LAY OFF NATALIE MERCHANT

generally speaking, i find our time in eden is a very overlooked album. the first few songs alone are album highlights on anywhere else.

-on

i know it's a used bin staple, but it's got zero retro love, which i lament. such a pretty album.

Co-sign… it’s a forgotten gem.

I was in junior high! I haven't seen it since then, I'm sure it's corny as hell. I remember somebody had "hug me" or "hold me" written on them somewhere and for some reason that moved me. Probably because I was desperate for someone to hold me.

First time I learn that OTIE is underrated! Big seller, most of its songs are part of the Maniacs canon insofar as they have one.

underrated v overlooked fite!

overcooked more like it

Okay, I just rewatched it and *cRiNgE* lol it's not the worst video but Natalie dancing a jig like she's a Wim Wenders angel up on high is pretty funny.

A cute young girl (probably 14 or so, the age I was when I saw it) lifts up the bottom of her shirt and it says "squeeze me slow" and that is what made me swoon and compelled me to buy 5 or so Maniacs cds. But they did have some good songs. Funny thing: in my memory the scenes of the kids running around in the woods were in vibrant color, but it's black and white.

Apparently the Sally Ann song is from the Candy Everybody Wants single and it's my favorite thing they recorded. It's a cover, the original was by the Horse Flies. Her voice doesn't always work for me, but there's something about the way it curls around the words, and the violin... sigh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyHUJS0XqqE

You win a prize.
For that.

I was thinking of posting about "Kind and Generous" in the Legacy Song thread, but I just listened and was all "Oh, it's that 'LaLa LaLa Thank You' song, yeah that was huge."

what did Don 'n' Ghost of Glenn think of her?

I'll write something, but first I did a gis to see if there was ever a pic of Don & Natalie together (they did both play the Clinton inaugural), but sadly there doesn't appear to be any on the 'net. I then thought if say there was a photo op pic them from 1989, it could symbolize every inappropriate professor-pupil hetero relationship of the era.

Fun fact. My family of origin really liked to stay at the Athenaeum Hotel in Chautauqua, New York (near Jamestown, which produced Natalie and the Maniacs).

My father says he was walking through the lobby and Natalie was drifting in and out between the columns of the portico, recording a music video. I was not there. Plus my father is a compulsive liar and a drunk-ass fabulist. So I paid it no mind.

Then I saw the video and I said, "shit, he may have actually been telling the truth," because in that video she is, in fact, dancing precisely there. Where I once helped a toddler untangle a kite string from his underpants.

First time I learn that OTIE is underrated! Big seller, most of its songs are part of the Maniacs canon insofar as they have one.

If they have a canon, I wouldn’t have guessed many of those songs were on it! (only two show up on that 2004 best-of comp). To the extent I ever see the band come up, it’s generally the hit cover song from their biggest seller MTV Unplugged).

(Oh I’m sorry, that comp has three tracks from the album… which is still fewer than the two albums before it. In My Tribe has five… geez, The Wishing Chair only gets one!)

Where I once helped a toddler untangle a kite string from his underpants.

remember when music videos could just be random images of nonsense things happening?

that sentence could be describing one of those.
(and in the one i'm imagining, it's not even for a natalie merchant song. she's just out of focus in the background, dancing around like you said. our main concern is the kite situation. the song the video is promoting is very catchy and upbeat, very "feel good jam.")

A buddy of mine watched her in the early days huffing markers onstage (and twirling around in a skirt with no underwear). She is now playing with symphony orchestras. So, yeah, she's grown up (and her new album is really solid, if also a bit stolid).

It's easy to make that claim when markers doesn't post here anymore.

She and Stipe came into the record store I worked at in college (10,000 Maniacs were opening for R.E.M. in town that night). This would have been . . . 1985? I thought they were a couple of homeless people.

1985 seems too early. It might have been the 1986 show. Camper Van Beethoven opened for them then. I think they were a couple then, so maybe they were just hanging out.

https://lastfm.freetls.fastly.net/i/u/ar0/398be0596de44ff6abd2552f5bf543cf.jpg

That photo's from later though, it was taken at the MTV Inaugural Ball in 1993.

listening to 10,000 Maniac's first album (Wishing Chair) right now, I really dig this, definitely in the jangly post REM college rock vein but has a unique feel

guitar playing is great, reminds me of Marr a bit

Some of those guitar lines are wtf in the best way

yes! very inventive and odd

TWC wasn't their first album though, that was Secrets of the I Ching. xps

hmmm that's not on streaming for some reason

ums- hope chest

that's the first 2 eps on one disc

It was on a small indie. All the songs are on Hope Chest

x-post!

It was reissued (along with their début EP Human Conflict No. 5) as Hope Chest, you'll probably find it under that.

xps lol

I mean, who else in America was recording folk rock with Indestructible Beat of Soweto guitars?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiBv1VPZjaY

For some reason they faffed around with the running order of the songs on The Wishing Chair for the CD (and presumably streaming) versions. The album flows much better with the original vinyl running order IMO.

Huh, I didn't know they did that (they added a bunch of songs, too). I've only ever known the CD version

Thanks for the Hope Chest heads up all! Will check it out

"About the Weather" has some interesting production choices...the track generally has a good amount of classic 80s reverb on it, even exaggerated on the lead vocal at times (there's a long tail on the last words of lines during the chorus for instance), but then the guitar sounds super dry and immediate and panned hard right -- almost sounds like a DI guitar, cool contrast

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=te7bbWBXusk

Cool to see some discussion/appreciation of Hope Chest. It's the only Maniacs I play regularly, in fact I just listened again last night thanks to this thread. Natalie's wordy lit class lyrics, delivered with maximum incomprehensibility and set to oddball calypso new wave, is really unique and charming.

I like how with "Planned Obsolescence" and "My Mother the War," they were like – "Yeah, 'punk,' we know what it is... we're not really into it, but here's our take."

i just started hope chest and the beginning of "planned obsolescence" reminded me of "public image" for a sec

the guitar playing on that track is bonkers, all squiggles

Yeah Robert Buck loved his pedal board.

looking at some of my initial thoughts about hope chest from 2009-

Imagine Johnny Marr playing guitar on the first Throwing Muses album and throw a sort of sporadic reggae slant into the mix and you have the first recordings of 10,000 Maniacs. It's your basic new wave formula for something that, by all reasonable logic, shouldn't work, but does because of the simplicity of the arrangements and tunes.

and yes, "planned obsolescence" is delectable.

lol I'm glad I'm not the only one who hears early Throwing Muses - though in some ways you could describe Kristin and Natalie as diametrically opposed in terms of their lyrical approach.

There's a thing about how if you took Hamlet and Lear and switched protagonists, neither play would be longer than 15 minutes.

Now I am trying to imagine Natalie singing Hips and Makers, or Kristin singing Blind Man's Zoo and... I admit I would kinda like to hear that.

Urgh maybe it's actually more likely to be said of Hamlet and Macbeth, but you get the the idea

Those guitars on "Planned Obsolescence"!

Back of the Moon is such a great song- I recently realized I can only understand the lyrics when I am readin g along with the song - which increased my appreciation. ALso one of the people of which I think "why such good songs for a breif period then not much good for decades? "

What's the saying, you have your whole life to write your first album, but only 6 months to write your second?