Conreport: Boskone 41, Feb. 13-15, 2004

(Thanks to Gary McGath, Lee Gold, Tim Ryan, Bob Leigh, and Paul Mangan for correcting errors in the first posting of this report.)

FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH

traveling

Our plans were for son Jeremy to attend Boskone, too, and for wife Rene to visit with friends in the area. But Jeremy caught the ghastly cold that I was just getting over at Arisia. Though recovering, he was getting dizzy spells when standing up, so Rene had to stay home with him. (Yes, he's under medical care, and it's not dangerous.) So it was just me driving up from Philadelphia, picking up Hillary Sherwood in New Jersey.

I had a meeting from noon to two that I couldn't miss. Rene picked me up afterwards and drove me home, where I packed up the rest of my stuff. Then we kissed goodbye, and I left.

About ~5:30 I got to Hillary's place, following the NJ Turnpike and her directions thru Hackensack. She took the wheel for the next leg. I'd been planning to stop for dinner at Rein's New York Deli in Vernon, Conn., but we were both hungry, so we ate at the Montvale rest area. We reached the hotel about 10:40.

I'd arranged to share a room with Gary McGath. The hotel screwed up: instead of two double beds, there was one king-size + a rollaway that Gary had left his things on. If Jeremy had come, we'd've been hard put to find floor space for his air mattress. -- Gary, who made the reservation, notes: Boskone was sharing the convention with a couple of other events, and the hotel was completely filled up. Quite a lot of people didn't get the rooms they wanted. The hotel did give Mark and me a $25 rebate for messing up, and I heard of their doing this in several other cases.

Abbreviations

• ttto: to the tune of
• words by.../music by...
• b/o: based on (story)
• [...]: my guess at the title, or the subject, or a distinctive line
• jip: "join in progress": I arrived after the event started

~11:10 Filkado readthru jip

~midnite open filk jip

• Bill Sutton, "The Ballad of Stan Long" by Joe Haldeman, a song about a spacer who did more because he had two.
• Michael McAfee, [tales of pale goths]
• me, A Chat With Your Teenager ttto A Chat With Your Mother, as follower
• Brenda Sutton, ["trust me!"]
• a run of sea songs
  • Barry Gold, Lee Gold's? Marry the Mabel Who Sings a High C ttto Capt. Jack and the Mermaid.
  • Krissy Benders, her Margaret ["I'll sing to your piping"]. A silkie love song that isn't ose. "Blame Tom Jeffers for this song. ... I named it for my mother."
  • Joe Kesselman, yclept Keshlam, his Stole Of The Seal.
  • Bill, [whalers]
  • me, Call Me The Whale, Paul Kaplan, ttto Greenland Fisheries
  • Gary McGath, his Eternal Dutchman
• Somewhere in here we have to rearrange the chairs so people could get in and out easily. I take advantage of the pause to announce the Interfilk pun can. I invite voluntary contributions to Interfilk for puns not made in performance. Lee Gold pays for the whole con in advance.
• Michael goes from sea to desert with his Worm With No Name ttto Horse With No Name b/o Frank Herbert's Dune
• Barry, The Threshold (Kipling/ Barry Gold)
• Brenda, [Starsong]
• Jordin Kare, Mono (poem by Les Barker). ["from only one speaker"]
• me, Not-So-Great Filker of Sule Skerrie, a late addendum to sea songs
• Krissie, Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky, to what I fail to recognize as the 2nd recorder part to Greensleeves.
• Suttons, The Highwayman (Alfred Noyes/ Phil Ochs), a stunning performance.
• a literal series, not quite continuous, running from A to mu
  • Jordin, poem [The Vowels of the Earth]
  • Gary, his setting of Burton Braley's poem A Gothamite In Camelot
  • Keshlam, Mike Rubin's setting of The Lament For Boromir (Tolkien)
  • me, The Sounds of Consonance to follow Jordin's poem
  • Lee Gold, prose reading, Mike Rubin's "The Programmer and the Elves"
  • Brenda, Senex McDonald (E-I-E-I-O), in [rather bad] Latin
  • Lady Bear (ME Todd-Cocrane), "Castle for Skrat", about a haunted castle
  • Suttons preparing to pumpkin. I do Mark Osier's "Old McDonald's Deformed Farm", which evidently paralyzes them until it's done.
  • Golds, Lee's "Old McDonald Had a Pharm". The first line is "Old McDonald had a pharmaceutically-enhanced farm"; I misheard this as "... suitably enhanced ..." (Lee: "a neat mondegreen*")
    * A misunderstood or misinterpreted word or phrase resulting from a mishearing, esp. of the lyrics to a song. 1954 S. WRIGHT in Harper's Mag. Nov. 49/1 The point about what I shall hereafter call mondegreens, since no one else has thought up a word for them, is that they are better than the original. --OED OnLine
  • Bob Leigh, Heard It Through the Bovine
  • I comment that Cows With Guns, by Dana Lyons, would be good here, but I don't know or have the lyrics. Hillary exclaims, "Finally, having something in this book 'just in case' is useful!" and provides them.
• Barry, his setting of Kipling's The Sapper
• Zev Sero, Cross-Time Huckster, Lew Wolkoff

