T-shirt #289 - 10,000 Maniacs - Our Time in Eden

T-shirt #289 - 10,000 Maniacs - Our Time in Eden

My friend Tom Meyers, better known as the Lord of Chaos, is visiting, and we are playing Dungeons and Dragons, specifically Pathfinder (which is D&D 3.5, modified by Paizo), so these entries during his visit will be brief. See him pictures in this same shirt as we share a love for this band: 10,000 Maniacs, whom I wrote about it originally in T-shirt #257 and featured my tickets.

Here's a short interview with him about his love of 10,000 Maniacs.

Me: Do you remember when you first learned about 10,000 Maniacs?

LOC: I first learned about 10,000 Maniacs walking through the northern end of Trowbridge Hall some time after we graduated with my friend Chris Tower. We heard someone playing the Wishing Chair album and maybe the song "Back of the Moon." I was struck viscerally with the way the main vocalist phrased words and sentences in the lyrics and the sound of her voice. I was captured by it. For me, it became the most meaningful music of the time.

When I listened to 10,000 Maniacs now, the music transports me to those times in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It brings me backs to specific times and feelings and emotions to when I first heard the song. Listening to a song today, I can go back to when I first heard it, how I felt then, what was happening.

I really like the fact that they were contrary to the popular music of the time. They were unique, different, and non-commercial.

In My Tribe transformed me more than The Wishing Chair because I really felt that it was a more mature sound. It was better mixed and better produced. I knew a guy who hated that the band sang about things that were important, but I loved that about it. And another thing, the poster, the images, the patch, the symbols, all of the visual elements were important to me. And this album propelled 10,000 Maniacs to my number one favorite musical group, and the album made it imperative that I see them live. It was one of the first albums I actively shared with other people, telling people "you have to listen to this. It's awesome."


I have seen the band six times in concert. The last of which, during the Our Time in Eden tour, I had front row seats, and I felt that Natalie was making eye contact with me, singing to me, and could tell that I was the band's biggest fan. I can't listen to 10,000 Maniacs without being reminded of my feelings during those years for a woman I knew in law school.

Me: What is your favorite 10,000 Maniacs album?

LOC: That is a very difficult question. If I have to choose one album, I would choose their last: Our Time In Eden.

Me: Rank the album in terms of your favorites?

LOC: I don't count albums after Natalie Merchant left the band. They are all very closely ranked but here goes:

1. In My Tribe
2. Our Time in Eden
3. The Wishing Chair
4. MTV Unplugged
5. Campfire Songs
6. Hope Chest
7. Blind Man's Zoo

Me: What are your top ten favorite 10,000 Maniacs song?

LOC: "These Are Days," "What's The Matter Here," "Cotton Alley," "Stockton Gala Days," "The Painted Desert," "Don't Go Back to Rockville," "Let the Mystery Be," "Back of the Moon," "Tension Makes a Tangle," "Verdi Cries."

Back O' The Moon - 10,000 Maniacs

10,000 Maniacs - Stockton Gala Days - Letterman

10000 Maniacs - "Don't Go Back To Rockville"

cover of an REM song.

 

I post songs on THIS IS MY JAM. Here's my jams for the last two years. Enjoy my odysseys.

My Jam Odyssey 2012 from This is My Jam

My Jam Odyssey 2013 from This is My Jam

COUNTDOWN TO END OF THE BLOG YEAR - 76 shirts remaining

- chris tower - first published - 1401.04 - 20:52
final publication - 1401.05 - 14:24