When Garbage Spewed Their Garbage
The one thing in my life that my father has told me he would never judge me for spending money on is a concert. As a massive concert aficionado himself, he has been to countless concerts over his many years on this earth and we have been to several together. He inspired me to love music from a young age and I do my best to attend concerts (and comedy shows and plays) when time and money allow.
Since undergoing weight loss surgery in June of 2023 (performed by a fantastic Israeli doctor), I have enjoyed going to shows so much more because I fit into seats more comfortably now, I have more energy to dance, I do not have to spend money on overpriced food or alcohol at the venues and my clothes look better. When an ad popped up on my Instagram this past March for a tour titled Happy Endings by the ‘90s American rock band Garbage, I contemplated going. I last saw Garbage in 2002 when they (and the Distillers) were the opening acts for No Doubt’s Rock Steady Tour. A band that I have enjoyed listening to since the late ‘90s, I finally bit the bullet and bought a ticket in August for the September 18th show at Roadrunner Boston. I scored a deal thanks to my father’s T-Mobile account, found a leather jacket and matching pants from the clothes swapping store that I have a membership with and eagerly looked forward to what I thought would be a nice night of music and not having to think about all the politics of the world. Unfortunately, I was about to be proven wrong.
Big time.
As I entered the lobby of Roadrunner after going through security, I looked to my right and saw the merchandise section. I took a quick peak at some of the shirts and then turned to my left so that I could go to the bathroom as Roadrunner is a general admission venue and I wanted to get a good spot and not move. It was here that the problems started. Right before the walkway that leads to the bathroom was a table with two women sitting there. They were representing Oxfam, a British NGO that is supposed to be concerned with eliminating global poverty. Oxfam, like many other humanitarian organizations, has maintained an anti-Israel bent for years. I was ignoring the table until I saw a poster on top of it. The poster included a QR code in which whoever scanned it would be directed to information about how to stop the alleged famine in Gaza. There was nothing on this table about actual famines like the ones in Sudan or Yemen. There was nothing on this table about how earlier that morning (Israel time) a Jordanian truck driver delivering aid to Gaza murdered the Israeli soldiers in cold blood who were inspecting the aid. There was no blame for Hamas who continually steals the aid and sells it at inflated prices. I sighed, walked past the table, went to the bathroom and breathed in deeply. I was not about to confront these women as I was at this show to have a good time, but I remained feeling deeply unsettled.
I walked out of the bathroom some time later, found a decent spot on the floor to watch the show and waited for the opening act Starcrawler to start. I did a quick look around and noticed the audience seemed to have many people close to my age and older. When I looked to my right, I saw a white woman who looked to be about college-aged and was dressed like all the stark raving Jew-hating protestors I have seen both before and October 7th, 2023. She had curly hair, round eyeglasses, was wearing a denim jacket and had an Arafat scarf keffiyeh. These people are absolutely insufferable. They make the Palestinian cause their entire identity. If I wanted to see this at a concert, I would go see a show at a venue in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I texted a former colleague about it but received no response with the time difference between Boston and Israel. Eventually Starcrawler came on and performed without incident. I had never heard their music before, but I enjoyed it. Garbage took the stage right after 9:00 PM. While I did have a little trouble seeing the stage due to my height being 5’2’’, I was still able to see the band. The lead vocalist, Shirley Manson, looked wonderful. I admired her fit form and not seeing a wrinkle on her 59-year-old face. But when I looked at her neck, I noticed a small black and white scarf. Please don’t be another white woman cosplaying as Yasser Arafat, I thought to myself. While it did not look like the keffiyehs I see that adorn the necks of moronic college students, it was, sadly, later confirmed to be one with in an online news article published a few days later.
Garbage continued to play a few more songs and at one point Shirley said how she would be bringing the scene back to 1995. Lots of cheers boomed—myself included—as I was happy that I was with people my age and older. They are less annoying than younger people! They know how to keep quiet in public and not listen to videos on their phones without headphones while on public transport! They don’t want to see Israel die! But I was clearly delulu as the younger people say; Garbage played a few more songs and then Shirley began to talk to the audience. Shirley is Scottish and mentioned how there was a recent white supremacist protest in London. This protest consisted of English people—of every color and creed—waving English flags… in England. England, the birthplace of my paternal grandmother and the country I once called home for a semester in college, continues to spiral out of control with Jew hatred and the police are more offended if you say you hate Hamas and love England than if you love Hamas (a proscribed terrorist organization in the United Kingdom, mind you) and hate England (and other westernized countries.) The audience started booing. I figured Shirley would get back to singing but once the booing stopped, I heard the shout: “Free Palestine!”
