Alanis Morissette, Garbage, and Cat Power in Charlotte

So I got a ticket to this for $6 ($10.98 with fees). This one reminds me of the first two shows I posted about on here that I got free tickets for from the Ticketmaster lawsuit, 311 and Janet Jackson. Obviously the financial aspect was the first reminder. It let me be like screw it I’ll go to that for $6 or free and also because all three of those concerts were at this same corporate amphitheater.

I had a copy of Jagged Little Pill in junior high like everyone else on planet Earth at the time but that CD was long ago confiscated by an ex girlfriend (along with my No Doubt CD! lol). So I literally hadn’t heard that album in close to two decades. I still have the first two Garbage CDs somewhere and it’s totally worth $6 to see Cat Power play an opening set so I went.

That said this was not the ideal environment to witness Cat Power. She was a replacement for Liz Phair who was originally the opener on this tour and the vast majority of the crowd wasn’t even there yet and the ones who were weren’t paying close attention. She was dressed in all black and played solo on a dark stage. It was physically hard to see her from my far away vantage point. What she played sounded good but did not overpower the sound of random conversations everywhere. It was more like background music unfortunately. She did play The Greatest but there was no Lived in Bars, Nude as the News, or Cherokee. But most of the crowd wouldn’t have know those anyway.

(Not pictured Cat Power – Seriously no point in posting a pic, you can’t make her out. I promise I saw her.)

Next up was Garbage. I had seen them before in 2012 and they played mostly familiar material from their first two albums with a few new songs sprinkled in. That’s exactly what they did here too. Nine years and a pandemic is more than enough time to be ready to hear all the old favorites like Stupid Girl, Push It, I Would Die For You and more though. It was a very crowd pleasing set. I had assumed this concert would be sparsely attended because of the blowout savings I was able to get on my ticket but by the time Garbage wrapped up with I’m Only Happy When It Rains the crowd was near full capacity. Shirley Manson was the only one that night to allude to the pandemic saying how shitty the year had been and that now is the best time to support your favorite artists because they need it after missing touring all this time. She then dedicated a newer song called Our Love is Doomed that was actually really good to the crowd. Maybe I should have kept up with Garbage all this time.

Next up was Alanis herself. I went into this looking forward to the bands in reverse order of how they played but Alanis put on a great show. It was the Jagged Little Pill anniversary tour so most of the set was that album. She played everything on it. She could drop mega hits like You Learn and Hand in My Pocket early in the set with all the other huge hits she had left still just from that one album. There were parts where the momentum dropped a bit and looking up the setlist later I realized those where the non- JLP songs, some of which I recognized and had just assumed where on that album too. She hit the stage after a video of her career highlights which included her acting roles and even some clips of people making fun of her lyrics on Ironic, which was nice to see she had a sense of humor about. Her voice sounds as good as it ever did and even though most people haven’t thought about her in a while you could clearly see that there’s a reason she was once the biggest pop star in the world. It was a good show that hit the 90s nostalgia just right. You got all the hits, the crowd seemed to love Ironic the most even if nothing in the song is ironic. A lot of people fled for the exits after You Oughta Now but they missed the encore of the secret song from JLP (ha, remember those!) probably the best performance of the night on Uninvited, and the closer Thank You. She did miss a golden opportunity to change ‘thank you, thank you silence’ to ‘thank you, thank you Charlotte”, though. Just saying. Still very worthy the $10.98 including fees.

The $21 I spent on a cafeteria grade cheeseburger, fries, and pepsi was absolutely not worth it though. Eat beforehand if you ever go to this place.