hms42

Just spreading word on this one -

Blind Lemming Chiffon is doing a fund raiser to finally release a professional CD.  (Actually a 5 CD box set, if he raises enough.)
The information and the funding page is here -

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/blind-lemming-chiffon-the-box

After stopping for dinner near the con and dropping off 3 passengers (2 in Manhattan), I am home.

Good convention and thank you everyone for a great weekend.   May we all get to see each other sooner than next Philcon.

For those who have not heard the news out of San Antonio , yet..

2014 - Detriot won the NASFiC.   Bill and Brenda Sutton are the Music GOHs
2015 - Spokane won the Worldcon - Tom Smith is the Music GOH

I just wanted to let everyone who is owed a contributor copy of the Conterpoint 2013 CD know that they have been mailed today.  If you get a bad disc, please let me know!!!  I will replace it, no questions asked.  (This also goes for ANYONE who got a copy at the convention, too.) 

There were enough extra copies to donate to interfilk to have copies for all of the interfilk tables to get one.  Would anyone be willing to bring a copy to conchord?  Delivery at Worldcon is an option. 

I have seen a lot of posts about Marty in the past 24 hours and while I did not know him that well, unfortunately, he was a staple I was used to seeing at conventions over the years.  The nice surprise to me was seeing him at the filk conventions when NEFilk was in the Baltimore area.  (I did not always get cross paths with him.)

He made an impact on a number of us in the fanish community.  I know him more for his MCing masquerades at various east coast conventions and at least one Worldcon.  (1998 especially, since that was my 1st worldcon)   He was part of Baltimore fandom, the costumers (Master level from what I have seen mentioned), technofandom and more recently, the filk community.   I last saw him @ Conterpoint 8 in June, where he was having a good time at the convention. 

I have been going thru the recordings slowly just to get a chance to listen to the convention and I have found him telling at least 2 jokes that made it into the archives.  I really did not want to know who was going to be Track #17 (memorial track) on the 2014 NEFilk CD this soon.      He will be missed and I am hoping to include at least one of his vampire jokes in his memory on the CD.  (Permission pending from his family, whom I will not attempt to contact for a while.)

I would have normally posted this during the convention, but I had forgotten it at home.
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Filk & (Oreo) Cookies

Conterpoint 2013

Conterpoint 2013 Guests

Guests Of Honor: Stone Dragons (Tom and Sue Jeffers)

1) The Big One - Stone Dragons (Tom Jeffers)

2) Board And Twine - Stone Dragons (Tom Jeffers)

3) Out In The Darkness - Stone Dragons (Sue Jeffers)

Toastmaster: Andrew Ross

4) Iron Chef Greek - Andrew Ross with Dave Rogers (Andrew Ross/Dave Carter)

5) How To Be Vorish - Andrew Ross (Andrew Ross/Trad)

6) 41 Thunderbursts - Andrew Ross with Dave Rogers (Andrew Ross/Dave Carter)

Interfilk Guest: Lissa Allcock

7) No Such Thing - Lissa Allcock with Marilisa Valtazanou (Zander Nyrond)

8) Life Is A Bowl Of Oreo Cookies - Lissa Allcock with Mich Sampson (Debbie Ohi)

9) Sisters' Song - Lissa Allcock with Philip Allcock (Philip Allcock)

Listener Guests: Jonathan and Debbie Baker (songs chosen by the listener guests)

10) Babylon Is (Thoroughly) Fallen - Filkers @ NY Housefilk May 2013 (Mike Rubin/Trad)

11) Subway Rider's Prayer - Marc Grossman (Mike Brown/Steve Savitzky)

12) A Simple Country Doctor - Matt Leger, Gary Ehrlich (Matt Leger)

Contata 2014 Guests

Guests Of Honor: Amy McNally and David Perry

13) Boxes - Amy McNally, Betsy Tinney, Chris Conway (Amy McNally)

Toastmasters: T.J. and Mitchell Burnside Clapp

14) Lullaby For A Weary World - T.J. Burnside Clapp (T.J. Burnside Clapp)

