Like attractive book covers and wine bottle labels featuring cute animals, the band’s name alone drew me in. Back then and still.

10,000 Maniacs.

Like, 10,000 crazy people. Sign me up.

“Hey, I know them,” I said the moment I saw their page in the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts spring 2025 line-up. Or I thought I did.

With two free tickets to the show in hand, I suddenly realized I couldn’t name a single song by the band…and that I was mixing them up with The Cranberries.

With a little prompting from Apple music, I started humming along again. “These Are Days.” “Because the Night.” “More Than This.” Songs I could hum to but had not yet paid attention to the words. That was me as a teenager: very taken with the surface shine.

And then there’s the iconic MTV Unplugged performance fronted by Natalie Merchant. I know I didn’t watch it live, but visuals from the performance and live tracks – “Because the Night” with applause that’s just as much a part of the music as the piano and strings – helped to define for me what was out there when I was getting a sense of myself, emerging from a family steeped in classical music.

Attending the 10,000 Maniacs show at the Krannert this month, I remembered something else – that a prime joy of a live concert is letting my mind wander, something I almost never have a moment for in this phase of my life. I’m going to let my mind wander a little now, to an accompaniment of “Don’t Talk,” which I misheard as “Dump Truck” during the live performance. Shows you where my brain is.

Mary Ramsey, the current lead singer, plays the violin on stage. It’s electric. I love this. She’s not Natalie Merchant, the original lead, but she’s got a big voice and a quirky, educated stage presence.

They’ve been doing this in various configurations for more than 40 years. So many band members have come and gone and come back, their Wikipedia page has a timeline on it. The individuals come and go, the band endures.

From the stage, band members shared stories of things like their first record deal, having to write 15-20 new songs in three months, and holing up in a cabin together to make that happen. To someone trying to make art at a rate of a little bit every day, it was inspiring. You can lock yourself in a cabin with four of your best friends and make art happen when it needs to.

The show started a little awkwardly. I felt awkward. They were playing rock music to a bunch of people sitting in auditorium seats as if we were at the symphony. But part of the genius of the show was that the band just rolled with it, kept playing their songs and gradually, through a mix of well-known hits, lesser-known songs, a few covers and banter, plus a few spotlight tricks, they drew us out. By the end, Mary barely mentioned ‘dance’ and pointed to the empty space in front of the stage and half the audience, it seemed, poured out of their seats.

I was among them, nudged up there by my husband: ‘You want to be up there, don’t you?’ I did, yes. But you know that admonition to “dance like nobody’s looking?” That’s not me. I swayed back and forth for a few songs then, feeling a little junior high, returned to my seat. I’ll never lead a rock band.

A few years ago, a saw a tweet meant to be provocative: Quick, name three bands fronted by women.

The ONLY bands I could think of were fronted by women: The Cranberries. Hole. Four Non-Blonds. Allison Krauss and Union Station. Stone Cole Miracle. And yes, 10,000 Maniacs.

In my world, women are the norm, especially musically. It’s not a bad way to be. I’m happy that my baseline musical instincts are counter-cultural in this small way.

The day after I saw 10,000 Maniacs live in this intimate setting, I learned that only 2 women were nominated this year for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Is there something constitutionally different about a band led by a woman than male-fronted bands we’re supposed to have on the tips of our tongues.

U2, for instance, shared space in the top song charts with 10,000 Maniacs (and room on my CD rack). They played the Super Bowl years ago and now where are they? There’s no chance I’d be in the sixth row for one of their shows. And not much chance they’d connect to an audience this well after so many years. That’s only a sample of one, but it seems as though membership in the hall of fame precludes a band from intimate college campus performances decades after their so-called prime.

There was an older guy (older than me, anyway) in a neat plaid shirt he could have worn to the office the day of the show standing about 10 rows back, losing himself to “These Are Days.” Hands up, head back. All the lyrics at the top of his lungs. Another joy of live music – watching people shift into another mode, being overtaken.  

A hit titled “These Are Days” (“you’ll remember/Never before and never since…”) was an eerily prescient thing to sing at the beginning of a 40+ year career. 10,000 Maniacs wrote themselves into longevity.

Never before and never since: the last magic of a live show is that you can’t rewind.

Days to remember – I’ll remember this one.