hms42

I attended both GaFilk 12 and Conflikt 3. Both conventions were fun and had some repeat concert performers.

GaFilk... Small relaxacon well worth the effort to travel to. (Plus having a local friend whom I get to see on Friday always makes it worth it.) The concerts were top notch. Dene Foye does a wonderful concert and it was nice to see him do more than just a few songs in circle. I hope to eventually see him with his Ghost of a Rose Partner at some point in the future. One of the highlights of the con was the 2x10s. Margaret Middleton and Rick Helmich (sp?) started them off with 2 covers of Larry Kirby songs. The really entertaining part of Rick's performance is that he took advantage of a description in Larry's pegasus nominated song, Redneck Pagan. He was in Redneck pagan garb with a possum on his shoulder, a hub cap containing a moon pie and a can of beer. The next performer was Larry Kirby who was called up with he opportunity to take revenge.

The rest of the GOH's concerts were also very good. Andrew Ross was entertaining and had a lot of good song that most had not heard before. (I have only seen him before at Denvention 3 and those in the Pacific Northwest are blessed with his presence.) Alexander James Adams concert was worth the trip down and its the first time I have been at a convention with him (in either incarnation). He has a new pre-release album (that sold out quickly) and released at the con, a DVD of a concert from mid-december. (I have not seen the DVD, so I can not comment on it.)

Just got word that my flight home is delayed about 20-30 minutes, so I can finish this con report.

I managed to record the con, so if you are looking for something you performed, I have not done more than back up the audio in two locations and pulled a few songs (by request of the performer). I ended the con with about 500mb disc space on my laptop (88.5gb of con recordings.)

Conflikt... Good, fun convention, a little more challenging at points... Being on EST while the con runs on PST. I got to see people I have not seen in a year (or more) and a few I had seen 3 weeks before (about 6-7 including Alec and Andrew who had been at GaFilk.) The concerts were good and it was nice to see some of the people live vs on recordings on my computer or on tape.

Conflikt has a policy of if you had a concert last year, you don't get one this year, which works great and forces them to rotate the performers, so each year someone else gets a concert. They are much heavier on the number of concert than GaFilk (which tends to have about 5). The 1/2 hour concerts of many people from their area gave us all a chance to experience people we would not have seen otherwise. CD Woodbury, New Bunk Foss, Ash Productions, Rebecca Newman, Aislinn all had fun concerts. I know I have heard some of them in circle before, but only have seen Aislinn in concert before (Denvention 3). This was a great way to introduce people to their music. CD Woodbury gave out a CD for the first 100 people to the registration desk. (Thank you CD) and Aislinn released a CD of filk songs. She rereleased some songs of hers that have been out of print for over 20 years. I enjoyed her concert and seeing her perform live again. Alec's concert rocked. The GOH concerts really rocked. I have never seen October Country before, nor ever heard of them before they were announced last year at Conflikt 2. I now understand why interfilk sent them to a con. They were good and do a nice show. A little improve between songs, and some good songs including some interesting covers from other Texas area people (Dene Foye is the one that comes to mind for me.) Tom Smith's concert went for two hours and really was worth going to. While I have seen Tom a number of times, a large percentage of the room had never seen Tom before because he is rarely on the west coast. He gave a kick ass concert that went for almost two hours and he played a number of good mix of his songs, some old, some new, finishing up with two of his hits. 307 Ale and Rocket Ride that rocked the house. Andrew Ross did a wonder Toastmaster concert on Sunday afternoon to finish the con and lead into the closing jam that was fun.

110gb of recordings later (I think that's the number), I am waiting for my plan ride home to start boarding.

Normally with interfilk, I manage to get others to spend lots of money on audio donations. This time, interfilk got cash from me. I purchased two voice auction items. A CD at GaFilk and a CD at Conflikt. (Larry Kirby Housefilk recording, which is a nice sample of his area and a Tony and Vixy CD that I have not heard yet. (I did have help on getting the CDs. They both are over my normal budget for interfilk items.) Also, the item I considered weird, but fun was the bag of ginger candy I purchased on Wed. for bringing to conflikt. It was bid into the voice auction and went higher. I will be stopping by that store's area for work on Tuesday and get any contact info for mail ordering it (for those who did not win.)