I could hear some cheers but could not see if it was the people younger than me (who latch onto a hatred of Israel because they get their news from TikTok and Al-Jazeera). I hoped Shirley would ignore it or say something generic about humanity for both sides as many celebrities try and toe the line about Israel to keep stakeholders happy, but Shirley certainly surprised me… by saying “Absolutely Free Palestine!” and then went on about how every day the world could see mutilated children on their phones. I stood there speechless.
Garbage kept performing but I was no longer into the show. I was tempted to leave so I could catch the commuter rail nearby, but decided to stay since I spent good money on my ticket. Shirley spoke to the audience once more, sending a message of love to the LGBT+ community. I did wonder if Shirley was aware of what happens to these people in Gaza. Or any other Muslim country. I doubted it. I stayed through the last song, not staying to see if there was an encore. I hightailed it out of the arena and caught a nearby bus to the train that would get me home, still shaking from the night’s events. I furiously texted my father and when I said how if I wanted to hear about politics, I would listen to an interview, my father said, “Or go to a lecture.” I get that songs can be political. But why can’t I hear a few hours of music without having to listen to anti-Western diatribes?
When I got home I took off my makeup, showered and began packing for the weekend. I had to spend that Friday afternoon through Monday morning babysitting for an old babysitting client. Friday meant picking up the two of the youngest of the three kids up from school, having all three on the Saturday and Sunday and then doing school drop-off on Monday morning. I could handle the kids as they are very self-sufficient and it’s always good to see kids you have cared for grow up. But I was not looking forward to being in their city—the city I once called home from 2014-2021—the City of Somerville, Massachusetts.
Somerville, Massachusetts is an even bigger manifestation of people who have made the Palestinian cause their entire identity. This has been both before and after October 7th, 2023. Somerville does not have colleges (where the students are radicalized by their professors), but it does have the students who cannot afford to live in the City of Cambridge while attending some of the biggest Jew-hating schools around: Harvard University and MIT. Somerville also borders Medford where Tufts University, also infected with Jew-hatred, is located. While the three different parts of Somerville I lived in over the years (Winter Hill, Magoun Square and Spring Hill) were pretty quiet, I saw the writing on the wall several years ago and realized I needed to get out of there before the city became Judenrein. Seeing all the anti-Israel stickers and graffiti while out walking with the kids served to remind me of why I got the hell out of dodge in 2021. For a city that claims to be about the environment, all the lampposts, telephone poles and guardrails were dirtied up with Palestinian flag stickers that cannot be taken off and “Free Palestine” written with a Sharpie. There are signs in peoples’ yards that say to stop arming Israel. Palestinian flags hang from balconies. An art center regularly hosts anti-Israel events. A salon catering to the LGBT+ crowd puts up signs about the BDS question on the November ballot. The falafel shop a few doors down has a massive Palestinian flag in its flagpole holder. Was this Somerville, Massachusetts or Dearborn, Michigan?
Or Paris, France?
Somerville is also one of those cities where the homes are adorned with signs saying how “Love lives here, no human beings are illegal, etc.” but will never extend this sentiment to Jews. The few times I have to pass through Somerville for errands, I still see white, female college students wearing their Arafat scarves. Odd; I thought the white Left were against cultural appropriation…
When I had a break on the Saturday with the kids, I decided to check Garbage’s social media accounts. I had never seen the need to before because Garbage is never in the news for anything, music or otherwise. They are not infamous for being anti-Semitic musicians like Roger Waters, Dua Lipa or Lorde. Garbage’s X account was private, but their Instagram was not. I had hoped to see pictures of the band, maybe some videos; basically the normal things you would see on a band’s Instagram account. Instead, it read like a page in Der Stürmer. Garbage praised the Oxfam table and said it would be at other shows. Garbage praised Mahmoud Khalil, the non-U.S. citizen who violated the terms of his student visa and harassed Jewish students at Columbia University. Garbage praised Kneecap, the Irish band who held up a Hezbollah flag at a concert and were let off on a terrorism charge due to a technical error. Looking at Garbage’s Instagram, you would not even know they were a band to begin with. While there were a few posts about releasing the Israeli hostages, they were never posts of their own; they were always coupled with “Ceasefire now.” It’s like when Jews are attacked by Arabs and world leaders say how both anti-Semitism and Islamophobia are bad. Why is it so difficult to write about Jewish humanity on its own?
Had I done my due diligence and looked at Garbage’s Instagram back in March, I could have saved myself a lot of trouble and the $60-something I spent on a ticket. But again, Garbage never makes waves in the news so checking up on them never crossed my mind. Garbage has plenty of fans; why the need to single out the Jews in order to stay relevant? Just STICK. TO. MUSIC. As my father said after I told him what I saw on Garbage’s Instagram, these diatribes have no place at a rock concert.
