Dirty, and the man primarily responsible for Garbage. The unassuming red-brick building was struck at about 7:30am, according to a report from local paper The Capital Times. Although a New Musical Express report said the studio was "demolished" by the backhoe, local sources and Garbage's own website report that the damage was actually minor-- some guitar amps, microphones, and a wall were destroyed, with an estimated total loss of about $50,000. Hmmm, I wonder if they'll consider bids from Homburg Contractors (the owners of the behemoth that plowed through the front door).

Garbage have been working on a new album at the SMART Studios facility since early March, and had been recording in the upstairs studio just three days prior to the incident. No terrorist group or activist cell has stepped forward to claim responsibility for the attack, and this (combined with the lack of a second backhoe) has silenced the uneasy echoes that radiated outward from the day-before-poignant date in question.

Nor, we learned, is this the first time that SMART Studios have been on the receiving end of such awful, divine providence-- in the sixteen years since Vig moved operations from an earlier location across the street, the building has been struck by a drunk driver and a boat trailer, and the basement flooded in 1996. A plague of locusts buzzes on the horizon. To the terrible drivers of Wisconsin: can we ask you guys to form a caravan and go drive in circles around some Starbucks or Wal-Mart or something-- you know, if you're going to wantonly crash into something that sucks really hard, you've really got to go straight for the source. We'll supply the Mad Dog 20/20 and blindfolds.

Vig, the man who sunk virtually all of his indie cred when he launched Garbage in 1998, would be an easy target for hurtful jokes and rampant schadenfreude, not in the least because he's been wildly successful at sucking and makes no bones about it. But all in all, he really doesn't seem like a bad guy, and so I will restrain my baser urges to make fun of his goatee and the fact that he once played in a band called Rectal Drip.

After some "renovations" Garbage will resume recording their album, the follow-up to 2001's Beautifulgarbage, which had been planned for an October or November release, but will likely be delayed by... by... oh, what was it? Oh yeah-- by the MASSIVE FUCKING BACKHOE that gatecrashed the studio where it was being recorded. Garbage still hopes to have the album ready by early next year. They'd better have the Neptunes drop some beats on that joint if they want to make back that fifty large, or else start eating a lot of eggs so they can line the walls with the cartons. According to Vig, the album will be rawer and looser, yet more thematically uniform than Beautifulgarbage. And for years hence, Garbage fans will swear, in the finest urban legend tradition, that if you listen real close, you can actually hear the backhoe crashing through the studio wall, three minutes and seventeen seconds into the third track.