Thank you to concoms of both conventions for a great time. I plan to be back at both next year. The guest lists for both conventions are worth making it to both.

Ok. My flight is boarding. Night.

Just having a little fun @ 36k. I am enroute to California (for the weekend) for a family event and the plane had free internet. (Its OK.) I fly back on Sunday night, so this is just a quick back and forth trip, with a chance to see family at a happy event. I think its the first time since my sister's wedding (3 1/2 years ago) that my mother and her siblings and her mother were all together at one location.

I don't think I mentioned it, but OVFF sound recordings were 183gb from the zoom recorders. All permissions are being gone thru fuzzyvanman, so yes, while we can pass it along, it just has to go thru the channels. Yes, we will be inventorying and IDing people.

I also recorded @ Philcon 2 weeks ago. That was a bit more reasonable in recording size (another 48gb of recordings, but that time I also had the sound board setup.) Some good concerts occurred and a few songs that I had not heard before. The song writing panel was fun and a new song was written by a group and permission was granted to share it on the filk archive. (The Wet Side of the Moon.) Sorry about the poor quality of the song, but mid con editing, I went with a copy of the song I knew where to find it quickly from.)

I am in Ohio for OVFF 25. http://www.ovff.org

I just have an hour wait for the person I am carpooling with and am taking advantage of the time to -
Grab lunch
check my email
Look up their flight
Find out the OVFF hotel info (that I forgot to print)
and
Read LJ.

(Just not in that order.)

I just updated the web page for the first time since January... (Ok... I have been a bit busy this year...)

Cover art for 3 more CDs went online (2 out of print, 1 in print.)

I leave as soon as the directions are printed, the computer is shut down and the car is loaded. A few extra stops enroute (returning stuff at Microcenter which hopefully will not take too long).

Its going to be an fun trip. At least this time, when driving to Canada, we have more than 2 CDs of music to listen to. (Last time, car that was rented had problems and we only had a CD to cassette adaptor and the original car had cassette. This time, mp3 capabile car WITH a port for the ipod and a lot of filk CDs, including the Duckon fund raiser CDs from 2009. I am agenting the CDs at Worldcon for them. If you ordered this year's CDs, I don't have your disc.)

I went out to Confluence for the weekend and am in safely at the hotel.

Last weekend at Shore Leave, Roberta Rogow released her 3rd CD. 'One Filk Two Filk Old Filk New Filk'. Its a collection of her newest songs, some with original tunes and some of her older ones that for whatever reason never made it onto her tapes.

The songs are from either live performances (concerts, Song Sequeter panels and in one case, the song writing contest for ConCertino 2009) or the open recording studio sessions I have offered at various east coast conventions that I have attended.

New Filk
1. All Is Well With Harry Potter
2. The Grantville Ram
3. Goblin Gold
4. Fire In The Hole
Backing Vocals by Marc Grossman
5. The Woman In The Snow
6. The Quest: The Road Goes ever on.
7. One Mile Closer To The Stars
8. The Wild Mars Rovers
9. DragonCon Report
10. Take It Back!
11. Trolls

Old Filk
12. Ewok Victory Song
13. Indy Jones, The Engineer
Backing Vocals by Marc Glasser and Kathy Sands
14. Lullabye For A Chieri
15. The Fannish Orchestra
Roberta Rogow with Gary McGath, Sue Len, Jacob Sommer, Mabel Liang, Masha Sten-Clanton, Jeanne Wardwell
16. Singles And Silver
17. The Dandelion Filkers
Backing Vocals by Marc Grossman
18. At The WorldCon

Contributor copies will be getting out in the mail hopefully this weekend. (I have to finish assembling them.)

