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A Band of Maniacs You Really Need to Know
A Plethora of Pop Writing Challenge
When Plethora of Pop editor and Monkees uber-fan Buddy Gott issued his February writing prompt, “The Shed a Little Light Music Challenge,” my first response was, of course, Springsteen-centered. After that, I wanted to bring attention to the 1987 10,000 Maniacs album, In My Tribe, but that one got bumped down the list by the Gin Blossoms’ New Miserable Experience. As I should have expected, several hardcore fans of both 10,000 Maniacs and Natalie Merchant took umbrage with this.
Normally the mini-outrage would have slid off me like water off a duck, but this time I let it trouble me. I was simply going to be done with the prompt after two stories, but considering the fact that over the past 30-plus years I have probably played New Miserable Experience and In My Tribe an equal number of times (it’s in the hundreds, at least), it would be wrong to leave the Maniacs out. So wrong, in fact, that I am deviating slightly from the prompt and bringing attention to the band itself rather than just one album (great as that album is).
Though unknown to many younger listeners today, if you came of age in the 1980s or early 1990s, the simple mention of the band’s name likely triggers some type of memory. For an all too brief period, they were one of the biggest things around…
