filkosopher

Anticipation Filk Photos

Sun, 16 Aug 2009 02:33:39 GMT

Here they are:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/41398207@N05/sets/72157621925459411/

Sorry to those I missed (especially in the first couple of days of the program)!

Harmuni 4 Photos

Sat, 15 Aug 2009 03:48:53 GMT

I've finally gotten down to organizing my photos, and have the set for Harmuni 4, held two weekends ago, up on flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/41398207@N05/sets/72157621917710897/

Now, time to go through my Worldcon filk photos...

Report: Harmuni 4/Constitution, Part 3 (Saturday addendum, Sunday)

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 03:21:24 GMT

     Oops!! I forgot to mention the Saturday concert sets between the instafilks and the cabaret! Philip Allcock, another pillar of British filkdom, in good voice and guitar, performing well written songs (his and others); and our filk GOH, Sib Machat, a talented and quirky German singer, guitarist and songwriter who performed her much-requested "Evil Eyeball" song, her quickie Lord of the Rings skit, a no-spoiler Harry Potter song consisting mostly of the word "beep" wherever a spoiler might occur, her "Dismissal Song" about profession-specific terms for being removed from employment, a song about German translations of Star Trek episode titles, and others.

As for Sunday,

After breakfast, a 10am panel in the Long Room about all the people in sf literature with menial jobs, generally neglected and not covered well. Big exception: Terry Pratchett, who has a sufficiently broad cast of characters to reach into the lower strata. Another: military sf, showing the grunt-level soldiers. Other instances, where a higher-status character interacts sufficiently with workers below to give an idea of, say, a stable hand's character, or one or more mid-level characters form a bridge between the upper and lower strata (as in Gormenghast?) The Babylon 5 workmen pov episode also mentioned.

   Filk: Sib Machat's second GOH concert, where she performed songs that she didn't have time for yesterday, followed by a closing one-shots concert (at which I performed my "One More Time" song), about 8 or 9 songs total.

   At 4 pm: a very brief closing ceremony, followed by a very funny and chaotic "quiz" with the remaining guests of honor and the very funny cabaret mc placed in teams of two. Can't remember who won, but that wasn't really the point of it all anyway. A good fun closing to the con.

Much later: Dead Dog Filking in the downstairs Froud Room. A struggle to get enough seats into the room, but generally we managed. Maybe 20 or so people there at one point or other, including Sib, Magician, Valerie, Nat, Rafe, Rika, Ju, Rick Hewitt, Deb Levy, Hitch, and others. (Note for MASSFILCers: I sung Robin Holly's "Colors of the Laser" in open filk on Saturday; one of the listeners requested a repeat of the song here.)
     Dead Dog broke up a little after midnight; most wanted to be able to get some sleep before packing, eating breakfast, and beating the 9am check-out deadline.

   In general, a good con, as was the Recombination/Harmuni 3 con two years ago, very well done at the general con level and the filk track level. I was glad to see at least two other US filkers present this time (Lisa and Joshua), as I seemed to have been the only one there two years before -- not that I minded being the only one, but that others were missing it.   Hope we can have a Harmuni 5 soon, with more people from our side of the pond visiting!

Report: Harmuni 4/Constitution, Part 2 (Saturday)

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 15:16:49 GMT

   Saturday: Woke up in time for the breakfast included with the room charge, served from 8-9am only, not a good time for filkers!

Morning panels in the Long Room:

     10 am: Titled, "Armchair Futurology," but primarily about British urban planning, particularly involving transportation issues (and a lively discussion about the likely extent of telecommuting). Generally much more optimistic than "future of our city" discussions I remember from decades ago, where the most likely outcome seemed to be "bomb crater, overgrown by vegetation." It seemed to help that we had one or two panelists here who have had experience in urban planning issues.

     11 am: Folklore/New Myths for Old: hard to characterize briefly, but a common theme seemed to be the ability of authors and others to adapt older folklore to current times, remaking it in the process, giving gods and mythic figures quirks to make them more human and accessible, transforming their status in religion (e.g. goddesses becoming saints), and current writers looking to lesser-used mythic sources to revitalize fantasy (same archetypes, different settings?).

     Filk: Missed Rhodri James' voice workshop, as I was saving my voice for my concert set. It might have helped, but it might also have distracted me (trying to use an unpracticed technique during a performance isn't something I do well). In any case, I did go to the Classic Filk event, which was part concert, part sing-along circle. A number of the older British filksongs were sung, and a pair of Leslie Fish classics: Banned from Argo and Hope Eyrie, and we closed with a British classic, Sam's Song.
     My concert set was next. I did mostly parodies (Sandworm Riding, Dead Mars Rover, A Mother's Lament, I Will Make You Live Now, T. Rex-eteen, and Argo Every Day), which audiences generally like, plus a couple of my more serious songs (Beware Her Children, and The Companion's Song). I was relieved that my voice held up, and felt free after that point to blast it out during the rest of the con if I wished.
   I was followed by Soir, a British filk musician with a very good voice and excellent piano playing. Soir was followed by Nat, another young British filker performing several interesting, sometimes quirky parodies (including "Where the Fandom Sings" tto Gwen Knighton's "Like Their Feet Have Wings," and a fun song about earworms). Nat was followed by Valerie Housden, a pillar of British filkdom, performing well on voice and guitar -- as usual (can't remember and forgot to write down the songlist, but MASSFILCers take note: it included Jonathan Turner's Second Hand Songs, which was also reprised at the Dead Dog).
     Instabands next:
     Band 1: Lisa Padol on kazoo, Keris on guitar, Azakir (?) voice, and Soir doing a great job on piano.
     Band 2: Good a capella performance by Hitch, Nat, Christo and Kathy Songbird
     Band 3: Josh Kronengold on recorder, Valerie Housden on guitar, and three of the kids at the convention (lost names, sorry!) playing piano, guitar and tambourine.

