by Francesca Chapman (section: Features page: 36)

THE OLD STORY

Like many a split between man and wife, the one between 10,000 Maniacs and lead singer Natalie Merchant seems to have boiled down to the old saw: The guys wouldn't help around the house.

Merchant described the drudgery that led to their 1993 breakup in Entertainment Weekly: "Being the only female, I'd (buy) the food, and everybody else would eat it and then not do the dishes, and beer cans didn't get rinsed and needed to be recycled and smelled funny....

"I just came to rehearsal one day and said, 'It's over. I really can't do this anymore.'"

Natalie, sweetheart, how'd you get in that mess in the first place? Do you think Janis Joplin did the dishes for Big Brother and the Holding Company? Can you picture Chrissie Hynde rinsing out empties for the Pretenders? We didn't think so.