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CHAPTER 2

Minuscule farming villages are not exactly renowned for their abundance of rock 'n' roll legends, but that is exactly where Garbage's drummer, Brian Vig, was born at the the tail end of the 1950's. After giving his crew cut son the suitable nickname of Butch, his doctor father and music teacher wife encouraged his developing interest in music, buying him some tickets to a local gig by Steppenwolf as his debut live show. Butch's penchant at this stage was for the piano, but his obsession with The Who, and in particular drummer Keith moon, meant he was inexorably drawn to playing the skins. After badgering his parents for months, he eventually became the proud owner of a Sears drum kit.

With time, the young Butch began to form his own bands, including an odd outfit called Eclipse, whose lead singer Worm was so-called because of his culinary penchant for these slimy creatures. When Butch enrolled at the University of Wisconsin to study a film course, he became even more embroiled in music. As president of the campus Roxy Music Fan club, he organized so-called 'Roxythons', all night sessions spent listening to the great smoothie, Brian Ferry. After an initial flurry of enthusiasm with his film course, he soon became increasingly distracted by music, especially when, in 1983, he joined a new wave band called Spooner.

Alongside Butch in Spooner was Duke Erikson, on drums - he was also from a small farming community in Nebraska, and had already been in several bands by the age of 16, including one called 'The British'. After a brief stint at a Nebraskan college studying art, he moved up to Wisconsin to further this career at the University, which is where he formed Spooner. Funding his nascent band's expenses by carpentry and truck driving day jobs, Duke soon hooked up with fellow undergraduate Steve Marker, who became the band's soundman. Marker was from Mamaroneck in New York State, and although not musically involved in Spooner at this stage, was soon to become a key player in Garbage's future. Also in the band were Jeff Walker on keyboards, Joel Tappero on bass, and Dave Benton on rhythm guitar.

With Butch on board, Spooner began gigging and very soon had become the hottest local band. A self-produced EP catapulted them to a local celebrity and even won them a disastrous and near-fatal support slot with Iron Maiden. Steve Marker meanwhile, was busy producing dozens of weird and wonderful local bands in his basement, and with the combined efforts of the other two friends, Butch and Duke, the trio began to develop quiet a reputation. Calling themselves smart studios, the friends would welcome hordes of surf punkster bands to the basement, and ply them with food whilst they turned their raw demo efforts into fully fledged recordings. Eventually Steve's basement was way too small and a small warehouse was rented between a porno bookstore and a dry cleaners. They bought a mixing desk that was once used by the fabulous Osmonds family in the seventies, and which still had a worn Osmands sticker on the facia. Other gear in the studio was bought from a band called 'The Shoes' whose Gary Kebe later helped out on early Spooner recordings. for $100, this rather crude set-up was all yours.

Over a period of two years, the unknown bands they worked with began to be replaced by more reputable outfits, as acts like Killdozer, Tad, the cool punk labels touch and go, Slash and Twin Tone, as well as hordes of lesser known acts passed through their doors. The sheer volume of acts visiting Smart Studios kept them very busy, but occasionally at the last minute, a cancellation would leave them with little time on their hands. To alleviate the boredom and studio time wasted when this happened, Duke, Butch and Steve began to form their own ad hoc groups, which frequently lasted no more than one night. An illustrious list of names sprung to mind for these acts, including doll Burper, Nurble Kernurble, Secrets of Terror Castle, First Person and the Flying Saucers. The most popular and long lasting of all these bizarre groups was the tastefully named Rectal Drip. Butch later told one magazine, "when a band would cancel, we'd say, 'Fuck it, let's record another Drip song.' The criteria for a song were simple: It had to be under a minute long, and it had to contain at least one extreme tempo change." They enjoyed a (very) minor local hit with the song 'John Jacon Jingleheimer Schmidt', and later produced a demo of 500 tapes filled with the sub-sixty second masterpieces ( a tape which now commands a high price in the collectors market, after the storming success of Garbage).

Spooner were still active during this time as well, and during the late seventies through to the mid-80's delivered three albums and a handful of singles from their own studios. Despite this, Spooners days were numbered, and in 1987 they broke up. Butch and Duke immediately formed a new band called Firetown, which lasted another two years and two albums, but by this stage their own band aspirations were being suffocated by the sheer success of their production services. Over the coming years, massive acts such as Smashing Pumpkins, L7, U2, Nine Inch Nails, House of Pain, Sonic Youth, Depeche Mode, Urge overkill and Soul Asylum would pass through their doors. At the start of 1991, however, a low-key phone call was put to Smart Studios from a Seattle label called Sub Pop, who had a new act they wished to record with Butch and his colleagues. In a much quoted recollection, Butch told MNE "I went into the rehearsal room and (they) were playing this song I'd never heard... it sounded awesome.... Kirk said it was called 'Teen Spirit' and I made them rehearse it ten times. It was just a great song. that band was Nirvana and the work they produced was to single-handedly change the face of modern music.