New Illustrated Songs from The Manna Sustains: First Vision of St Olaf, and The Wind & Snow

The Manna Sustains will eventually be an illuminated songbook, but I'm putting out individual illustrated songs while I work on it. Original art by Grainne Proinseas! Here's First Vision of St Olaf:
First Vision of St Olaf, from The Manna Sustains - Illustrated Sheet Music
Feel free to download, print, & play around with as you wish. This song was posted earlier here with a rehearsal youtube video:


NEXT: First Interlude: The Wind & Snow.

The Wind & Snow, First Interlude from The Manna Sustains - Illustrated Sheet Music
And we have a new video for this song, too:


The audio for that video can be downloaded as a free mp3 here if you wish:

Thank you so much. Stay tuned for more illustrated sheet music & demo videos from The Manna Sustains. Please "like" The Manna Tease on Facebooks! & also Grainne Proineas' artist page.

Illuminated Sheet Music - What Mary Noticed from The Manna Stains illustrated digital songbook!

Another addition to our burgeoning genre of illuminated digital sheet music - "What Mary Noticed" from The Manna Sustains, an Epic Murder-Ballad Song-Cycle by The Manna Tease. This will eventually be a whole illustrated songbook illuminated by Grainne Proinseas, & we'll be dropping samples of individual songs as Scribd documents over the next few weeks.

What Mary Mary Noticed, from The Manna Sustains - Illuminated Sheet Music
Please download, print, and play around with as you wish. The Manna Tease singing a somewhat rough-around-the-edges rehearsal of this song into the youtubes:

Stay tuned for more illustrated songs! & more from The Manna Sustains. Lyrics to "What Mary Noticed" originally posted here. Please "like" The Manna Tease on facebooks here, & Grainne Proinseas here.

Introducing: Illuminated Sheet Music - Young Manasseh's Stains from The Manna Stains illustrated digital songbook!

And now, Grainne Proinseas & I are spearheading an initiative to spearhead the genre of illuminated songbooks. The Manna Tease's Epic Murder Ballad Song Cycle, The Manna Sustains, will be a fully illuminated songbook illustrated by Grainne Proinseas, and I'll release little excerpts of individual songs as we create them, practice the project, et cetera.
Young Manassehs Stains, from The Manna Sustains - Illuminated Sheet Music

Please download, print, and play around with as you wish. I'm deliberately keeping the score pretty vague, just the melody and chord progression, with the occasional instrumental melody. Additional verses can differ slightly in melody & syncopation, &c. Here's us singing "Young Manasseh's Stains" live:

Stay tuned for more illustrated songs! & more from The Manna Sustains. Lyrics to "Young Manasseh's Stains" originally posted here. Please "like" The Manna Tease on facebooks here, & Grainne Proinseas here.

Henry K. Lee - The Manna Tease sing it live for the real Henry K. Lee!

The real Henry K. Lee with the real Manna Tease

On Thursday night, a band of east bay journalists had a party at the Warehouse, a divey cop bar in Oakland (quite thematically perfect.) They invited us, the Manna Tease, to come serenade them with our song "Henry K. Lee." The song was inspired by the bay area section of the San Francisco Chronicle, wherein almost every gruesome article about crime is written by one man, Henry K. Lee. My earlier youtube of it had become quasi-famous amongst colleagues of the real Henry K. Lee and other people who worked on crime news in the bay area. (It was featured on blogs here, here, here & here.) It was lovely to actually meet him, altho the real Henry K. Lee, a cheerful & charming man with seemingly few demons, is the opposite of the cheap-suit-wearing, chain-smoking man we had mythologized. We promised a better quality youtube (the original was just a camera phone rehearsal, &c.) & we now doubly deliver, with a fancier one & also the live one from the Warehouse:

Enough! or two too much! of that song. Lyrics & chords posted here. Henry K. Lee's facebook page here, & if you don't get the Chronicle, you can get his book Presumed Dead here.


Please "like" the Manna Tease on facebooks here.

Department of Quotes & Conversations: Why Buy 3 Bottles of Two Buck Chuck

Overheard conversation at Trader Joe's in Berkeley an hour ago: One man to another, justifying have three bottles of Charles Shaw in his basket:

"You know how when you buy two bottles, after you finish one, you're like, oh, I only have one bottle left. But when you buy three, after you finish one, you're like, I have two bottles left."

Unsurprisingly, I also had three bottles of Charles Shaw in my basket (pink wine to mix with lemonade for our Midsummer Shakespeare picnic tomorrow. I'll be playing Robin Goodfellow.)

