Campfire Songs: The Popular, Obscure & ... - 10,000 Maniacs (CD 2004)

Looking back at college rock, I think of the bands that time forgot. Sure R.E.M. still exist, but they ve matured past their "Murmur" and "Document" glory days. Bands like The Smiths, The Pixies, and The Replacements have all seen their better days, and countless many more remain relics of the 1980s, the college rock scene having progressed to grunge and contemporary alternative rock.

If one band must be remembered during the time when The Byrds were the word and experimentation reigned supreme over wound-licking, it d be good to recall 10,000 Maniacs.

The name was inspired by the title of a Herschell Gordon Lewis gore-galore camp classic from the 1960s, but the band were a full 8,000 maniacs more than his "2000 Maniacs." Is that crazy or what? The band didn t form in Athens, GA, like their peers in R.E.M., but their were small town natives nonetheless: Jamestown, NY and the Chadakoin River were where the quintet built the foundations for their band, and 1982 was the year when they had finally came up with the resources to make an independent debut album. Vocalist Natalie Merchant, guitarists Robert Buck & John Lombardo, bassist Steve Gustafson, drummer Jerome Augustyniak, and keyboardist Dennis Drew were projecting themselves to the world by shopping at thrift stores and the Mission (Natalie wore Depression-era dresses that made her look like a Civil War housewife, and she was barely past her teens), driving in the same Dodge Tradesman van souped up to become a school bus, and each shared shifts at the local community college radio station. They lived together, performed together, worked together, and became supremely unified in time for their 1985 major label debut on Elektra, "The Wishing Chair," although afterwards one of the group left (Mr. Lombardo) and they kept on as a five-piece.

10,000 Maniacs performed for over a decade until Natalie Merchant left the band at the midst of their biggest breakthrough, recording a couple of solo albums that kept her in the hit parade: 1995 s "Tiger Lily" had three hits with "Carnival," "Jealousy" & "Wonder," and 1999 s "Ophelia" yielded "Kind And Generous." But the albums expanded mainly upon her growth as a singer/songwriter, and subsequent albums "Motherland" and the folk-standards collection "The House Carpenter s Daughter" remain fine additions to her oeuvre.

The remaining Maniacs soldiered on, reuniting with John Lombardo and adding his performing partner Mary Lombardo on vocals. Unfortunately, two albums didn t hold exposure, and their only hit was a flaccid cover of Roxy Music s 1982 make-out masterpiece "More Than This." The band just wasn t the same, and later on I couldn t tell them apart from Texas or Sixpence None the Richer.

The story of 10,000 Maniacs from their D.I.Y. status to their last stand with Natalie Merchant is told in the collection Campfire Songs: The Popular, Obscure & Unknown Recordings, a two-disc set from Rhino and Elektra Records that captures their most essential modern rock hits and album chestnuts, and throwing in additional outtakes, rarities, demos and compilation material for completists.

The first three tracks on disc one hark back to the band s Fredonia recordings, survived only through their 1990 collection "Hope Chest." From the EP "Human Conflict Number 5" (1982) we get Planned Obsolescence (track 1) and Tension (track 3), and from the "Secrets of the I Ching" EP (1983) is My Mother The War. Planned Obsolesence is the bleak realization that "Science is truth for life" set to unnerving guitar notes and a steady, bitter rhythm. My Mother The War is equally freaked new wave with a forceful guitar and bass, and the doomed lyrics ("Well acquainted with sorrow/Left millions in grief, my mother the war") are sung in beautifully plaintive fashion by Merchant. Tension is also a very grieving and tragic song, although it makes its point across with vivid imagery: "Local posts they list your friends/In order of disappearance/Lawn scattered tins feed birds/The portion baked for absent guests."

The lone extract from "The Wishing Chair" is Scorpio Rising, which is headstrong and visceral in its musical delivery, cut from the mold of The Smiths and The Plimsouls best works. Merchant is not vulgar in her condemnation of uncivil behavior, just blunt: "Save the pistol/Save the cynic's tongue/Save the cool white stare/And treat me to an honest face sometime/Amaze me now!"

The package really starts cooking with an incredible 12 songs from three separate albums. What is regarded as their first fine album, 1987 s "In My Tribe" had five truly great songs that are displayed on this compilation. You have to remind yourself that the song from that LP which blessed the moniker to this package, "A Campfire Song," doesn t show up. The first song you hear is Like The Weather, a fine-sounding track pumped up with organ fills and a lilting composition with thunderous drums and guitar jangle. This was their first big radio/MTV track, and what a fine candidate it is: despite Natalie Merchant s depressed stance throughout the song ("A shiver in my bones just thinking about the weather/A quiver in my voice as if I might cry...What a cold and rainy day/Where on earth is the sun hid away?"), this is infectious as boogie woogie flu. Don t Talk is in a more brooding and despairing musical direction with Natalie trying to talk a sober realization to a bottle-addicted father unable to grasp her words: "The drink you drown your troubles in is the trouble you re in now...We will talk, talk, talk about this when your head is clear Until then, you may talk but I won t hear."

