Little. She composed music for the Chico theater group The Blue Room, for a play based on Molière's The Misanthrope, with lyrics by playwright Lauren Goldman Marshall. Manning also hosted a weekly radio program called Radio Detour on listener-supported station KZFR. Cover songs In addition to being a highly regarded songwriter, Manning is known as an interpreter of other writers' songs. Artists she's covered include The Bats ("Smoking Her Wings"), Badfinger ("Baby Blue"), Jackson Browne ("These Days"), The Verlaines ("Joed Out"), Portastatic ("Through with People"), Tom Lehrer ("Rickety Tickety Tin"), and Les Paul and Mary Ford ("Blow the Smoke Away"). Manning sings "San Diego Zoo", the opening track on the 1995 album Wasps' Nests by Stephin Merritt's side project The 6ths. Her cover of Marianne Faithfull's "The Shalala Song" can be heard in Jon Moritsugu's 1994 film Mod Fuck Explosion. Of her penchant for covering such a wide range of songs, she stated: "I listen to a lot of different types of music. I think that's why there's such a diverse bunch of covers...If I fall in love with a song, I'll make a tape of that one song and hear it 50 times in a row without having to rewind. Usually, all the covers I've done are songs that I've obsessed on." Personal life Manning lives with her husband Dan Vargas, a music producer, in Long Beach, California. She teaches science at Hutchinson Middle School in Los Angeles County. Discography Solo releases Lately I Keep Scissors (Heyday, 1988) One Perfect Green Blanket (Heyday, 1991) Barbara Manning Sings with the Original Artists – collaboration with Stuart Moxham of Young Marble Giants and Jon Langford of The Mekons (Feel Good All Over, 1995) 1212 (Matador, 1997) In New Zealand – collaboration with various musicians (Communion, 1999) Collections One Perfect Green Blanket – CD release compiled with Lately I Keep Scissors (Heyday, 1993) Under One Roof: Singles and Oddities (Innerstate, 2000) Super Scissors – three-disc re-issue of Lately I Keep Scissors andOne Perfect Green Blanket with previously unreleased bonus tracks, outtakes and demos (Rainfall, 2008) Chico Daze – previously unreleased songs recorded in Chico, CA from 2004 to 2009, on Bandcamp, 2016 Singles Don't Let It Bring You Down b/w Haze Is Free (Mounting a Broken Ladder) (Forced Exposure, 1990) February 8, 1992 with Seymour Glass – "8s" and "CZC" (Majora, 1992) We Go Under with Flophouse – "B4 We Go Under"