Young Manasseh's Stains & On the Trail of Young Manasseh - The Manna Sustains

And now! We are excited to announce that we are beginning to put songs from our new EPIC MURDER BALLAD SONG CYCLE, The Manna Sustains, on youtubes. It is narrative collection of folk songs, with many characters weaving thru the story, a bit of mystery and INTRIGUE, plenty of sex, drinking and drugs. We would like to perform the whole thing some time this summer, but in the meantime, for lack of anything better to do with this project, here are videos of The Manna Tease singing the first two songs: "Young Manasseh's Stains" and "On the Trail of Young Manasseh."
Update: I think the live version from our Adobe books gig is better than the one originally posted (below):

Young Manasseh's Stains

...wherein Young Manasseh comes to Arkansas City to find romance, goes on a Bender, and elopes with the Sheriff's Deputy.

Young Manasseh came to Arkansas City for to find romance.
The lights were bright & the girls were pretty, but Manny was too drunk to dance.
He laid on the steps of City Hall to take a nap.
He dreamt of alligators & an apple as round as the equator,
And his feet went tappity-tap-tap-tappity-tap.
Then descendin' the steps of City Hall came a deputy sheriff named Maple Seraph,
And said, Manny, you smell like poop.

Young Manasseh woke up in the drunk tank hungover as Colonel Qaddafi.
Sheriff Maple said you have only yourself to thank. Would you like a cup of coffee?
Manny & Maple went to get some cappuccino next door at the casino owned by Donald Trump.
They talked about the economy & the rising of the sea,
And his heart went thumputy thump-thump-thumpity thump-thump-thumpity-thump.
They switched to margaritas & shots of tequilas & bet on the Kenos,
And they put all their money on red.

Young Manesseh woke up in a nasty motel where Elvis once stayed.
Next to Manny was the Sheriff Maple & her rifle on the bed where they laid.
She said, Manny, oh, Man, we need to make a plan, 'cause I think we killed a man, but first where's my clothes?
Then he kissed her on the nose & on her roast beef toes,
And she moaned out whoa-whoa who's-your-do-see-dodo-doze whoa-whoa-whoa-whoze.
They hopped in his '90's Toyota & drove to the border of Louisiana,
Where they ditched the rifle.

Young Manasseh ran out of gas in the Mississippi swamp.
He & Sheriff Maple set up a muddy igloo & made love in the muddy damp.
He said, you don't have to decide, but if you'd like to be my bride, I've got nothing to provide, & she said Ja!
So they killed an alligator & they baked an apple fritter, & danced till later,
And they sang la la la la la la la la la la la.
The moral of the tale's if you want to kill a whale, you don't always need a harpoon,
But it helps get the Sheriff drunk.

©2011 The Manna Tease

Here's a free downloadable mp3 of the above live version if you wish to have it:


UPDATE: Introducing new illuminated sheet music! "Young Manasseh's Stains" with illustrations by Grainne Proinseas:
Young Manassehs Stains, from The Manna Sustains - Illuminated Sheet Music

On the Trail of Young Manasseh

...wherein we find our hero, Special Agent Francis, searching for the fugitive Young Manasseh up in Alaska.

Special Agent Francis on the trail of Young Manasseh,
Hitched a lift with a hang-glider from Ketchikan, Alaska:
Her name's Amanda, from Ketchikan, Alaska!

Special Agent Francis on the trail of Young Manasseh,
Hitched a lift with a hang-glider from Ketchikan, Alaska:
Her name's Amanda, from Ketchikan, Alaska!

As they soared above the glacier,
Fantastic as fallacier,
On the trail of Young Manasseh,
Swarms of clouds unfold to form a boreal castle,
Swarms of clouds unfold to form a boreal....

Amanda sang,
Where does the ice go when it melts into my glass of Scotch?
Francis said,
Should you be drinking while you're hang-gliding, miss?
Amanda sang,
When we die in the Arctic, do the glaciers weep & watch?
Francis replied,
Please pay attention where you're guiding us.

Special Agent Francis, airsick, & sick of her song,
Ditched his hippie hang-glider & hitchhiked to Saskatchewan,
Goodbye Amanda! see you never!

Special Agent Francis on the trail of Young Manasseh,
Hitched a lift with a hang-glider from Ketchikan, Alaska:
Her name's Amanda, from Ketchikan, Alaska!

Special Agent Francis, airsick, & sick of her song,
Ditched his hippie hang-glider & hitchhiked to Saskatchewan,
Goodbye Amanda! see you never!

©2011 The Manna Tease
"On the Trail of Young Manasseh" incorporates the traditional American folk tune "Boll Weevil" (public domain.)

