10,000 Maniacs

[turney@cs.cornell.edu (Jenn Turney)]

Thought people in the group might interested in hearing the latest
news from 10,000 Maniacs.  I saw them in concert Friday night, their
last stop of a mini-tour.  The concert was a good one and included
several new songs, nine by my count.  They are to go into the studio
shortly, so perhaps we can expect an album, dare I say, before the end
of the year?

Of the new songs, I'll say that in general they're much better than
those on Blind Man's Zoo, on which I think the lyrics were often
fighting with the music, and have much more of the lyrical character
of The Wishing Chair and the musical integrity of In My Tribe.  The
concert venue (campus concert hall) has terrible acoustics and the
speaker balance, especially from where I was sitting, made it
impossible to catch much of the lyrics (Natalie's not particularly
easy to decipher in the first place!) so I can't offer any tentative
titles.

Natalie seemed to be enjoying herself, even did some spontaneous a
capella singing.  She didn't introduce any of the new songs by name
but did do quite a bit of talking with the audience.  For song
selection, there were most of the obvious choices off In My Tribe,
only one off Blind Man's Zoo ("Trouble Me"), and two from The Wishing
Chair.  I would have liked the distribution to be a little more even
but I suspect the two girls sitting next to me, who sang along with
"Hey, Jack Kerouac", "What's the Matter Here", and "Like the Weather"
and were pretty quiet the rest of the time (just as well), wouldn't
have agreed with me there.

It's certainly nice to have something to look forward to from this
group.  Any one else get a chance to see them?

Jenn
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| turney@cs.cornell.edu | Dept of Computer Science | Cornell University |
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| She winced at his response of such a gratuitous "Wow": it said little |
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