What s The Matter Here has the musical hallmarks of a real midtempo confessional (and damned if the beat doesn t just remind me of a later Maniacs song), yet the lyrics are heartbreakingly true to life and touch on the intense theme of child abuse with a jarring sense of optimistic reprimanding and shame: "I'm tired of the excuses everybody uses/He's your kid, do as you see fit/But get this through that I don't approve/Of what you did to your own flesh and blood...Answer me and take your time/What could be the awful crime he could do at such young an age?"

Hey Jack Kerouac takes a plaintive 4/4 beat and beautifully chiming rhythm for the chance to allow Merchant to sing an ode to the legendary San Francisco beat poet and his falling from grace: "You chose your words from mouths of/Babes got lost in the wood...What a tear-stained shock of the world/You've gone away without saying goodbye."

Verdi Cries is a moving and beautiful ballad with piano and orchestral arrangements, something which rings familiar if you remember hearing R.E.M. s 1992 song "Nightswimming." David Campbell (yes, the son of Beck who arranged for everyone from Jackson Browne to Ruben Studdard) provides the string arrangements, and Merchant provides the poetry: a stirring recollection of hearing the Verdi opera piece "Aida" played in nearby hotel room, and then stealing tea and crumpets and heading out to sea and drawing in the sand.

From the 1989 release "Blind Man s Zoo," there are four key selections. The first is Trouble Me, their breakthrough single featuring back-up vocals by Jevetta Steele. Whereas most of the album deals with morose and serious topics, this song is a particular statement of love and hope set to slow piano and guitar delicacy: "Trouble me, disturb me with all your cares and you worries/Trouble me on the days when you feel spent/Why let your shoulders bend underneath this burden/When my back is sturdy and strong"

Poison In The Well is a thrusting proclamation of ecological disaster, the arrival of toxic waste into water and the hesitancy to clean it up: "Someone's been a bit untidy, they'll have it cleaned up in a week/But the week is over and now it's grown into years since I was told that I should be calm, there's nothing to fear here/But I drank that water for years, my wife and my children." The band s Jamestown home was nearby Niagra Falls, where the Love Canal was built on a chemical landfill, thus providing a sharp authenticity to the storytelling.

You Happy Puppet is a semi-preachy diatribe against being stuck in a socially disturbed society and going through life blind and unaware: "If the world is so insane, is it making you sane again/ To let another man tug at the thread that pulls up your empty wooden head?" The rhythm and beat here is vaguely familiar to that of "What s The Matter Here," only more harmony vocals and ringing keyboards give a clear disctinction.

Eat For Two thrusts along with hard snare drum beats and jabbing guitar and piano melodies. The problem Merchant describes here is teen pregnancy and the burden it weighs: "Now I know lightning strikes again/It struck me once, then struck me dead/My folly grows inside of me/I eat for two, walk for two, breathe for two now."

Their final studio release with Natalie Merchant ended up being "Our Time In Eden" from 1992, and three tracks are presented from that album. The first is an album track, Stockton Gala Days, a mid-tempo pop piece about the self-reflection of a less worrisome childhood in the summer fields: "Violets serene like none I have set apart/From dreams that escape me/There was no girl as warm as you/How I've learned to please, to doubt myself in need/You'll never know." The arrangement is given whimsy by Mary Ramsey on violin, who would be Merchant s replacement in time.

The other two songs are exactly what you d expect: Candy Everybody Wants and These Are Days. The former features James Brown s brass combo (Maceo Parker, "Pee Wee" Ellis, and Fred Wesley) in a surprisingly funky and jazzy arrangement with steady vocal prowess by Merchant, singing about TV-inflicted desires of bawdy behavior and junk food addiction to sex and violence ("If lust and hate is the candy/If blood and love tastes so sweet/Than we give em what they want."). Those few million people who saw
"Cheaper By The Dozen" might recognize the latter, which is construed as their most popular song even if you would argue "Trouble Me" or even the non-Merchant "More Than This?" (their only Top 40 pop hit) fared better. It still became a modern rock hit, and the jubilantly sweet instrumentation seems impossible to ignore. The lyrics are a view of the world in a more natural and unperturbed state, something surprising after the social ills as presented on their last album: "These days you might feel a shaft of light making its way across your face/And when you do, you ll know how it was meant to be."

Their biggest hit is not any of the aforementioned three, however. The first disc ends with perhaps their most successful single, the band s 1993 cover of Patti Smith s Because The Night, the Springsteen-penned classic she revamped for her 1978 release "Easter." Her version went into the Top 10, and the Maniacs version stood a few notches outside the Top 10. The band performed this track on their "MTV Unplugged" acoustic set, which was released in October of 1993 and was the unanticipated swan song of Merchant-era Maniacs. The band s cover is a sweet arrangement that brings soft and subtle orchestrations and preserves the upbeat feel of the original song, and Merchant s live vocals are arresting.

Disc one presented the popular recordings, so it s only fair that disc two dig through the vaults to unleash obscurities, delicacies, cover songs, and work-in-progress recordings. However, the intriguing thing is that this particular disc displays not only a hulking collection of bonus tracks for compilation s sake, but maps out all the particular musical genres that pushed the band along through their decade-plus career.

