19872. Hey Jack Kerouac
3. Like The Weather
4. Cherry Tree
5. The Painted Desert
6. Don't Talk
8. Gun Shy
9. My Sister Rose
10. A Campfire Song
11. City Of Angels
12. Verdi Cries
It was the summer of my 14th year when I saw the video for Like the Weather by 10,000 Maniacs. My friend Lonnie (the same one who wasn't as impressed as he should have been with Tango in the Night) was on vacation in Florida, so I wrote down the name of the song and the artist so that I could tell him about it when he got back to town. I loved it, and I knew that he would too.
He did. And we listened to that tape all summer long. One of the things I loved most about In My Tribe was that Like the Weather, which was great, actually turned out to be one of my least favorite songs on the album because everything else was so so good.
Not long after the album came out, I remember reading in Rolling Stone that it was the top college music album in the country. I felt so grown up somehow. Just the idea of college music stirred all these romanticized images in my mind of all-night political discussions in the dorm, saving the world -- you know, all those college cliches that are mostly untrue. But still, I loved the thought. And the songs on In My Tribe were actually about something. Something important I thought. Child abuse (What's the Matter Here?), illiteracy (Cherry Tree), war (Gun Shy) ...
And as if to underline how grown up I was becoming, my parents agreed to let me go see 10,000 Maniacs in my FIRST EVER out-of-town concert. It was at Mud Island Amphitheater in Memphis. Natalie Merchant sat down at the piano for the final song of the night, the gorgeous Verdi Cries, and just as she began to sing (no lie) a bug flew in her mouth. She stopped playing & started to explain to the audience what happened, but some ass yelled at her to shut up so she got up and left the stage. End of show.
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