by: Tony Scherman; page: 15

"It’s taking us as long to remix this stuff as it did to record it!" said Natalie Merchant lead singer for 10,000 Maniacs. She was sitting in Manhattan’s Electric Lady Studios, finishing up a painstaking archeology project: remixing the band’s first two recordings, cut in 1982 and 1983. Engineered by college students, the records, Human Conflict Number Five and Secrets of the I Ching, were hardly of audiophile quality. "Especially the drums," said Merchant. "The snare drum sounded like a bag of rice dropped onto the kitchen floor and the bass drum sounded like someone whacking a wet cardboard box." So Merchant, along with former Maniac John Lombardo and engineer Joe Barbaria, hunkered down at one of Electric Lady’s SSL consoles to spiff up the songs. The biggest problem was the Human Conflict tape’s advanced decomposition - it was shedding particles so badly Barbaria had it baked in a special oven.