For space is wide and good friends are too few.
axonsandsynapses Suffer my soul, for the hunt is not over
The hounds follow me to the end of the earth
Through blood death and pain, I follow my calling
A road I have followed since the day of my birth
It’s really a pity that this recording is so corrupted, because from what I can tell it used to sound pretty neat. Now I guess it sounds doubly ominous, in a way.
“The Curse,” by Julia Ecklar
THERE ARE LIKE TEN OF US, BUT I TRY
oh my god do I try
(that’s a lie, though, this blog has 129 followers as of now, and I love all of them)
A little fairy comes at night,
her eyes are blue and her hair is brown
With silver spots upon her wings
And from the moon she flutters down.
This isn’t quite the Fairy Queen interpretation I’m used to (by which I mean, she doesn’t threaten to take anybody’s eyes out or steal any children), but it’s pretty.
There are songs for a world filled with fairytales
There are songs for a world more mundane
But the words and the music are dancing as one
And the magic they weave is the same
“Songs that Matter,” by Terence Chua
Lyrics available here
Oh the werewolf, oh the werewolf comes stepping along
He don’t even break the branches where he’s been gone
Oh the werewolf, oh the werewolf comes travelin along
He don’t even crush the leaves where he’s been gone
Sometimes you’re listening to folk music on Pandora and you come across something you very much never expected.
“The Werewolf,” by Michael Hurley, performed by Barry Dransfield
Now presenting… The Enterprise Came Flying In, the first pre-release from the IDICarols album, featuring Trekmas classics such as
- Hark, the Emissary Leads
- Rockin’ Around the Enterprise
- O! Mister Spock
- The Twelve Days of Trekmas
- and many, many more!
Secular, Trekular fun can be yours for the low, low price of your dignity! When no other holiday music will do, sing along to IDICarols, coming soon to a Trekkie near you.
[original instrumental track source]
Like a princess in a castle
Like a queen without a king
Like a present wrapped in ribbons
Or a bird with broken wings
She is waiting to be rescued
She is waiting to be free
If someone could only tell her
Just who she’s supposed to be
“Princess in a Castle,” by Terence Chua
Lyrics available here
I’ve been on Tumblr too long and thought this would be about relationship ships, and it’s…very much not. Honestly, it’s better. There are some phrases in this I never expected to hear sung.
Performed by Andrew Ross, with Sunnie Larsen, CD Woodbury and David Rogers, at Orycon 37. A parody of you-know-what, by the Proclaimers.
Miles Vorkosigan posted this on Facebook and called it “a revenge ballad that is maybe the most controversial thing I perform in public.” Seems like the kind of folklore we need right now.
Lyrics under the cut.
Filk 101: An Introduction
What is Filk? In lieu of trying to effectively explain it myself, I will shamelessly steal from the guy who literally wrote his thesis on this:
What is filk? Hard question.
Easy answer: the folk music of the science fiction fandom.
Thing is, it doesn’t always sound like folk music, and it’s not even close to all about science fiction. We’ve got singers and rappers, guitarists and accordion players, keyboardists and bodhran-wielders. We’ll take sad songs about space and ballads from the back pages of Mercedes Lackey novels, songs that are strings of innuendo based on Star Trek, songs about gaming, politics, Shakespeare, Kipling, cats, escapism. Songs to the tune of one song, referencing three more songs, making jokes about a sci-fi convention that happened back in the 60’s and speculating about the future of space travel. It’s music fit for Dothraki; it takes what it likes and goes where it will–but it has also become the bardic historian of fandom, and it’s one of the most inclusive and accepting musical traditions of Western civilization. We want you, your three banjo chords, and your truth. And by “truth,” I mean excess emotions about comic books.
On that note, I tried to make a single introductory playlist full of filk classics to educate the uninitiated.
I failed.
The genre is just too diverse to fit on a single mix. So, instead, have four playlists that attempt to introduce this wonderfully weirdass genre. They’re vaguely sorted by theme. I’ve included a mix of old and new filk on each; some “classic” songs that have endured from fandom days of yore, and some more recent music that I think will end up becoming classics for the filkers of the future.
I’d like to emphasize that these mixes are by no means comprehensive; there’s lots of stuff I wanted to include but just couldn’t fit. I highly encourage people to go explore more after listening.
Here are the sections [full track lists are under a cut, because otherwise this post would be WAY too long]
Parody is a central theme of filk. There’s a piece of media we like? We make fun of it. There’s a song we like? We make fun of that. There’s a filk song we like? We write yet another filk song to make fun of that.
Filk is obsessed with space travel both fictional and real. Some of the saddest filk songs (referred to as “ose,” derived from the pun “ose, ose, and morose”) are songs set in space. As well as some of the funniest songs. For whatever reason, there are far fewer songs that fall between those categories, so I apologize in advance for any emotional whiplash. I tried my best.
Unit 3: This Is What Happens When You Let Fantasy Novelists Write Music
This tradition began with Mercedes Lackey, who published songs in the backs of many of her novels. A lot of filk is rooted in the fantasy genre, and a bunch of songs are short stories in their own right.
Unit 4: Revenge of the Fairytale Princesses
From the beginning, filk has had a strong feminist bent. One way it manifests is in songs reinterpreting classic female characters or archetypes.
Track lists under the cut…