Next: Song no. III: What Mary Noticed.

The Manna Sustains
An Epic Murder-Ballad Song-Cycle
by the Manna Tease

And the Lord said, I brought you into this world, and I can take you out.
-Exodus 16.37

Prelude. The Wind & the Rain
Song no. I. Young Manasseh's Stains
Song no. II. On the Trail of Young Manasseh
Song no. III. What Mary Noticed
Song no. IV. First Vision of St Olaf
First Interlude. The Wind & Snow
Song no. V. Wha' Happened in Oaxaca
Song no. VIa. Who are you, Elle Mary?
Song no. VIb. Second Vision of St Olaf
Song no. VII. Pink Mary's Stains
Song no. VIIIa. Banks of Pontchartrain
Song no. VIIIb. Young Manasseh Complains
Second Interlude. The Wind & Mud
Song no. IXa. Arkansas City
Song no. IXb. On the Trail of Pink Mary
Song no. X. Pink Mary's Marriage
Song no. XIa. Chase Scene / The Spatula / Pink Mary's Death
Song no. XIb. The Manna Sustains
Song no. XIc. Pink Mary's Resurrection / Wha' Happened in Oklahoma / Who Are You, Elle Mary? (Reprise)
Song no. XII. Young Manasseh Remains
Hymn. Sacred Throne
Palinode. And I Will No Longer Smoke My Hubbly-Bubbly Solitarily

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Auto-Tune brings Harmony to the Middle East: "We will dance to ‘Zenga-Zenga’ in the square"

This New York Times article has everything: Arab-Israeli relations, Revolution, Qaddafi, T-Pain, & naked dancing girls. I'll quote it in full:

JERUSALEM — A YouTube clip mocking Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s megalomania is fast becoming a popular token of the Libya uprising across the Middle East. And in an added affront to Colonel Qaddafi, it was created by an Israeli living in Tel Aviv.
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Noy Alooshe, 31, an Israeli journalist, musician and Internet buff, said he saw Colonel Qaddafi’s televised speech last Tuesday in which the Libyan leader vowed to hunt down protesters “inch by inch, house by house, home by home, alleyway by alleyway,” and immediately identified it as a “classic.”

“He was dressed strangely, and he raised his arms” like at a trance party, Mr. Alooshe said Sunday in a telephone interview, referring to the gatherings that feature electronic dance music. Then there were Colonel Qaddafi’s words with their natural beat.

Mr. Alooshe spent a few hours at the computer, using pitch corrector technology to set the speech to the music of “Hey Baby,” a song by the American rapper Pitbull, featuring another artist, T-Pain. Mr. Alooshe titled it “Zenga-Zenga,” echoing Colonel Qaddafi’s repetition of the word zanqa, Arabic for alleyway.

By the early hours of Wednesday morning, Mr. Alooshe had uploaded the electro hip-hop remix to YouTube, and he began promoting it on Twitter and Facebook, sending the link to the pages of young Arab revolutionaries. By Sunday night, the original clip had received nearly 500,000 hits and had gone viral.

Mr. Alooshe, who at first did not identify himself on the clip as an Israeli, started receiving enthusiastic messages from all around the Arab world. Web surfers soon discovered that he was a Jewish Israeli from his Facebook profile — Mr. Alooshe plays in a band called Hovevey Zion, or the Lovers of Zion — and some of the accolades turned to curses. A few also found the video distasteful.

But the reactions have largely been positive, including a message Mr. Alooshe said he received from someone he assumed to be from the Libyan opposition saying that if and when the Qaddafi regime fell, “We will dance to ‘Zenga-Zenga’ in the square.”

The original clip features mirror images of a scantily clad woman dancing along to Colonel Qaddafi’s rant. Mr. Alooshe said he got many requests from Web surfers who asked him for a version without the dancer so that they could show it to their parents, which he did.

Mr. Alooshe speaks no Arabic, though his grandparents were from Tunisia. He said he used Google Translate every few hours to check messages and remove any offensive remarks.

Israelis have been watching the events in Libya unfold with the same rapt attention as they have to the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt.

In the past, Colonel Qaddafi has proposed that Palestinian refugees should return en masse by ship to Israel’s shores, and that Israel and the Palestinian territories should be combined into one state called Isratine.

Mr. Alooshe said he was a little worried that if the Libyan leader survived, he could send one of his sons after him. But he said it was “also very exciting to be making waves in the Arab world as an Israeli.”

As one surfer wrote in an Arabic talkback early Sunday, “What’s the problem if he’s an Israeli? The video is still funny.” He signed off with the internationally recognized “Hahaha.”