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More than 30 years after Natalie Merchant took her final bow with 10,000 Maniacs, the band’s seminal set for MTV Unplugged will be reissued and expanded this fall.

Available September 6 on CD or two LPs, this remastered presentation of the original multiplatinum disc adds three extra songs from the performance featuring another lead singer for a band who recently had gone solo: David Byrne of Talking Heads. They performed covers of Iris DeMent (“Let the Mystery Be”), a Jimmie Dale Gilmore country tune (“Dallas”), and “Jolene,” made famous by Dolly Parton. (“Jolene” is streaming now and can be heard below.)

10,000 Maniacs had been plugging away for over a decade when they came together at Sony Music Studios in New York City on April 21, 1993 to shoot an episode of MTV Unplugged. They’d slowly courted alternative and some mainstream success with late ’80s singles “Like the Weather” and “Trouble Me” along with “These Are Days,” off 1992’s Our Time in Eden. By then, lead singer Natalie Merchant had already informed her bandmates (guitarist Rob Buck, keyboardist Dennis Drew, bassist Steven Gustafson and drummer Jerome Augustyniak) of her intentions to go solo, feeling hemmed into the structure of a band (later deeming it “art by committee” to Entertainment Weekly). With an expanded line-up that included percussionist Jerry Marotta, Information Society keyboardist Amanda Kramer and string players including Mary Ramsey (who’d played on Our Time in Eden and would replace Merchant as vocalist, a position she holds today), the MTV Unplugged set included “These Are Days,” “Like the Weather” and “Trouble Me” along with other favorites off Eden (“Candy Everybody Wants,” “I’m Not the Man,” “Stockton Gala Days”) and others from the band’s catalogue (“Don’t Talk,” “What’s the Matter Here?”).

By then, MTV Unplugged albums were big business: Mariah Carey’s cover of The Jackson 5’s “I’ll Be There” from her set was a No. 1 single, and Eric Clapton’s album from the performance won six Grammy Awards. It made sense, then, for 10,000 Maniacs to add a cover to their set: a scintillating version of Patti Smith’s “Because the Night,” a Bruce Springsteen outtake he gave her to add lyrics to. With the Byrne collaborations/covers unreleased on the original album, “Because the Night” was given focus as the single from the album, released four months after Merchant’s last show with the band. Against all odds, the cover reached No. 11 on the Billboard Hot 100 – the band’s biggest hit, two slots higher than Smith’s version – and the album matched the No. 13 chart peak of their 1989 album Blind Man’s Zoo, certified triple platinum by the RIAA for shipments of three million copies. Merchant’s solo career began in earnest, while 10,000 Maniacs continued on without her.

Check out the full track list and order links below. (As always: as Amazon affiliates, we earn a small portion from qualifying purchases at the below links.)

MTV Unplugged (Expanded Edition) (Elektra/Rhino R2 726868, 2024)

CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada
2LP: Amazon U.S. (TBD) / Amazon U.K. (TBD) / Amazon Canada (TBD)

+ bonus track featuring David Byrne

1. These Are Days
2. Eat for Two
3. Candy Everybody Wants
4. I’m Not the Man
5. Don’t Talk
6. Hey Jack Kerouac
7. What’s the Matter Here?
8. Gold Rush Brides
9. Like the Weather
10. Trouble Me
11. Jezebel
12. Because the Night
13. Stockton Gala Days
14. Noah’s Dove
15. Let the Mystery Be +
16. Dallas +
17. Jolene +

Tracks 1-14 released as Elektra 61569, 1993
Track 15 released on “Few & Far Between” CD single – Elektra 66296, 1993
Tracks 16-17 previously unreleased on CD. Included on original MTV Unplugged video/laserdisc – Elektra 40183, 1994