by: Michael P. Iten
The 10,000 Maniacs' new album, Love Among The Ruins, scheduled for a spring release, will make it to stores just in in time to meet that deadline.
The release is now planned for June 17 - just three days before the start of summer, which officially starts June 21.
The Maniacs' home page on the world wide web (www.maniacs.com) features a count-down to the album's release, which is anxiously awaited by band members.
On Thursday, the web site message read, "LOVE AMONG THE RUINS IN 3 MONTHS & 11 DAYS."
"We remastered the record on March 3 in Los Angeles," said keyboardist Dennis Drew from his home in Jamestown. "As long as everything gets approved on it, it will be ready for June 17. We're very excited about being able to get back to work."
The band had announced the album would be released sometime in April.
A single is expected to be release sometime in May in anticipation of the album, Drew said, "though it's not written in stone yet."
The delay in the album's release, the keyboardist said, is due partly to the fastidious mastering and packaging process and partly because of glitches. He likened the mastering process to creating a mold from which the other CDs and cassette tapes will be created.
"We know they mastered one of the wrong songs," he said. "They used the single edit version instead of the album track. We know that's going to have to go back. This is the process where we decide how much time goes between each song."
The copy, or text, for the album sleeve, he said, is due this month. Other deadlines have forced band members to fly back and forth between Los Angeles and Western New York.
In the interim, bassist Steve Gustafson said no concerts are scheduled. Drew said the band's guitarist, Rob Buck, is busy lending his guitarwork to a release by folk-punkers The Violent Femmes and working on a tribute to beat poet Jack Kerouac issued on Rykodisc. The spoken-word recordings, placed over a template of music, will include Buck's guitar-work.
The 10,000 Maniacs' last performance was Jan. 20 in Washington at one of President Clinton's Inaugural Balls after a performance at the 9:30 Club. Rolling Stone reviewed the club show, saying the performance was "clean and tight as ever," and "By the time (singer Mary Ramsey) tackled the first fave from yesteryear, 'What's the Matter Here?,' the painful comparisons to Merchant were all but hushed," according to the band's website.
"As long as we hit all the deadlines, the single will be out sometime in May," Drew said. "We're still waiting to hear the duplicates of the master and approve it. As long as everything gets approved, it'll be ready for June 17."