Secrets of the I Ching by 10,000 Maniacs

Secrets of the I Ching, the first full album from 10,000 Maniacs, came out in 1983 on Mark Records, a year after their debut EP, Human Conflict Number Five. Natalie Merchant, the band's original singer and songwriter, is here alongside John Lombardo, Robert Buck, Dennis Drew, Steven Gustafson and Jerome Augustyniak, and this is the band before the polish: jangly, earnest, a little ragged around the edges, and plainly going somewhere.

Plenty of it got a second life. "Tension" (itself a re-cut of an EP song), "Grey Victory", "Daktari" and "My Mother the War" were all recorded again for 1985's The Wishing Chair, the first of them renamed "Tension Makes a Tangle". And every track on the LP resurfaced, remixed, remastered and reshuffled, on the 1990 compilation Hope Chest: The Fredonia Recordings 1982-1983.

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