by: Mark Genovese and Michael Lamendola
The 10,000 Maniacs were to tour in Europe for the rest of this month. That has been delayed until late August, however, so they can make a demonstration record for "a major record label," group spokesman Dennis Drew told The Post-Journal recently.
Although the Jamestown-based group has not actually signed a recording contract, negotiations are under way, he said. The group also is considering offers from other record companies, he added.
Because the deal is not final, Drew perferred not to identify the record company.
The Maniacs' three-week tour of England and West Germany was scheduled to start on July 8, when this offer came at the last minute, Drew said.
"We were all set to go. Then, on June 27, the night of our date at the Rusty Nail, I got a phone call," Drew said. He flew to New York City the next day. The company, which he said is to pay for the recording time at Bearsville Studios near Woodstock, asked the band to delay its tour until the recording was finished.
The band is comprosed of Drew on keyboards, vocalist Natalie Merchant, who also writes the group's songs, Robert Buck on guitar, Steve Gustafson on bass, J.C. Lombardo on guitar and bass, and Jerome Augustyniak on drums.
The Maniacs have had tremendous success with music fans in Europe, Drew said. Their first release - recorded, pressed and distributed on their own - is a five-song EP entitled Human Conflict Number Five. The record recently reached No. 16 on the English independent charts.
Their second independent release, Secrets of the I Ching, a 10-song LP, was named the best record of 1983 by British music reviewer John Peel.
Drew said the group hopes to build a reputation on the European tour and get on other charts. This would cause "a ripple across the big pond (the Atlantic Ocean)" that would give the group a better position in dealing with the companies that have approached them. He said the band is successful overseas because of the style and content of the music, which is closer to the European cultural scene than it is to the American scene.
America is "so secure" that all its music is about love, sex, drugs and rock and roll, he said. Meanwhile, Europeans tend to be open to something that is not in the mainstream.
"We are relatively self-confident pepole who are not self-absorbed with their bodies," he said.
Bassist Gustafson said, "The content of our music reflects humanity. It is not preaching about things."
Of the band's varying styles in its sound - one can hear influences of reggae, funk, folk and European pop - he said, "It sounds like a tossed salad."
The band has extensively toured the eastern United States, where they worked on making business contacts in the expanding new music scenes in the South.
In all, the band had traveled about 40,000 miles in three years, he said.
If the company they keep is any measure of success, the Maniacs certainly have achieved that. They recently played at a poetry reading at The Ritz in New York with Todd Rundgren and the Jim Carroll Band and they are scheduled to play at the New Music Seminar in New York with such name acts as General Public, the Smiths, Difford and Tillbrook, and Souxie and the Banshees.
If a record is to be released it probably will not come out until Christmas, "so we don't interfere with Billy Joel's greatest hits," Drew joked.
When a major-label record is released, the group's independently-pressed LP and EP will be pulled off the market, he said.
For its newer recordings, the band is experimenting with more accoustical instruments, "but we're not going to sound like a country band," Drew said.
The 10,000 Maniacs are scheduled to play during the first evening of the Downtown Jamestown Business Association's Fest on Wednesday.