I am reminded of the dialogue in the third episode of the eighth season of South Park called “The Passion of the Jew,” in which the characters Kenny and Stan go to see The Passion of the Christ and leave the theater outraged when the film is over. They demand their money back but the ticket seller says he cannot refund their money because they sat through the entire movie. Stan replies that the movie was not a movie but a snuff film. The ticket seller says that the film was about Jesus Christ who died for their sins and Stan replies, “We go to church to learn that stuff; we go to movies to be entertained” (emphasis mine.) Stan says how he and Kenny were not entertained and that they want their money back. The ticket seller says again that he is not allowed to give the boys back their money because they sat through the entire film and follows up with that they have to take up their fight with the film’s producer. When Stan asks if he will have to get his money back from actor and producer Mel Gibson, the ticket seller says he’d like to see them try and Stan replies emphatically, “Oh, we will. This is America and in America if something sucks, you’re supposed to be able to get your money back.” Unfortunately, I bought my ticket through AXS and they only give refunds for cancelled shows. The only thing I could have tried was to contact Roadrunner since people were illegally vaping inside the venue. It’s a sad state of affairs that I would have a better chance of potentially getting some form of reimbursement for smoke getting into my face than for attending a concert I did not expect to turn into a Nuremberg rally. Of course, if I wanted to attend a concert reminiscent of rallies in Nazi Germany, I would have gone to the Glastonbury Festival or to Coachella. But I am not rich—despite Leftists thinking my Jewish tucchus makes me so—and I don’t take drugs (except my bariatric pills post-gastric sleeve) that would get me through a music festival.
At least once I got back to my apartment in South Boston after my babysitting adventure in Somerville, I could breathe a sigh of relief. I attended my neighborhood’s monthly civic association meeting. The biggest gripe at these meetings? Bike lanes. No talk of ceasefires (which the Somerville City Council had passed; the no votes from the Boston City Council are from the members who represent South Boston.) No talk of BDS. We focus on actual problems in our own towns which we can actually solve. The night was even better because I won the door prize for the first time since I joined in early 2024. South Boston is a glorious place. We fly American flags. We help our neighbors but also mind our business. The hostage posters were not torn down (see my previous article.) I have only seen one home fly a Palestinian flag. There have been a few anti-Israel stickers on telephone poles, but they were removed and never went back up. In the local Buy Nothing Group on Facebook, someone posted asking for supplies for Israeli families after Hamas launched its attack and the community delivered. South Boston is hosting a temporary exhibition about the Nova Festival; this would never happen in Somerville. Are there some anti-Israel things here? Yes. But I would rather live with the ghosts of Whitey Bulger’s victims than the Jew-hating progressives in Somerville. There is a man in South Boston who helps run the monthly book sale at my library and wears a Palestinian flag pin on his hat and is always holding up an anti-Israel sign in Copley Square. The sad irony is not lost on me that Israel was the only country that helped Boston when Copley Square was blown up at the 2013 Boston Marathon (see my post “The Only Country That Helped Boston”). But the anti-Israel crowd has never cared about the truth.
It does make me sad seeing how many celebrities who know nothing about reality—jumped on the anti-Israel bandwagon. I expected this from college students, not from Hollywood. I at least get around this by buying used DVDs or music so I do not have to contribute money to Jew-hating artists. To quote Francine Frensky in the second half of the sixth episode of the third season of the children’s cartoon Arthur when she and her friends find out that the band they were dying to see were actually holograms and not real people, “Sometimes it’s just better not to know anything about celebrities.” I do wonder what Garbage will do now as the current ceasefire holds as they have said this tour is their last tour. What will they—and the other Hamas-supporting protesters—do with their time now? I doubt it will be to care for Sudan or Yemen since Israel/AIPAC/The Jews/The Jewish Lobby/The Israel Lobby, etc. cannot be blamed.
I remain glad that I had a small respite from Garbage when I went to see Adam Sandler perform last-minute almost two weeks later. Sandler, a proud Jew and supporter of Israel, has always been one of my favorite actors. TD Garden was packed and full of New England accents. Not a Palestinian flag in sight. In fact, in the background of one of the live camera feeds that Sandler was showing on the screens behind him, I could see someone wearing a yellow pin for the hostages. Sandler stuck to what I paid him to do—comedy. But as nice as a break from Jew-hating celebrities was, it was short-lived as I remembered how the first movie that got me into Sandler in the first place was Big Daddy. And this is the film where I first heard the song “When I Grow Up.” That song was performed… by Garbage.
