I have been watching the Umphrey’s McGee Mantis page for updates on newly unlocked Levels and as a result I’m signed into the Meebo chat (as “playbsides” if anyone wants to talk). Other than the grand debate about whether 1000 copies of the Deluxe Package depreciates the “value” or rarity of it versus the fact that some fans are bummed they didn’t get in on it– there hasn’t been a lot of useful chatter. I’ve helped some folks understand what the deal is with the pre-order mostly.

But, today I happened to catch someone mentioning the free downloads in the UMLive accounts and sure enough– I signed into “My Stash” and in addition to the pre-order for Mantis, there was another item ready for download called “Mantis Pre-Order: Early Bird Bonus” which showed available for download! I didn’t get an e-mail about it, but my e-mail gateway does whitelisting so it bounces the mails for resend and that adds some time to e-mail receipt for me.

At any rate– very cool deal! I got two tracks: both from the amazing 10-31-2008 Halloween show at the Warfield in San Francisco. This show was pretty cool in that they decided to do live performed “mash-ups.”

The two tracks we got were “Women, Wine and Song” (a 128Kbps rip) from the show and a Backstage Vocal Rehearsal of the band working out the vocals to “Thriller” which was mashed with “Another Brick in the Wall” (a 192Kbps rip).

You can listen to “Women, Wine and Song” from the Warfield show at Archive.org.

In other cool news, the Umphrey’s Camp has noticed my Mantis Bonus Watch article and linked to it from The Floor, which is their blog. It’s driven my page views to the highest they’ve ever been! Hello to new visitors, I hope your stay is pleasant.