Pumpkin

SATURDAY, VALENTINE'S DAY

a new day

11am: Hucksters' Room

Look at and drool over many things and repeating to myself "No!", "Shan't!", "Nyet!", <Qo'!>, and similar reminders.

At one table I see an attractive T-shirt with a version of a quote that I have in my .sig file:

We don't just borrow words; on occasion English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.
-- James D. Nicoll

I start to tell the huckster about the correction, but he sighs wearily. "The manufacturer knows about it. The guy who said it got a free copy, and he's OK with it."

noon: the Suttons' Featured Filkers concert

• Strangers No More
• "the animal portion of our program"
  • "Little Gomez" (Eric Bogle)
  • Stray Dog Man
• [Abel Harris, Bartender], b/o Tanya Huff's "I Knew a Guy Once" in Space Inc., edited by Julie E. Czerneda
• A Dalesman's Litany; poem trad, music ?Eng, 50s-60s?. "From Hull, from Halifax, and Hell / Good Lord, deliver me." [And a plug for CDBaby, a good source of music on the WWW.]
  * [The Suttons say it was traditional, but on the Web at Songs of the Ridings it's attributed to F. W. Moorman. "When Professor Moorman published his Songs of the Ridings in the early years of [the 20th] century...". For the tune, they may have said they'd gotten it from Steeleye Span. On the Mudcat Forum there's a thread on the song's origin, in which one person writes: "[Tune] written by Dave Keddie of Bradford about 1960, English Folk Dance and Song Society. (Roy Palmer, A Touch on the Times 329)". But she doesn't say what source she's citing; and of course there could be more than one tune.]
• Women With Drums. "A new song Bill just wrote for me." Bill reciting, Brenda on bodhran.
• Pointy-Haired Boss. Autobiographical. Brenda says, "Never piss off a bard."
• Dear Abby. Buffy filk.
• An Explanation for Adoration. Why Brenda loves England. Won a Sam for Best Serious Song (as "Tea"), which surprised her, as she didn't think of it as serious.
• Merlin, by Doug McArthur. I only thought I knew how spine-chilling this song is.
• Star. Brenda says "Almost my newest song. A love song."

3:00 Suttons' performance workshop

I don't have anything planned to bring for comment, and my guitar is in my room, but I'd like to hear their advice to other filkers. But the room is locked. The Suttons call the hotel desk. The desk sends up someone to confirm that the room really is locked... but without the means to unlock it. We lose 15-20 minutes of our 50-minute time slot this way.

When we finally get to get started, they start with some general advice:

• don't apologize before performing
• don't be shy; open your mouth and let the sound out
• keep intros short or nonexistent. OK to improvise intros if you're good at it, but otherwise have them prepared
• don't tell the whole song in advance
• (more...)

First guinea pig volunteer: Paul Estin, his "Be Happy". [2004-10-15: Contrary to what I thought earlier, it is not ttto Bobby McFerrin's "Don't Worry, Be Happy". Paul writes: Er, no, actually, it's an original tune, not TTTO anything else. (Mostly, anyway, except in a few parts where I intentionally take from other songs.) The actual title, btw, is "Happy Song Virus", but seeing as I've changed it myself three times so far, *that's* not a big deal.]

