10,000 Maniacs
10,000 Maniacs
10,000 Maniacs (named after the 1960s low-budget horror film Two Thousand Maniacs) are a multi-platinum alternative folk-pop rock band formed in in Jamestown, NY. In 1981, high school friends John Lombardo and Robert Buck joined a band originally named Still Life, then invited Natalie Merchant, a local sixteen-year-old ‘timid hippie girl’, to jam with them at a party.
Within a few years, the band was packing hipster clubs along the US east coast, including the famous 40 Watt Club in Athens, Georgia. Electra Records signed them, but their first album, written mainly by Lombardo, failed to make an impact. Their second album In My Tribe was written by the remaining members after Lombardo’s exit, and it gave the band their first mainstream success. “What’s The Matter Here?” and “Like The Weather” were minor US hits that eventually pushed the album to double platinum sales.
The follow-up Blind Man’s Zoo initially made a bigger impact than its predecessor in the US, reaching #13 and almost giving the band its first US top 40 hit with “Trouble Me” (also the band’s first UK hit), but was later called “a critical and financial disappointment” by Rolling Stone. Member Steve Gustafson later shared, “Most people around us thought that that was it, that it was over and we were never gonna make another record.”