It was a time of hope, a time for freedom and a time of tremendous possibilities…

And in the State of Ohio, a rag-tag group of rebels was about to start a musical revolution….

It would be a fateful night. The year was 1997, the month was August, the day was Tuesday, the hour was 8, and so on. The place was Phil’s Roller-Rama in Columbus, Ohio (“the Buckeye State”). Manda Marble, the master bass-player, had just won second place in the free-style figure roller skating competition and was celebrating with 7-Up and nacho-styled corn chips at the snack bar. It was then that the rink’s stage lights went up…the Trucker Hat Banjo Five was about to step up to the microphone.

The Trucker Hat Banjo Five had started the previous summer and had electrified the Columbus music scene with their unique mix of bluegrass, hiphop, funk, punk, oi, jazz, and Bavarian chamber music. Although they were both ground-breaking and innovative, internal problems threatened the band’s stability, and as would prove fortunate, their show at Phil’s Roller-Rama was to prove their last.

The Trucker Hat Banjo Five’s First and Only Album
(Courtesy of Creamed Corn Records)

Accordion player Mark Slak and Rhythm-Violinist Joe A. Damage, left without a band to call their own, joined up with the young Marble to form a new band. The trio took their name from William Shakespeare’s As You Like It, forming up as:

Manda and the “Not see him since? Sir, sir, that cannot be:
But were I not the better part made mercy,
I should not seek an absent argument
Of my revenge, thou present. But look to it:
Find out thy brother, wheresoe’er he is;
Seek him with candle; bring him dead or living
Within this twelvemonth, or turn thou no more
To seek a living in our territory.
Thy lands and all things that thou dost call thine
Worth seizure do we seize into our hands,
Till thou canst quit thee by thy brothers mouth
Of what we think against thee”’s

Eventually it was decided that it would cost far too much to put this name on a t-shirt, and that it would be darn near impossible to put the band’s name on a legible button. The name would be dropped in early October, just before the band’s first show at the Day n’ Niter 24 Hour Laundromat and Pancake House in downtown Columbus.

Columbus, Ohio: The Garden City

It was on that chilly autumn night that the world first witnessed Manda and the Marbles. Unfortunately for the band, they had been so busy choosing a new name that they had neglected to write a single song. The audience didn’t seem to mind, since Mark Slak’s hair was so nice to look at. Eventually this slight deficiency was solved, as was the issue of Joe A. Damage’s terrible narcolepsy affliction which had ruined several of the band’s earliest shows. When Manda Marble finally got around to purchasing a bass for herself, the band was ready to hit the big time in a big way.

Within a few months of getting together, Manda and the Marbles launched their first attack on the vulnerable music scene, with the release of Rock’s Not Dead, a septology of pure sonic force and driving power. So amazing was Rock’s Not Dead, that scientists working for the National Air and Space Administration (NASA) chose the song “Louise” as the Official Song of the Cassini-Huygens Mission to Saturn and Titan. When the spacecraft reached Saturn in July of 2004, speakers built into the probe blasted the Manda and the Marbles’s song throughout the Solar System. It was not heard, however, since sound cannot travel in a vacuum.

The past few years have seen remarkable and amazing things for the world’s most amazing musical combo. The Marbles’ continue their creation of fine music, putting out the albums Seduction, More Seduction, and Angels with Dirty Faces. The Marbles even managed to increased their numbers, and their musical prowess by 33.3 (repeating) percent in 2004, when keyboard player Elias donned the Sacred Gilded Daisy Chain of Cleveland and was officially inducted into the Order of the Marbles.

Throughout the past five deci-decades, Manda and the Marbles have forged for themselves not only a place in the music world, but a place for themselves in the pages of history. They have performed before Kings, Queens, Viceroys, Presidents, Arch-Bishops and Chairpersons of the Board. People across eight continents and five hundred countries have rocked out to their music. Their sounds have been featured in such hit films as “Beach Party Massacre,” “Typeset Titan: The Johannes Gutenberg Story,” and “Don Quixote 3000.” Former President Jimmy Carter has declared Manda and the Marbles “…the best hope for peace in the Middle East.”

James Robard Carter: A President

And, most recently, they were honored at The Slick Spot in Meridian Mississippi when drag queen Ida Bomb performed “Dangerous” on stage in a Manda-impersonation that witnesses could only describe as “…breathtaking…”

Ida Bomb: A Slick Spot Favorite

Without a doubt, the future will be bright for these shining stars….