Cover art (with the back cover of the CD) is available on my web page -

http://www.floatingfilk.com/1filk.pdf

I will be putting up 1-2 songs from the CD when I update the web page, (whenever that actually happens, maybe before worldcon 2009) I will put up the cover art for the ConCertino 2009 CD at the same time.

Writing from the dead dog at ConCertino where I was Techno-Guest. Its been a fun weekend of lots of excellent concerts and open filk music.

The concom were great and deserve a lot of credit for the wonderful job they have done running the convention. Thank you to madfilkentist and the rest of the ConCertino 2009 concom for inviting me as a guest. Once I heard the other guests of the convention, I would have been here anyhow.

They did try to keep me out from behind the soundboard. They were somewhat successful. I ended up playing insta mic wrangler a few times. I didn't touch the sound board all weekend. I just was constantly swapping and downloading recordings from the Zoom H2 recordings.

I produced a CD for the members of the con who paid for a premium membership and it turns out I did a LOT more than madfilkentist expected. Originally, it was supposed to have been a couple of songs from each guest. (Its grew as the audio was located.) :) 76 minutes of audio later, the convention has a CD. ONLY 50 copies exist (they ARE numbered) and I won't be printing more. 2 more copies will appear at interfilk auctions (including OVFF). Unknown on the other location to get it from the convention.

In opening ceremonies, instead of performing, I contributed a recording that had been made of John Caspell, who was missed. I also ran a session on recording and editing audio. The recordings will need to be permission granted to be shared, but people did get to see what I see on the other side of the screen and a few features of what I know about in Audacity and Adobe Audition.

Kathleen's concert was great. She called up Kathy Mar to assist on Dr. Anne Prather's Spiral Dance which the audience appeared to like. (Anne really needs to get some of her songs back into print.)

Bill and Gretchen did a great concert with a number of their duets that don't have live versions in print. Apology was fun and they did cover a song that Bill posted in his LJ a couple of months ago, Cruising. (Thank you Katie for a line to start a good song.)

Brooke's concert was a lot of fun and extremely good. John's presence was missed. Brooke did cover two songs that John had written. I look forward to finding more recordings of John to give her for John's family. (I know they exist, but not where they are located in the recordings.) The concom printed John's badge and provided that to Brooke (along with his copy of the Premium CD for his family.) She also as a new CD out with her and John on it.

I know there was a memorial circle for both John Caspell and Lois Mangan, but I unfortunately was not able to attend it.

A small number of shorter concerts occurred during the weekend from Kathy Mar, Judith Hayman, and Sassafrass.

Kathy's concert was also for her CD/DVD release that officially happened this weekend. Sassafras had 5 of their 13? 14? members present and their concert showcased a few songs that will be on their next CD. They released a CD for the Con with some of the songs from the new CD and some reprints from their earlier CDs. Judith's concert was a nice introduction to her music. (I have not seen her concert before.)

There also was a childrens' concert with Paul Estin, half next year's (Conterpoint) GOH Mary Ellen Wessels and Lady Bear. I was waking up at that time, but I did get to hear Lady Bear in open filk and she is fun to listen to. I did ask the performers how their concert went and they said it was good. I will have to see what turns up on the recordings.

There were a lot of people who normally I only see at Worldcon or GaFilk attending the convention, including the other Guests of the convention. Kathleen, the Ropers and Brooke were wonderful in concert and in circle. I look forward to the next convention with any of them at it because I know its going to be a lot of fun and great music.

Thank you to everyone for making my first time as a guest of a convention a great time!

As I have mentioned in the past (June last year), I am attending ConCertino 2009 as TechnoGuest. The convention is NEXT weekend.

The convention web page is at http://www.concertino.net.

As part of my contribution, since I am not a performer, but a tech, I put together a limited edition CD that will be given to the members of the convention who purchased a premium membership, but you can purchase an attending membership at the door. There are only 50 copies that exist and NO, I am not publishing any more.

