Since the only other place currently to find my music is a few filk convention and Worldcon compilations, and I have no idea when I’ll get around to finishing a studio album, I’ve done the next best thing and created a Bandcamp page! Currently up are a couple of selections from my recent FilKONtari-NO and NEWhere performances.
I gotta admit that I’m just using you to pass the message on to the rest of the filk community on tumblr. I noticed that due to the covid-19 situation, there was a virtual filk con earlier this summer. I’d like to suggest that there would be more virtual filk events (cons or even just small filk circle type things) in the future, too, even after the covid-situation has passed. As a broke younger generation nerd from a country where filk has never been a thing, getting into the filk community 1/3
2/3 and getting to know filkers, has been very hard to me, and I feel like if there were more virtual filk events, it would be easier to me at least to meet more filkers (even if I can’t even write good poetry in English or any other language, let alone make music, I can’t play any instrument, and my singing voice is about as good as a crow’s,
3/3 so I know I don’t really bring anything into the filk community to be honest), and I’d really like that! And I’m guessing I can’t be the only one with this problem? Please tell me I’m not?
Hey Nony! I know filkers are already talking about the prospect of continuing to do online filk events after the pandemic has passed, precisely because of the wider participation they allow. Even those of us who regularly go to filk conventions have been enjoying the chance to see and hear people from farther off than we usually get to travel – and for those who almost never get the chance at all, virtual events are that much more important. Personally I’m hoping that the virtual events do outlast the pandemic, and I suspect they will.
For now, there are definitely more events planned while the pandemic is still ongoing! Here’s some ways to find them:
Filkstreams.org is a repository of sorts for tracking upcoming virtual filk events, including concerts, conventions, and open circles. It’s not always comprehensive but people are working on that.
Friends of Filkis a Pacific Northwest filk organization that hosts monthly filk circles (now virtual for the duration of the pandemic), and their website hosts a very useful event calendar.
F Is For Filker is a Facebook group for filkers – I’m not on Facebook so I don’t know very much about it, but it was recommended through …
#filkhaven is a Discord server for the filk community, and an excellent place to meet filkers. The #schedules channel there is a place where people often post news about upcoming events.
Also, to address your parenthetical, for you and for anybody else reading this who’s wondering the same thing: please don’t feel like you need to “bring something” to the filk community in order to join it! The community exists for the people in it, not the other way around; if you want to be part of it, it doesn’t matter if (or how well) you sing or play or compose, you’re still welcome.
Yeoman by Baths– I can’t find anything from the artist to confirm that it’s explicitly star trek related, but it’s about a couple dancing and falling in love on a starship
Klingon Pop Warrior murdered me and I am dead
Okay let’s see… here’s a handful of filk songs about Star Trek that come to mind
Banned from Argo by Leslie Fish. This infamous comedy song WILL get stuck in your head and you’ll probably hate me for it. Depending on your taste in humor you’ll either find it really hilarious or hate it. There’s implied NSFW in a few verses. (I should note that no Star Trek character is named, but the song uses their ranks/jobs instead. However it mentions Klingons in the final verse, and anyway you know exactly who each verse refers to)
He’s Dead Jim by Julia Ecklar. Another comedy song. Name describes content pretty well.
Bones (either by Julia Ecklar or Leslie Fish but I’m not sure which. Some filker who’s better at keeping track about these things please tell me which one it is) – yet another comedy song, this time Bones complaining about all the bullshit he’s faced with every day as the CMO of the Enterprise. This one I like a lot, it gets Bones’ character very well I think.
Farewell Mother Russia – I don’t know who wrote this, but it’s sort of Chekov POV “Space Travel is pretty fun”
Demon in the Dark – again I don’t know who wrote this originally. I assume everyone can by the name guess what episode this is about?
