Garbage: One Mile High...Live Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.0

Garbage: One Mile High...Live Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman June 1, 2013

People tend to think of my home state of Oregon as a liberal bastion, and at least with regard to some of its larger cities, like Portland and Eugene, they’d be correct. However, vast swaths of this state are resolutely conservative, including the large bulk of smaller towns and, especially, Oregon’s eastern latitudes. The same thing might be said of my wife’s home state of Wisconsin, though the general consensus is probably that Wisconsin is generally conservative with just a few liberal enclaves scattered amongst its rolling sylvan hills. One of those undeniably liberal enclaves is the college town of Madison, where a rather unlikely group of musicians banded together in 1994 to form the alt rock assemblage Garbage, a band whose counter culture leanings might in fact might be thought of as more at home in the alternative and grunge scenes of the Pacific Northwest than in the dairy state of Wisconsin. Garbage got off to a huge start, scoring gigantic sales with its first album and managing to avoid the oft mentioned “sophomore slump” by capitalizing on its initial success with another big hit with their second album. They also had the distinction of providing the theme to The World is Not Enough which if it didn’t exactly rise to the classic status of the theme to Goldfinger (or even in fact the slighter charms of Skyfall), at least proved how much on the cultural radar the band had become. Unfortunately, the bloom was off the rose by the band’s third album, and seemingly Garbage had ended its brief run at the top of the charts.

This concert from October 6, 2012 (just coincidentally a certain reviewer’s birthday) finds the band in great form in Denver, Colorado, despite not having performed together for several years. Shirley Manson still makes an appealing (if just a little odd) front woman and the band (Duke Erikson on guitars and keys, Steve Marker on guitar and keys, Butch Vig on drums and guest bassist Eric Avery from Nine Inch Nails) sounds fantastic. This is a fairly low key concert in terms of stagecraft, but is high on both energy and musical excellence in terms of the performance itself. Garbage may have taken itself out (sorry for the horrible pun), but it’s back with a vengeance, and the band’s many fans should really enjoy this concert Blu- ray.

Garbage: One Mile High...Live Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Garbage One Mile High. . .Live is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Eagle Vision, an imprint of Eagle Rock Entertainment, with an AVC encoded 1080i transfer in 1.78:1. This is a very nice and sharp looking high definition presentation that only has some occasional posterizing from the upstage bright blue lighting array marring an otherwise precise looking image.

Garbage: One Mile High...Live Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Garbage One Mile High. . .Live DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and LPCM 2.0 mixes both are very well rendered, though at times I wished that Shirley's vocals had been mixed a little further forward. Other than that niggling qualm, fidelity is excellent and dynamic range is surprisingly wide.

Garbage: One Mile High...Live Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Pre-Show Warm Up Featurette (1080i; 1:01)


• Automatic Systematic Habit Featurette (1080i; 1:59)


• Battle in Me Featurette (1080i; 1:38)


• Big Bright World Featurette (1080i; 2:17)


• Blood for Poppies Featurette (1080i; 2:14)


• Control Featurette (1080i; 2:22)


• Big Bright World Music Video (1080i; 3:36)


• Blood For Poppies Music Video (1080i; 3:41)

Garbage: One Mile High...Live Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Garbage may seem a little tamer now than it did in the mid-nineties, but the good news is that the band, despite having taken some long vacations from each other, sounds nicely cohesive and very energetic in this 2012 concert. Recommended.