     Dinner hour was followed by the Constitution LARP Cabaret: the LARP didn't run, but the concom gave the green light to the cabaret anyway. Playing Rapunzel wowed the crowd with a great performance; Christo impressed with the theremin. There were a number of poems read. Cabaret organizer Judith Proctor did a dance performance with a rhythmic swinging of what looked like weighted stockings, all to the tune of Tom Lehrer's "We'll All Go Together When We Go." (Harder than it looks, don't try it at home with your mom's or wife's stockings!)
     Open filk followed, well into the night, beginning with the themes of space and science, shifting to general filk sometime after midnight. (I lasted until a bit after 1 am this time.)

Next: Sunday

Report: Harmuni 4/Constitution, Part 1 (Friday)

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 03:01:07 GMT

     This report will be, as a number of con reports are, about the writer's (me, in this case) own experience at the con, most of which was at the Harmuni 4 con, which was the filk portion of Constitution (and the one I primarily came for). The other "cons within a con" at Constitution were Unicon (literary), BRSCON (role-playing and gaming) and the Ars Magica Grand Council (fantasy rp). I did make a few of the Unicon panels, so I'll have something to say about them as well.

Constitution was held last weekend (July 31st-Aug 2nd), in Cambridge, UK. A very brief opening ceremony was held in the main function room, known as the Long Room -- because it's, uh, *long*. (Don't sit in the back if you want to hear.) The guests were introduced: Steph Swainston, the Unicon/literary guest of honor; Sean Punch, the gaming goh; Henry Gee, the science goh; and Sib Machat, the filk goh. The concom introduced themselves. The introductions took all of ten minutes, after which those assembled were ordered to go out and enjoy themselves.
   I went to an opening panel on War in SF and Fantasy. The main theme in the panel seemed to be the portrayal of characters in military settings, whether battle or military life. Panelist Simon Bradshaw, who reported spending 17 years in the RAF, expressed disappointment at how few SF works get military life right, a major exception being Lois Bujold in her Vorkosigan books. Steph Swainston stressed the need to focus on character development, and along with other panelists, the treatment of soldiers as people rather than stereotypes. I will jump ahead and note here that I picked up Ms. Swainston's first book at this convention, *The Year of Our War*, and have been impressed with both her portrayal of battle and character.
    The filk program opened with Playing Rapunzel, with Mich Sampson on piano and Marilisa Valtazanou on a variety of instruments, and both in fine voice. They performed songs by Talis Kimberly, Kathy Mar and others, arranged and played beautifully. They were followed by Julianne Honisch, who performed several of her songs (and reminded me of why I have two of her songbooks and one of her cd's). The open filk afterwards was devoted to the themes of fantasy and gaming, until sometime after midnight (I sung several songs, then left a bit after midnight, when the circle moved into open filking)

Saturday, next...

In Montreal

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 15:26:10 GMT

I arrived in Montreal last night, after a bit of a scare at Heathrow: They had overbooked my flight and put me on standby. However, I made it on the flight. (One of the other fans on the flight, coming from Constitution to Worldcon as I was, said that all the solo reservations like mine got put on standby. If that`s the case, then I would hope that only a few, if any, actually got bumped.) After nearly three quarter of an hour`s wait getting through customs, I picked up my baggage and got a shuttle to the hotel, flopping in my bed as my body was on British time still (about 3 AM, although I suppose that`s about the normal time that I would leave a late-night filk circle anyway).
Constitution, as well as its Harmuni filk track, went very well, I thought, as did the similar combined convention held in Cambridge two years ago (Recombination). I hope to give a con report later on, but an initial round of applause right here to Chris O`Shea and Valerie Housden for putting a great filk program together in just a couple of weeks time!

In Cambridge

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 15:07:42 GMT

I'm settled into my room now at Murray Edwards College of Cambridge University, where the Constitution convention is starting up. I spent the prior two days in London, seeing the Tower of London and the British Museum. Since the Tower cost 17 pounds to get in, I spent several hours there seeing most of what was available. On the other hand, the British Museum is free (though it's worth the relatively small 3 to 5-pound donation they ask for, and which I gave) -- and vast -- so I plan on being back there on future visits. (I basically made it through the ground floor exhibits, which include, among many other things, the Rosetta Stone and the Elgin Marbles.)

Programming for Constitution (and Harmuni, its filk track) begins tonight. I'm looking forward to it (though I've still got a little prep to do before my concert set -- I seem to be warding off a cold; next I need to ward off Frank Hayes Disease ;-)).

Preparing for Trip: Two weeks, Two Countries, Two Cons

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 00:31:07 GMT

Tomorrow morning I'm flying to London. After a couple of days in London, I'm headed for Cambridge and the Constitution convention, a combination of four linked cons: Unicon, primarily for literary sf; BRSCON, for role playing; the Ars Magica Grand Council, for fantasy & role playing; and Harmuni for filk music (which is what's bringing me there, especially now that they've got me doing a concert set on Saturday afternoon!). After Constitution, I'm flying to Montreal for Anticipation/the WorldCon (and seeing some of Montreal). Hoping to take pictures, too (and if I can master my digital camera and get the photos on and off my hard drive, I might even be able to post some)!

[Hmm...can't find the mood icon. I'll just say I'm jumping up and down like I'm waiting for Santa Claus. :-)]
[Oops! There it is!]