Prodigal Sun/The Spectrum - October 1, 1982

by: Michael Walsh

In the behavioral sink of any local music scene, a group has its work cut out if it hopes to be more than a live reproduction of FM radio, more than an occasionally compelling soundtrack for competitive drinking and flesh assessment. To begin with, a band must assemble the right mix of musicians and personalities: you need fertility and creative friction but without everybody pulling in completely different directions. Then you need enough original songs to establish your distance from the enthusiastic cover band syndrome. After that, you need to make some recordings, partly to see how you produce, partly to give your following something to play at home, and partly to help promote yourself. After that, you've got to avoid the temptation to sunbathe on the local success plateau, as well as the temptation to become area representative for whatever fad is currently gaining national attention. Through all of this you've got to believe you're going someplace, while also retaining sufficient integrity to avoid thinking it's going to happen next Thursday or that, to the surprise of those around you, you're already Keith Richards. (Somehow, it's often Keith.) As John Lydon, another inspiration to smalltime emulators once said, "the ladder is long."

If this is committing the cardinal sin of sounding negative, it's only because of the frequency with which promising bands level off or disintegrate while the radio reproduction experts continue to bring home $1000 a night. Too much of that takes the fun out of watching bands germinate and develop, and so it's particularly pleasant to report that 10,000 Maniacs, a six-member group from Jamestown, is climbing Lydon's ladder quite nimbly. Their five-song, seventeen minute EP Human Conflict Number Five has been out for a month and is selling well, partly through the airplay given to Planned Obsolescence by WUWU FM, the only rock station in town which understands that sounding a little different will bring a ratings reward. On the live circuit, the Maniacs have been playing out in Buffalo and Rochester, and are planning gigs in Toronto. Also in the works is a trip to Atlanta, where the band has the ear of John Hibbert, producer of R.E.M. and other bands of the Athens/Atlanta axis. 10,000 Maniacs seem just like the kind of group who could sensibly move towards the sonic reduction practiced by Athens bands like Pylon and Method Actors, or the minimalism once practiced by Boston's Jonathan Richman and England's Young Marble Giants. So maybe something quite appropriate will come of the Atlanta excursion: the ladder is long.

Jamestown, for you new arrivals, is about 80 miles south of Buffalo. It's a model small city with plaques outside of town to prove it: the local industry is furniture manufacturing, the local pride is a powerhouse junior college basketball team, and the local shrine, also just outside of town, is the birthplace of Lucille Ball. The population is largely WASP, Swedish, and Italian, and each persuasion is represented in 10,000 Maniacs, whose name multiplies by a factor of five the title of a horror film from the great fifties cycle of such productions. Norman 'Rob' Buck lays electronic guitar and synth, and he means electronic guitar: people ask "What is that sound?" Dennis Drew plays Fender Contempo organ on the record, but tonight at the Continental will be premiering some brand new keys; he was perhaps affected by playing the Steel Pulse keyboard stack when the Maniacs opened their recent show at the Tralfmadore. Stephen Gustafson and John Lombardo trade off on bass, vocal and guitar duties, depending an the song, and Lombardo sings in a self-styled "odd voice." Natalie Merchant is the band's lead singer, chief lyricist, cover artist and ferel youth, and has the ability to dance at speed through the audience without ever hitting anybody. Finally, Robert "Bob-A-Matlc" Wachter plays very solid drums and maintains the noble tradition of the pencil-thin mustache.

Quite apart from its musical value or potential, Human Conflict Number Five is an object lesson in independent record production. Interested parties should note that 10,000 Maniacs has got a sound as good as any local record I've heard out of the Tonemeister Program at Fredonia State College. The 16-track facility allowed the Maniacs to use [?] tracks for drums alone, and studio time is free to anyone who can interest a program participant in their recording project. John Lombardo reports that quality is ensured by the stiff competition to get into the program, and that its participants are generally eager to work with bands. Thus avoiding the burden of studio costs, the Maniacs were able to borrow enough money to have 1,000 copies of their record pressed on heavy-duty vinyl by Mark Recordings of Clarence. They distributed to area stores, promoted the record to the media and industry, and will break even after selling 600, a figure approaching fast enough that there may be a second pressing.

However, all of this discussion of the band's practical progress shouldn't be allowed to divert attention from their music, which is a fluid mixture of the familiar and the unexpected. The familiar includes a certain extent of social and moral criticism in the songwriting: Merchant's lyrics for Planned Obsolescence seem to advocate the perfection of technology at the expense of religious atavism, while those for Tension look both affectionately and skeptically at the material trappings of memory. Lombardo's Anthem For Doomed Youth, takes its title from the World War I poet Wilfred Owen, and combines a pastiche of his tone with the songwriter's more sardonic sensibility: "Don't tell me we're not prepared/I've seen today's marine/He's eighteen and he's eager/And he can be quite mean." More unexpected is a reggae influence, although the band agrees that this has been exaggerated and is fading fast. Anthem For Doomed Youth does have the slowly sliding and wailing organ of early-70s reggae, and in concert the Maniacs will sometimes cover the Gladiators' Eli Eli or the obscure ska gem Last Train to Expo 67. However, Human Conflict suggests with Groove Dub, more detachment from this influence: the song begins with an echoplexed line reminiscent of reggae DJ records, but the lyrics raise their own question about such borrowings: "Imitate, come on, imitate that tired old song."

Also unexpected is Merchant's unaffected vocal delivery, which has shades of folk singing and forms a welcome contrast with the numerous singers who seem determined to force their voices into contrived oddity. The overall sound is balanced enough to include both a banging rhythm section and a melodic sense inclined to rollicking and lilting. Orange matches stinging and flowing guitar with floating vocals and marked chord changes, while Groove Dub combines strong rhythm guitar with chasing funk bass. Tension is textured by drum and organ crescendos and rapid fire lyrics, and Planned Obsolescence starts with bass underpinnings, adds steady-state-organ and cymbals, and finally doubletracks Merchant's vocals against Rob Buck's finest hour - a whopping, shrieking and shuddering of synthesized guitar. All in all, much more than we have a right to expect from a do-it-yourself first effort.

In the last week, the band has been back in the Fredonia studio laying music tracks for four new songs. Katrina's Fair is a story of multiple personality, and focuses on one person who gets stuck with all the chores. Death of Manolete concerns the Spanish bullfighter challenged out of retirement and killed in the ring, and the list is rounded out by an instrumental titled Among the Americans, and a homage to the surrealist painter titled Pour de Chirico. The Maniacs are nothing if not eclectic.