Disc Baseball / Frisbee Baseball / Basedisc - How to play a game that doesn't exist

I was playing frisbee in a baseball diamond today, & trying to imagine how disc baseball might work. Something closer to disc golf, I would hope (where you can drink beer & trash talk), than to Ultimate, which is actually athletic. (So, more whiffle ball than MLB.) I assumed that this game has already been thought up by others, but my googly-research was a bit depressing. It revealed perhaps the saddest novelty sports blog possible, which owns the domain name www.discbaseball.com, screen shot below:

I imagined a game where the "pitcher" would throw a disc to the "batter," who would have to catch it and then re-throw it as far as he could into the outfield. Perhaps the baseball strike zone would be fairly larger than a baseball strike zone: If the pitcher failed to throw within the strike zone, it would be a ball, & if he threw it in the strike zone but the hitter couldn't catch it correctly, it would be a strike. Likewise, if a fielder caught the disc after the hitter re-threw it, the hitter would be out. I think the problem is, this game might be too easy for decent athletes, and only fun for beer-drinking hippies like ourselves who don't receive or throw too well. It might not leave enough time for the hitter to get to first base, & It might be harder, & better, with a smaller disc like a disc-golf disc. 


A website called gaggleofgames.com has also conceived of this game, and offers other hypothetical rules. Their use of the term "probably" makes it seem that they have not tried it either:

DISC BASEBALL

Thursday, 19 April 2007

Additional Props: Spots for Bases This game is played like baseball except for a few minor rule changes. Set up a baseball diamond by using the spots for bases and make the bases about 20 feet apart. Divide the group into two teams. Team 1 in the field, Team 2 at “bat”. There is no pitcher, and the rest of the team in the field can position themselves as needed (probably much like baseball). The first player from Team 2 throws the disc from home plate, then runs the bases. If the throw doesn’t go 20 ft. or goes foul, the batter tries again. Three fouls is an out. If the throw is caught on the fly, or the disc reaches a base before the runner gets there the batter is also out (just like baseball). As far as the fielders go, only the basemen (1st, 2nd, 3rd) can run with the disc. The other fielders have to throw it where it was picked up. Team 2 scores a run each time a runner crosses home plate. We play three outs to an inning and then the teams switch places. Make sure the fielders are at least 20 feet away (mark this area with the boundary cones) from home plate, so they don’t get beamed with the disc.

Please comment if anyone has attempted to play Disc Baseball, if it is just a bad idea, or how the rules might evolve into something functioning & fun.
Update: I also found this video, listed under "BaseDisc":

Sweet new Maloo Music Video: Sheehow

And now, a spicy sweet new music video from friends-of-the-blog Maloo [sic] featuring Olaf Mary & Jordan Epcar & a lovely film by Georges Méliès. [Note: This song was originally called "Parkinglot Dots" by the White Rasberries [sic]; correction appended.]

Indian Cress - Nasturtium love song - demo recording & video

Here's a tiny new love song, inspired by the nasturtium weeds that grow all over Berkeley.

And a sample demo mp3:



This and other non-Manna Tease demo songs available at the Friends Around the Campfire store here.

Please "like" / follow our band The Manna Tease on facebooks here.

Lyrics & chords:
(I'm using a capo & playing it in C#.)

Indian Cress

A Cmaj7 A Gmaj7/E

A Cmaj7
My girlfriend
D E
Growing like a weed
A Cmaj7
Some loves are planned,
D E
Others take seed.

Some flowers
Smell like the judgment,
But ours
Is tangy & pungent.

A F
Indian cress
G Gmaj7/E
Undress for success,
bmin7 E
Spicy & sweet
bmin7 E
On the side of the street,
bmin7 E
Your outfit is sexist
bmin7 E
(As) the orange rose of Texas,
c#min7 F#
Listen, my catcalls:
c#min7 F#
Let down your petals.
G Gmaj7/E A
Beautiful Indian cress.

A Cmaj7
My girlfriend
D E
Climbing a fence
A Cmaj7
Some girls depend (on you)
D E
Others pay your rents.

Some demons
Are wise or exotic,
And some poisons
Can be antibiotic.

Indian cress

Undress for success,

Spicy & sweet

On the side of the street,

bmin7 E

Your outfit is racist

bmin7 E

Take off your headdress,

bmin7 E

Clean off your faces,

bmin7 E

Your make-up is running,

c#min7 F#

Your tears are becoming

c#min7 F#

The dew in the morning,

c#min7 F#

Listen, my catcalls:

c#min7 F#

Let down your petals.

G Gmaj7/E A

Beautiful Indian cress.

©2011 The Manna Tease