First is a self-penned offering from Natalie Merchant called Poppy Selling Man, an outtake from the band s 1982 Fredonia session that yielded "Secrets of the I Ching." It s a shuffling little song propelled by Dennis Drew s distinct organ riffs. The song sounds strangely enough like it could be a 1960s demo recording.

Another demo will be more familiar: Can t Ignore The Train was a track from "The Wishing Chair," but is presented here in a version with a different producer, Eddie Kramer (in place of Joe Boyd), who makes the song ring out more like an early recording than the original album cut.

Peace Train is finally issued on CD after being long left to suffer vinyl LP limbo. This Cat Stevens cover got scrapped from CD issues following his public supporting of a fatwah against "Satanic Verses" scribe Salman Rushdie, Stevens officially having converted himself to Islam beforehand. The band use their majestic folk-rock influences to full effect in order to provide a nice take on a familiar classic, and it s a breath of fresh air to hear the band s impassioned and effective cover finally be available to the mass audience all over again.

The next two songs were originally released on the CD single for 1989 s "You Happy Puppet." A cover of The Carter Family s Wildwood Flower is an interesting diversion into country music, and the band also take on John Prine s 1971 song Hello In There, a song of economic and personal depression as well as the frailties of age, in a fashionable and faithful manner.

Michael Stipe of R.E.M. did a special guest performance with the band on To Sir With Love, a take on the classic Don Black/Mark London-penned theme song from the Sidney Poitier-starring film of the same title, sung originally by Scottish songstress Lulu. Recorded around the inauguration of Bill Clinton and when everybody seemed so optimistic about this guy s new position as American president, the song packs in a tight arrangement with a trombone-and-sax section and both respectable vocalists providing a superbly-merging duet chorus. The song was originally released on the single for "Few and Far Between," the third single from "Our Time In Eden" which failed to show up on the hits disc.

The cover of Morrissey s Everyday Is Like Sunday, from the "Candy Everybody Wants" disc, shows up. The original Morrissey song remains one of his best solo tracks, but this version is middlesome at best, and Merchant sings with a drollness that underscores the beauty of the arrangements surrounding her, unlike the original 1988 version from the ex-Smiths frontman. The most intriguing bit of history is that Morrissey heard the Maniacs take on his song, and was so inspired that he wrote a mocking B-side track called "Have-A-Go Merchant."

These Days, from Elektra Records 1990 old-meets-new compilation "Rubaiyat," which is currently OOP, although many tracks do surface on other artists odds and ends collections. This is a Jackson Browne cover, and Merchant does better with his track than she did with Morrissey s (maybe it s just a matter of picking the wrong song to cover). The band s solid performance is all the more stellar here as well.

I Hope That I Don t Fall In Love With You was on the "These Are Days" single, and the Maniacs remain all-too-faithful to the Tom Waits classic from 1973 which this song owes itself to, but still manages to wring some priceless heartbreak from the plaintive performances from all in the band. A lost cover of David Bowie s "Ziggy Stardust" masterpiece Starman is unusually reggae-inflicted, though, and feels less successful.

One of the better covers here, and the last of the covers, is the stripped down country-folk rendition of Iris DeMent s Let The Mystery Be. Of course, I always enjoyed David Byrne (I admit to being late to respecting his solo career, but his Talking Heads material always fascinated me) and so having him sing and play guitar on this particular track is an ace in itself. Bravo.

The last three tracks to round out disc two are all demo recordings of "Our Time In Eden" songs recorded in Jamestown, 1991. Noah s Dove presents a natural sense of beauty when placed along the familiar-sounding finished version. The demo versions of Circle Dream and Eden contain alternate lyrics. The former sounds damn near incomprehensible and 92% different from its future counterpart, while the latter demo sounds much more clearer and provides a respectable alternate set of lyrics that yearns for a charmed life and contains less of the later s vivid garden imagery.

The non-plastic package for this compilation is bound in a slipcase. The interior package has a fold apart front cover which has a pocket housing the first disc, a center pocket for the second disc, and the back of the back cover houses the 36-page booklet. This contains the requisite album credits and track information, and also contains reflective writings from all the surviving members of the original band, as well as a written eulogy to Robert Buck written by Natalie Merchant. Also, rock critic Anthony DeCurtis contributes an informative essay on the band s career and how he first heard the band. Album artwork and vintage band photos all abound in the various photographs, as well as the intriguing black-and-white imagery and non-promotional artwork that adorns the cover.

The 10,000 Maniacs did what most American college rock bands did in the 1980s: they embraced their inner roots rockers and small-town traps to develop a smart and grand body of musical work. It's great hearing a lot of these modern rock gems today, and Natalie Merchant's songwriting skills are some of the best in adult alternative history. With Campfire Songs: The Popular, Obscure & Unknown Recordings, this collection provides a well-rounded collection of the best of the band s output for casual fans, and contains enough lost catalog material to entice maniacal Maniacs aficionados. Although a couple of second-disc leftovers should have remained leftovers, the rest of the set contains enough strong points to merit five stars and a high recommendation to all. No need to trouble yourself any more.