Here is the song list (and liner notes) that will be on the CD. 76 minutes of audio.

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Come Filking
ConCertino 2009 Premium CD

Guests of Honor - Bill and Gretchen Roper
01 Cruising Bill Roper (Bill & Gretchen Roper)7
02 Just Play Bill & Gretchen Roper (Bill Roper)1
03 Library Song Bill & Gretchen Roper 1
04 Sinister Walk Bill & Gretchen Roper (Bill Roper)1
05 Apology Bill & Gretchen Roper1

Interfilk Guests - Brooke Lunderville and John Caspell
06 Worm Herder Brooke Lunderville and John Caspell (Brooke Lunderville2
07 In a Histaminor Key Brooke Lunderville and John Caspell (Brooke Lunderville)2
08 It's Just So Nice When Someone Knows Your Name Brooke Lunderville and John Caspell (Brooke Lunderville)2
09 The Space Lasers May Already Have Penetrated My Tinfoil Helmet (Despite My Extensive Field Research) Brooke Lunderville and John Caspell (Brooke Lunderville)2
10 The Giant Squid Has Not Brooke Lunderville and John Caspell (Brooke Lunderville)2
11 Burn It Down John Caspell (Michelle Dockrey/Tony Fabris)3

Ghost of Honor - Lois Mangan
12 Ballad of Lois Mangan Judith Hayman/Lois Mangan (Mark Mandel/Percy Montrose)4
13 Come, Filking, Filking Lois Mangan/Kathleen Sloan/Heather Borean (Lois Mangan)4
14 The Phoenix Lois Mangan (Julia Ecklar)3
15 The Woad Ode Lois Mangan (William Hope-Jones/Traditional)4
16 The Hand of God Lois Mangan/J. Spencer Love/Gary McGath (Julia Ecklar)3
17 Carmen Miranda's Ghost Lois Mangan/Gary McGath (Leslie Fish)5

Toastmistress - Kathleen Sloan
18 Magic To Me Kathleen Sloan6
19 Catalog Queen Kathleen Sloan6
20 Discipline Queen Kathleen Sloan (Paul Kwinn)6
21 Spiral Dance Kathleen Sloan (Dr. Anne Prather)6
22 Meat Kathleen Sloan/Paul Estin (Kathleen Sloan)2
23 Take It Back Kathleen Sloan2

Performer (Composer, if different from performer)

Thank you to Bill Roper, Brooke Lunderville, Paul Mangan, Ken Lalonde, and Gerry Tyra for contributing recordings for this CD. Thank you to everyone for permission to record your concerts and to use your songs. Kathleen's song “Meat” is based on Terry Bisson's short story “Meat”. More of Leslie’s songs are available at www.lesliefish.com

Recording locations - 1 GaFilk 2009 / 2 Denvention 3 (Worldcon 2008) / 3 Practice session / 4 FKO 16 / 5 ConCertino '95 / 6 Fencon 2007 / 7 Recorded specially for this album

Bill and Gretchen Roper's web page - http://www.filker.com
Brooke Lunderville's web page - http://catfish.dhs.org/~happyfish/filk/

Engineered and published by Harold Stein for ConCertino 2009.
Cover art by Jane Sibley MASSFILC logo by Virginia Taylor

http://www.concertino.net http://www.nefilk.us
Floating Filk Studios FFS-008 http://www.floatingfilk.com

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Unfortunately, you can no longer get a premium membership for the convention. (Sorry, they will not be selling those at the door.) There WILL be copies donated to interfilk, so you will get a chance to get a copy at a filk convention some point in the future.

I have uploaded a different take of "Take It Back" to the filk archive. The version of 'Meat' that is used on here is the same one that is on Paul Estin's 'Mind the Stopgap' CD.

No, I am not at FilkOntario, I am at I-CON (NY) where I am running filk. (Maybe I will attend it next year.)

I just wanted to say congratulations to the 2009 inductees to the Filk Hall of Fame -

Frank Hayes and Erica Neely