• adapt volume of voice and music to venue
• keep eye contact
• prepare patter to fill in unintended pauses, such as having to tune, spacing out on the words, etc.

Gary McGath & Virginia Taylor, Gary's Mad Scientist's Love Song, which they've never done a cappella before: Gary is normally seated at his keyboard.

• Difference between shtick song and non-shtick. Breaking the fourth wall: are you going to play shtick to each other, or the audience? (not mutually exclusive)
• the hardest thing to teach people on stage is what to do with their hands. Where do you put them?

Michael McAfee, his Startown

• a long song, so you've got to vary the melody. The strum is hypnotic, try to develop a picking technique.
• vary the tone: volume (if you sing softer, people pay attention); tempo
• look at people when chorus comes up to encourage singalong; but late at night people might be OK leaning back and listening
• another way to vary the tone of a storytelling song is to sing it more conversationally in parts
• modifying the tune for some verses; to differentate the chorus from the verses
• maybe not sing the chorus after every verse

There's a little time left. I volunteer my This Road (b/o Bujold's Curse of Chalion)

• build intensity to last verse, with the lowest point of v.3 higher than the lowest point of v.2
• if doing it a cappella -- and it works well so -- add hand movement.
• I had no facial expression in the 1st 2 verses; be comfortable with emotion
• vacant expression in v1 worked well for the character's state at that point. Add eye contact with audience in 2nd. Portray change with the character's progression
• maybe break off eye contact for the reflective last verse
• The repeated line that starts and ends each chorus is a good place to express emotion differently in each verse and to set the tone for what's to come

2:08 pm concert sets jip:

Golds

• The Reader's Song
• Old Man Zeus, Myers/Pelz, a Silverlock song; and a plug for the NESFA edition.
• Candlelight, ttto Stan Rogers's Mary Ellen Carter (w/o chorus), b/o Deep Secret, Diana Wynne Jones
• Let The Birds Fly, b/o Bridge of Birds, Barry Hughart
• Spoiler. About the backstory to The Queen of Air and Darkness, which is a well-known filk (a setting of a lyric in Poul Anderson's story of the same title) that many fen hear and sing not knowing the story, not knowing that the song (TQOA&D) is a lie.

Paul Estin & Michael McAfee

• "Sheena is a Punk Filker" by Michael ttto "Sheena is a Punk Rocker" by the Ramones
• "Hear Her Voice" (by Michael, probably original since he didn't indicate TTTO, which he normally would) [b/o Daybreak]
• Fluorine Atom
• the Rocky Horror theme: "Science Fiction, Double Feature" (Richard O'Brien)
• Michael's Your Planets And Your Sons ttto "Your Daughters and Your Sons" by Tommy Sands. "People ask what this is based on. It's generic space opera." "Every space opera!"

JoEllyn Davidoff

• The Night
• Body Count. "My only funny song, about all the people who die in Hamlet. It's given me a real appreciation of the name Horatio."
• [Drifting Out To Sea]. Untitled, but named Fred by her friend Diana Huey. JoEllyn... title them!
• Orion.

ca. 5:30 pm: A visit

~11:00 NESFA Hymnal Singalong jip

I get back to the con just in time for the end of the singalong. I join in a couple of numbers (and suggest a couple), and then it becomes open filking. All I remember of this is premiering Little Fuzzy Lunatics, ttto Frank Hayes's L.F.Animals, about Hokas. Shortly afterward I go to ...