Interfilk Guest: Peter Alway

15) Schroedinger's Mouse - Peter Alway (Peter Alway)

Listener Guest: Sheryl Ehrlich

16) Tower - Gary Ehrlich (Gary Ehrlich)

In Memoriam

17) Ernest Clark: Beyond Pandora's Door - Ernest Clark (Ernest Clark)

18) Mara Brener: Our Spaceman - Mara Brener (M.E. Brener & H.M. Brener/Trad)

19) Sheila Willis: Wolf and Hawk - Technical Difficulties (Sheila Willis)

Title - Performer(s) (Writer/Composer)

Unless stated otherwise, all tracks were recorded for this CD.

Tracks 1-3 recorded and mixed by Tom Jeffers in the Stone Dragons Studio

Tracks 10, 12 recorded by Harold Stein, Floating Filk Studios. Track 12 from Matt's Toastmaster Concert @ GaFilk 2011

Track 13 – Reprinted from the CD Hazardous Fiddle published by Flowinglass Music

Track 14 – Reprinted from the tape Pegasus Winners, Vol. 1 published by Love Song Productions

Track 15 –Recorded for FAWM 2011

Track 17 – Recorded at OVFF 2 (1986) by Lois Welling/Lila Holbrook

Track 18 – Reprinted from the tape Manifilk Destiny published by Wail Songs

Track 19 – Reprinted from the tape Station Break published by Technical Difficulties.

All other tracks recorded by the performers and provided for this CD.

This CD was compiled, engineered and published by Harold Stein for Conterpoint 2013. Cover art by Matt Leger.

All recordings used with permission of the performers and the publishers. Thank you to everyone for permission to use your songs on this CD.

http://www.conterpoint.org http://www.contata.org http://www.nefilk.us

http://www.floatingfilk.com

FFS-017

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I have had a report of one of the CDs not making it into the cases, so PLEASE check to make sure you got your CD with your membership.  If its missing, a replacement will be mailed out with the contributor copies being mailed.

UK and Canadian contributor copies have been relayed via people from those areas.  (I will send emails in a week or so.)

For the past few years, I have been releasing at least 1 CD a year at the NEFilk convention.  This year, I have been talking about doing both a new CD for Conterpoint 2013 and the Conterpoint 1993 from recordings found in Spencer's archives. 

The all member CD is still happening and is coming together fairly well.  (I am still waiting on 1-2 songs and recycling a song from an out of print filk tape.)  

The Conterpoint 1993 CD has to be releasing late, unfortunately.  It is still happening, but its just taking longer to do right.   Most of the delays have been real life catching up and work opening 8 new offices in the NYC area since January.     One side benefit of the delay is that instead of the 10 hours of raw tape (Spencer's soundboard recordings) that I had available to me, I have since found more recordings that I can work from.   This included some digital tapes from Spencer's archives (unknown if this is digital conversions of the same 10 hours or not) and 9 more hours of recordings from someone else.  While not sound board, it may give a few songs that were not available otherwise.  There are at least 2 concerts in there that do not exist on Spencer's boardfeed.   The new recordings include Critical Mass and Gary Ehrlich concerts.      In the idenfied recordings, we do have Bill Roper's GOH concert, Dick Eney's Toastmaster concert and I might have a recording of "Sue Trainor", but I don't know her voice.   I MIGHT have something from these recordings in the interfilk auction at Conterpoint.

There will be a sign up list @ registation to notify you of the release of the CD.  Sorry for not making the convention with this CD, but I wanted to do a better job and its the first compilation album I have ever done which is a for sale one (vs a freebie), so permissions are more complicated.     This CD WILL happen,  I am currently planning for a summer 2013 release at this time.

I finally made it to a FKO after many years of hearing good things about it (and seeing a few videos online.)

The convention is a lot of fun and a friendly environment.   I finally got to meet a few people in person that I have been talking to online and have only heard previously in recordings from various sources.

It was a needed break from all of the craziness of work lately.  (Last week we moved an office from temporary space to perm space, 2 days in a new project in Rhode Island and 1 day in the office (short due to train to Albany to meet jslove and T).   The cross NY drive, was not bad, but I wish I was not that tired going into the convention.

