Quote Originally Posted by Sidewinder View Post
Quote Originally Posted by BCR View Post
I really liked her. Saw them multiple times back then. Thought she was a truly excellent songwriter in addition to having a world class voice.

Kind of a weird band in that she was clearly the star who wrote everything, was attractive, and had that voice. Her band looked like some dudes from the bowling alley, yet they must have contributed something, even if it was just reining her in a bit. I found each of her successive solo albums worse than the last.

I mean she was always a liberal girl, but she’s been living up in tine country in the Hudson valley for decades now, and I just caught her in Cleveland on 5/13(had to check phone videos for date), and while her voice was still perfect and I enjoyed it, it like if felt like I was out of place at some feminist gathering.

Sang like 2 songs from her early solo career that I was familiar with, and then song after song about women’s issues. Very weird in that she was as talented vocally as ever, but I only found it enjoyable in a nostalgic sense. She used to write really good songs. Now she writes songs about feminist fairies. I kid you not. She was explaining her process in writing the song and I was like wtf is this?

My girlfriend is young enough where she missed that whole era of 10000 maniacs, doubt she would have liked it anyway being a country girl and it catered to a particular brand of college student of that era. She came away saying wow she can really sing, but kind of shocked I liked her so much at one time. I guess you had to be there .

This era of Natalie was something. I remember seeing her and Stipe do this Prine song and feeling bad for him trying to sing with her with that voice. I recall having a conversation about her I think with bottomset like 15 years ago iirc. I think he liked 10000 maniacs also, or I’m confusing who it was.

Word around Atlanta in the 80's was they were an item (before Stipe realized he was gay).

Natalie Merchant, REM are god-tier 80s music that wasn't hair metal.

She is a unique talent, but so institutionalized by her television we will never get any more good songs from her.

Check out Beloved Wife, San Andreas Fault and that song amount about River Phoenix to see how elevated she was as a singer song writer.
They were an item at one time.

I'm familiar with those songs. Kind of the end of her songwriting career imo.

I dug stuff from like a decade earlier.

Songs like The Big Parade. I used to do tours of DC when I was young and always thought of how many people there were asking themselves the bolded lyric below.

Detroit to D.C. night train, Capitol, parts East.
Lone young man takes a seat.
And by the rhythm of the rails, reading all his mother's mail from a city boy in a jungle town postmarked Saigon.
He'll go live his mother's dream, join the slowest parade he'll ever see.
Her weight of sorrows carried long and carried far.
"Take these, Tommy, to The Wall."

Metro line to the Mall site with a tour of Japanese.
He's wandering and lost until a vet in worn fatigues takes him down to where they belong.

Near a soldier, an ex-Marine with a tattooed dagger and eagle trembling, he bites his lip beside a widow breaking down.
She takes her Purple Heart, makes a fist, strikes The Wall.
All come to live a dream, to join the slowest parade they'll ever see.
Their weight of sorrows carried long and carried far, taken to The Wall.

It's 40 paces to the year that he was slain.
His hand's slipping down The Wall for it's slick with rain.
How would life have ever been the same if this wall had carved in it one less name?
But for Christ's sake, he's been dead over 20 years.
He leaves the letters asking, "Who caused my mother's tears, was it Washington or the Viet Cong?"
Slow deliberate steps are involved.
He takes them away from the black granite wall toward the other monuments so white and clean.

O, Potomac, what you've seen.
Abraham had his war too, but an honest war.
Or so it's taught in school.