~11:30 the open filking in the other room jip

• Bill Sutton, White Squall (Stan Rogers)
• Gary McGath & Virginia Taylor, his brand-new Batty Party
• me, pretty new The Bree West-gate ttto Eddystone Light
• Barry Gold, Lee's Give Me Your Hand
• JoEllyn Davidoff, her Love Makes The World Go 'Round
• Brenda Sutton, Tom Bombadil's Song. Bill does a vocal didjeridoo ground.
• Rob Wynne asks Brenda for accompaniment ttto Cat Faber's Least Of My Kind, and sings a new LotR song: "The Last March of Gondor" by Rob & Larissa March
• Paul Estin, his Isaac and Arthur and Robert and Ray
• Jonathan Turner (JT), Old Love. Robin on flute
• Rebecca ??, Tell Me Why (scientific version)
• Rob, Adam Selzer's [The Death Of Me Yet]. Michael McAfee falls over with laughter, filling in for Ny Martin, who normally takes that on.
• me, Once In A Lifetime. The song I wrote for Rene on our 30th anniversary. It's still Valentine's Day to me, and she's in Philadelphia while I'm here.
• JT pumpkins with his Secondhand Songs
• Daniel Glasser, Telephone Lullabye
• Michael McAfee, The Wife Of Usher's Well, trad.
• Golds, Green Fields of Scotland: chunks of Lord Randal and other murderous Child ballads, all set ttto Eric Bogle's No Man's Land
• me, 2vss of (Give Me Those) Old Child Ballads
• Bill, Talkin' Matty Grove, Frank Hayes
• Rob, "Polly Vaughn Dreams of England" by Adam Selzer, b/o the traditional Polly Von
• me, Serial Folk Killer (Miki Dennis)
• Paul, Defenders of Marriage (Roy Zimmerman)
• Krissy Bernard, her [Baby Won't Be Lonely Any More]
• Barry, [I'm very glad I got married, and I wish that my gay friends could]
• Daniel, Lovely Mary Lou
• Rachel Silverman (Gingi), Your Date's Name Here (by Jacob Sommer, "who is downstairs playing Munchkin")
• Brenda, her Name Me Jonathan
• me, Donna, Dono
• McAfee, The Zucchini Ninja
• Paul, Carrot Juice Is Murder (The Arrogant Worms)
• Brenda, her My Granny Taught Me. Weeding the garden.
• Bill asks Daniel for Demons In Your Bed
• (After 1am, and the bawdy songs come out.)
• Lady Bear, [The Hairs On Her Dicky Dido], ttto The Ash Grove
• Rob, "We'll All Sin Together When We Sin" by Rob Wynne & Martin DeMello ttto Tom Lehrer's We Will All Go Together When We Go
• proving that small minds run in the same gutter, I add another verse I had already written.
• Michael, his [Seven Virgins]
• Daniel, I Still Want It All The Time (David Buskin). Michael on brushes & drum.
• Brenda, Boys Want Sex In The Morning; made famous by Uncle Bonsai, written by Andrew Ratshin
• Paul, Sensitive Guy
• Barry, A Girl Who Has Everything (Jan Kelson). She has whips and chains and nipple clamps and......
• me, Under the Whip and Leash. A few months ago the muse dragged me into this topic, much against my expectations. Even more to my surprise, it turned into a love song in the last verse, which makes it doubly appropriate now.
• JoEllyn, Our Love Is Being Kept Alive By Artificial Means (Christine Lavin)
• Rob, "Studs and Black Leather" by Jaqueline Taero
• Gingi and I have the same thought for a follower: Supersadomasochisticsexualrelations (Ailsa N.T. Murphy). Gingi and Ailsa recorded this at Spencer and Persis's one night and asked me for guitar backup. I ad-libbed a throw-in on the last verse and ruined the take, so we had to re-record it. This time Gingi is expecting it, although no one else is.
• Brenda, To All The Boys I've Loved Before
• Daniel, part of I Want You (To Blow Me A Kiss Goodbye) (Michael Duffy)
• Rob, "Only" by Dave Rood
• Michael, An Appreciation Of A Particular Segment Of The Gaming Hobby ttto Dancing Cheek To Cheek. About D&D.
• Dan'l, Did You Say I Love You
• (... A couple I missed hearing)
• me, The Wiggle-Waggle Chippendales

My PDA's power is low and so is mine, so I stop scribbling. At one point Lee & Barry sing a Purim song of theirs, and I follow up with a song from a Purim Shpiel from my former shul, Beth El of Sudbury, Mass.: The Mordecai Post March ttto The Washington Post March (Sousa). [Since I habitually keep track of which of my songs I've performed, I scribble down that I also sang The Campaign Volunteer's Lament ttto I've Been a Moonshiner, Virgin Blood, and A King in Krothering.] Rob adds that at the end of the open filk, he closed with his "Keep You Closer". (... as a closer <gd&ravvf>)

bed

SUNDAY, FEB. 15

noon: Noreascon4 program brainstorming session