Here are the the tea blends and relevant songs that were a part of March’s Sound & Vision opening at Hiveartspace in York:  (you can get your own pouches and tins of the tea blends from Adagio, and 5% of each blend goes to support the ACLU.)

The What’s With All The Screaming blend was inspired by Jonathan Coulton’s Skullcrusher Mountain — yet another catchy tune about a mad scientist in love.

“I made this half-pony, half-monkey monster to please you / But I get the feeling that you don’t like it / What’s with all the screaming? / You like monkeys, you like ponies / Maybe you don’t like monsters so much / Maybe I used too many monkeys / Isn’t it enough to know that I ruined a pony making a gift for you?”

The PonyMonkeyMonster collage in the show goes with this tea because it goes with the song. (It’s my very first but probably not last PonyMonkeyMonster! There’s a part of me that wants very much to make a Concrete Cuddler that’s also a PonyMonkeyMonster, but it’s not likely to happen this week.)

Moving on!

 Forget Your Perfect Offering blend was inspired by lyrics in Leonard Cohen’s song Anthem. You probably know the ones: “Ring the bells that still can ring / forget your perfect offering / There is a crack in everything / that’s how the light gets in.”

(There’s another Leonard Cohen-inspired blend called A Thousand Kisses Deep, as well, but that one wasn’t one of the blend samples handed out at the show.) (Or maybe it was and they just got scooped up so fast I didn’t see them — that’d be pretty cool.)

 Pirin Zalag was inspired by Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer’s song The Mountain, which is all kinds of super special to me.

I won’t go into why because it’s kind of an intense story for a conversation about tea, but Pirin Zalag comes from the Sumerian chant that Dave sings in the background of the song, and it means Forest of Light, which gives me goosebumps.  The song is beautiful and the tea doesn’t suck.

Then there’s Squirrelly Spice, inspired by the band The Squirrel Nut Zippers.

And Nesatovo, inspired by the song of the same name by the group Beats Antique.

Then comes Wildflowers, inspired by Dolly Parton’s song Wildflower. (Yes, technically there are three artists on this track from the Trio album but it’s totally a Saint Dolly song.)

And finally Once More With Feeling, which of course is inspired by the whole Buffy soundtrack rather than just the song.

The painful label design comes straight from the CD design, which I had for the longest time. It’s been years and years, but once in a blue moon there’s still some breaking into song around a certain group of friends. Because yep. That warrants a tea, for sure.