Tomorrow's Songs Today, now available!
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Jan. 27th, 2015 | 10:52 am
mood: 
jubilant
posted by: 
madfilkentist in 
filk
Who first published recorded filk? (It wasn't Leslie.)
Where did the word "filk" come from?
When and where was the first filk convention, and who organized it?
What was the original tune for "Mary O'Meara"?
How did Off Centaur Publications rise and fall?
How did the Pegasus Awards and the Filk Hall of Fame originate?
Why do you see so many dandelion symbols associated with filk?
You'll find the answers to these and many more questions -- well, at least my answers, based on a lot of research -- in Tomorrow's Songs Today: The History of Filk Music, available for immediate download as a free e-book!
It's been a long effort, and I owe thanks to many, many people. Terri Wells' editing and Matt Leger's cover have made it a much better product than it would have been otherwise. Beyond that, I don't want to fill this post with the huge list of acknowledgments, so just download the book and read them for yourself.
The limited print edition will follow. It's mostly to provide the promised rewards for my IndieGoGo supporters, but I'll be making some copies available for sale. It's rather expensive to produce a small run of a book and have it look good, so I have to apologize for the rather high price I'll need to set. There will also be a few tote bags available.
The release party will be at Boskone.
Where did the word "filk" come from?
When and where was the first filk convention, and who organized it?
What was the original tune for "Mary O'Meara"?
How did Off Centaur Publications rise and fall?
How did the Pegasus Awards and the Filk Hall of Fame originate?
Why do you see so many dandelion symbols associated with filk?
You'll find the answers to these and many more questions -- well, at least my answers, based on a lot of research -- in Tomorrow's Songs Today: The History of Filk Music, available for immediate download as a free e-book!
It's been a long effort, and I owe thanks to many, many people. Terri Wells' editing and Matt Leger's cover have made it a much better product than it would have been otherwise. Beyond that, I don't want to fill this post with the huge list of acknowledgments, so just download the book and read them for yourself.
The limited print edition will follow. It's mostly to provide the promised rewards for my IndieGoGo supporters, but I'll be making some copies available for sale. It's rather expensive to produce a small run of a book and have it look good, so I have to apologize for the rather high price I'll need to set. There will also be a few tote bags available.
The release party will be at Boskone.
Most Excellent!!
from:
asg_qa_s7
date: Jan. 27th, 2015 04:29 pm (UTC)
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from:
reedrover
date: Jan. 27th, 2015 04:32 pm (UTC)
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Please put me on your mailing list for a hardcopy book announcement. I would like to purchase two if they come available. Thanks!
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from:
lignota
date: Jan. 27th, 2015 04:58 pm (UTC)
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from:
hms42
date: Jan. 27th, 2015 05:03 pm (UTC)
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Really well done.
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from:
eintx
date: Jan. 27th, 2015 05:44 pm (UTC)
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from:
kjn
date: Jan. 27th, 2015 07:47 pm (UTC)
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Taking a look right now, and has signal-boosted as well.
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from:
kjn
date: Jan. 27th, 2015 08:49 pm (UTC)
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In 1966 the Swedish sf fan and later pro Sam J Lundwall published an album with his own songs on various topics: Visor i vår tid (Ballads/songs in our time). It included at least two tracks that can be regarded as filk on its A side: "Monstret Från Planeten Mars" (the monster from the planet Mars) and "Möte i rymden" (Encounter in space).
The latter song is very much inspired by Evert Taube's, a noted Swedish songwriter, "Möte i monsunen", with similiarties in both content and melody (I have later done a more classic parody of the latter song, before I knew about Lundwall's version). Here's a video of Lars-Göran Johansson performing the song at a gathering with Club Cosmos.
(Swedish filking can probably best be described as a series of fits, starts, and stops. The stops have probably been the most frequent of all.)
Edited at 2015-01-28 08:56 am (UTC)
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from:
hrrunka
date: Jan. 28th, 2015 11:03 am (UTC)
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from:
madfilkentist
date: Jan. 29th, 2015 12:55 am (UTC)
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from:
fmullen7
date: Jan. 29th, 2015 02:15 pm (UTC)
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from:
hitchhiker
date: Jan. 30th, 2015 07:14 am (UTC)
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from:
klangley56
date: Feb. 2nd, 2015 07:21 pm (UTC)
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I absolutely want a hard copy of this publication, so any info you can give me to that end will be greatly appreciated.
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from:
filkferengi
date: Feb. 3rd, 2015 06:58 pm (UTC)
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What are the details on the print edition?
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from:
klangley56
date: Feb. 10th, 2015 06:55 pm (UTC)
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>>Enter Leslie Fish, who came to be one of the best known of all filkers. She and the DeHorn Crew performed at the Star Trek Convention of 1975 or 1976.>>
It was the Chicago Star Trek Spectacular, held August 22-24, 1975. My first ever con (not that anyone cares, I'm sure) and also Leslie's first con. (She reported that in a LoC to "The Halkan Council." She also said later that she didn't have the money to get into the con, so she wrote the songs and offered to play them as a way to get in.)
>>When timing the tape, we found that we were eleven minutes short — and the only solution was for me to write another song. Well, damn, I’d already written at least one song for every major character on the show, so what did that leave? Why, nothing but a jolly tale of the entire crew on shore-leave. The result, written in a single day, was “Banned From Argo,” which turned out to be the second-favorite song I’ve ever written, much to my chagrin. . . . I forget who wrote the content for the back cover or the internal booklet, but it was typeset and printed at our local union print-shop.>>
A conflation of memory, perhaps. This verbiage refers to the second vinyl LP, "Solar Sailors." In the "internal booklet" included with the album, it states the following:
BANNED FROM ARGO
Strictly for fun, this is a raunchy, boastful "fo'c'sle" chantey, based on an old ballad tune ("The Boston Burglar"), about the Enterprise crew on shore leave. Written almost overnight (after finding that we were one song short for a full-length album), the song sounded a bit thin the first time through, so we grabbed Carole Shuttleworth and her 12-string and added them to the chorus.
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