As for the con, some of the highlights of the convention -
Seeing Urban Tapestry's 20th anniversary concert, Cat Faber's concert being interrupted (mid concert announcement) with the news they caught the 2nd Marathon bomber, right after she sang her song about the helpers (written in response to the Marathon bombing) http://www.hwaet.org/Songbook/LookForTheHelpers.html.  Getting to see Tim and Annie Walker again.  The Ropers (Bill and Gretchen) surprising Kathleen Sloan with a new song about her, at the beginning of the interfilk auction, which had its own entertainment.   Getting to request a song that I have only ever heard on tape (and then to get the story behind why it was written, too!) from Cecilia was great.  (I don't mind the flaws of when it was sung, but just getting it sung was great.)  - "The Grandfather Clock", which was one of the first Dr. Who songs I ever came across in the filk community.  The filk Hall of fame concert, where songs were performed by the newest members.  (They took turns and it turns out they a little bit of theme organizing.)   We got the stories on some songs, why they were important to the inductee and a little history on 1-2 of the songs.

2 other highlights -
The Future of Filk Concert - This was a mixture of 2 of the younger attendees (including Katie Roper) singing 2 songs with Dave Clement, followed by 2-3 others performing 2 songs each, Kari Maaren, Leslie Hudson, Devin Melanson.  I think it was Kari (and I know someone will correct me on this.) having the audience really enjoying her songs (Vampire song).  This was the first filk convention for all 3 of them and they are all new to filk.  They have a brand new CD (limited edition), also available only as download from bandcamp - http://pirate-elves-in-space.bandcamp.com/   They are ones to definitely watch.

The other highlight of FKO, annually is seeing who is inducted into the Filk Hall of Fame at the banquet.   I knew I was going to attend that, if I ever made it to the convention and I went.   Seeing the 2013 inductions of - Cecilia Eng, Roberta Rogow, and Volker Tanger was great.  Cecilia and Roberta both were at the convention and gave speeches.   Volker unfortunately was not present and did send some words that were read, I believe by Ju.  (Sorry, going from memory here and not checking the recording of the induction.)  I did not know the method was to announce the name then read the entire citation, I figure they would read the citation and hold for a little more suspense.   Its is amazing how much they have all done for the community and how much information people have submitted in about the inductees.

If you think someone should be inducted in 2014, please submit information via the Filk Hall of Fame form.  Your nomination just might make the difference on getting someone inducted.  Dave Hayman DOES keep the information on file and will save it for future years, so they may not get in in 2014, but that might be the difference for 2015 or beyond.  http://www.filkontario.ca/hof/hofolform.html     (That reminds me, I need to submit a nomination for someone who has not been inducted, yet.)

Ok.  Time to post this before the train pulls into NYC and I have to change train systems.  (Amtrak to LIRR.)

Update on 4/24 -
Kari is the one I was thinking of, above.   It was her song "Kids These Days" that really showed her potential, imho.  She is only going to get better.

I am home from Boskone.  It was a good convention.  Lots of friends, a few new ones.  I got to see concerts by people I just saw a few weeks ago in Seattle.  (And they are not from that area, either.)

Heather Dale and Ben Deschamps were excellent, like normal.  A new story or two was told for some of the songs and Heather did a cover of a found filk that was beamed down from the ISS.  Here's the original - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvAnfi8WpVE and Heather's cover that she put on YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/heatherdalemusic.   (Sorry, I don't have permission to share Saturday's cover with Ben.)

As for the other concerts during the weekend, they were all great.     (More when I am not tired.)

I also took advantage of the trip to work a little on the filk audio archive in the area.  (Spencer's).    While tapes did not get converted this time, I did get my web page to change hosting providers and I did get the liner notes for 2 previously unknown "Distributed By Wail Songs" tapes.  (The j-card's text is now digital.)   "Windsinger" and "A Hitch In Time".

Next challenges - Updating my web page for the first time since 2009 and get started on the Conterpoint 2013 CDs.  (The convention all member CD and the 1993 Conterpoint CD which will be releasing at the con.)