Vow of Vengeance by Julia Ecklar – This song is set somewhere between the TOS episode Space Seed and the movie Wrath of Khan, and it’s about Khan, well, swearing vengeance against Kirk
For the Needs of the One by Julia Ecklar – Spock bidding farewell to Kirk in Wrath of Khan. (Warning: this song WILL make you cry)
One Final Lesson by Julia Ecklar – Saavik mourning Spock after his death in Wrath of Khan
Hero’s Song sort of sounds like it’s about Kirk? I mean it never mentions Kirk anywhere, technically, but it matches him very well, it’s filk song, and appears on several albums that contain a lot of Star Trek related filk, so I’d consider it safe to say that this song is meant to be about Kirk.
Homecoming and The Light that Died by Julia Ecklar – these are, according to her, about Kirk returning to Enterprise in The Motion Picture, and her headcanons regarding Chekov post-TOS but before the movies, respectively. However it’s sort of hard to see the connection between those songs and Star Trek unless you know it’s there and know what it is. I think if you google her album “The Traveller” you should be able to find a PDF of a booklet containing her explanation of the creation of both those songs, as well as their lyrics?
@filkyeahfilk is there any Star Trek filk that comes to mind to you guys that I forgot to mention? I’m pretty sure I’m forgetting something and anyway, you know these things better than I, so tagging you in case you want to add to the list 🙂
Hey, you know what’s a great resource for obscure music? Shared playlists, especially the kind that multiple people can add to. There’s a hell of a lot of filk and closely filk-adjacent music on this playlist, and it’s growing all the time.
Obligatory disclaimer: this playlist isn’t and can’t be comprehensive, since there’s also a hell of a lot of filk that isn’t on Spotify. Still, here’s almost six hours’ worth of music by an amazing variety of artists, and even if you’re familiar with filk there’s likely to be some you haven’t heard. Enjoy!
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, NEFilk is regretfully altering our original plans to hold a relaxacon in July 2020. Instead, we intend to hold an online event July 3-5, 2020 as part of the ongoing Festival of Living Rooms, and (with the agreement of our hotel) the in-person NEFilk Relaxacon has been rescheduled to June 18-20, 2021.
Save the date: July 3-5, 2020!
Join us at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Danbury, CT, for a filk relaxacon!
(relaxafilk? filaxacon? eh, we’ll figure it out)
In the last few years, filk has lost two major recording engineers, Chris “Keris” Croughton and Harold M. Stein. Like many filkers, Harold was a great collector of tapes and CDs, but his collection went beyond that, into raw board feeds from filk concerts and the steadfast recording of housefilks and filk circles at conventions. Harold would tirelessly run around with his dozen Zoom recorders, capturing every detail, sometimes in quadruplicate. He also acquired the recording collections of many filk stalwarts, including Wail Songs founder Bob Laurent.
Harold also collected songbooks at a prodigious rate. Not just professionally produced songbooks from Wail Songs and Off Centaur, but also peoples’ personal collections, which he duly scanned in. And we still have all those files, many of them unprocessed, but we now have a way to continue his work.
If you’ve attended lots of filk cons, or regional filk circles, please help us identify audio clips of voices and songs. If you haven’t, please help us out on identifying songbooks. All your work helps us extend Harold’s dream.
Thank you!
@meravhoffman
Director, Harold M. Stein Memorial Filk Archive
We are incredibly excited to announce that in anticipation of our upcoming concert this month, Scribe and I have put together a short EP of some of our music available on Bandcamp.
This website has been instrumental in helping us move from posting the occasional lyrics to songs to “Hey, maybe we could actually…” to becoming a full-fledged filk duo, so for people who’ve been with us for that journey, we’re excited to finally get to share the fruits of that with you.
(And even if you haven’t, we’d of course still be thrilled if you wanted to take a look at our songs!)
The offerings on this EP include:
A lullaby for the Opportunity rover
A song about fighting perfectionism through unicorn metaphors
A song about missing long-distance friends as told through music metaphors
And a song that’s definitely totally about our D&D party but also about found family in general
