Snowdreams and filk circles

Above: "Snowdream." I created this in Corel Painter X recently.

Only about a month and a half until FilKONtario! Allison, Jodi and I have found out more about our concert that weekend; we'll be performing from 9-9:45 pm on the Friday night. We'll also be performing a couple of songs in a children's concert during the weekend.

Speaking of FKO, I came across the following video while browsing the Conflikt LJ community and thought I'd include it in my Blatherpost today.

The performers: Michelle "Vixy" Dockrey and Tony Fabris, who are the Guests of Honour at FKO this year. In the video (posted in YouTube by DagainRevdatter), they're performing Dawson's Christian (a song written by Duane Elms) in a casual open filk music circle at Conflikt, a new convention that launched last month. You can hear Callie Hills accompanying on bass flute as well.



For those who have never attended a filk circle, this gives you a fairly good idea of the atmosphere of a typical circle: a bit of casual conversation here and there, but mostly music...some solo performance, some group, and some singalong.

Want more Tony and Vixy? Check out FilKONtario (Toronto, Apr. 4-6th), where they're GoHs. I got hooked on Jonathan Coulton because of Tony's performance of Skullcrusher Mountain (which remains one of my favourite songs ever).

In the next video, you can hear Michelle sing one of her Firefly songs, "Mal's Song," which cleverly integrates the main theme from the TV series:



In the video soundtrack above, Michelle is performing with Escape Key (not Tony).

To find out more about filk, please check out my Filk FAQ.

B5Virgin Updates:

I've updated Babylon Five Virgin with a couple more reports: Season 1, Episode 7: The War Prayer, and Season 1, Episode 8: And The Sky Full Of Stars,




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Love Scam cartoon and music videos

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my friends Lissa in the UK and Beckett in California today!

I'm experimenting with more multi-panel one-shot comics. I posted one in Inkygirl today in addition the comic above (I'm putting both on cards in my Cafepress shop).

A little while back, I asked you all for suggestions about online music videos that you liked. Here are some of your replies:

From legoline:

Dream Catch Me - Newton Faulkner

From braider:

Helsinki Complaints Choir

Mozart Bond Igudesman & Joo

From petitecrivan:

Bond Duel

The Unicorn Eve: music by Minstrels of Mayhem ("a wonderful group that plays at Renaissance Faires").

From phillip2637:

Medley: Ukulele Orchestra of GB - Fly Me Of The Handel

Pop: Ukulele Orchestra of GB - You Don't Bring Me Flowers

From sibylle:

Helsinki Complaints Choir (with subtitles)

William Shatner singing to George Lucas

An Indian Dance Video, with subtitles

They're Taking The Hobbits To Isengard

From markbernstein:

I Will Survive - The Puppini Sisters

Wuthering Heights - The Puppini Sisters

From Halfmoon_mollie:

Wild Ponies - Jonathan Byrd

PUPPINI SISTERS: WUTHERING HEIGHTS

A great cover of Kate Bush's song, "Wuthering Heights" (and VERY different).





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Tell Me What You Want, What You Really Really Want

Above: heading across a frozen lake to the cottage this past weekend.

Last night, I went to the Spice Girls concert in Toronto.

I blame my friend Craig. He, Jeff and I were trying out the Winterlicious menu at the Autogrill when he jokingly suggested we check out the Spice Girls concert. I took him up on it.

My main reasons for doing so:

- Because I've never been in the Air Canada Centre before.

- Because it's been a long time since I've been to a pop rock concert.

- Because Craig asked.

- Because I was curious. They were the first major British pop music phenomenon of the mid-90s and no matter what you think of their music, you can't deny their influence on pop music culture and marketing.

Jeff (not surprisingly) opted out of our Spice Girl adventure, so Craig and I went without him. We got our tickets at a drastically reduced price, probably because the show had already started (we missed about 10 minutes).

BlogTO has a great post about the concert as well as photos, but I had a somewhat different perspective. I was unfamiliar with most of the songs (except for their cover set), don't own any Spice Girl albums, and the bulk of my Spice Girl knowledge comes from conversations with my friend Allison, who teaches grade school so was witness to the Spice Girl craze at its height.



Despite my Spice ignorance, however, I had a ton of fun. The Spice Girls had quite a few male backup dancers, an impressive light show, parts of the stage that went up and down for interesting entrances and exits, rhythm steam effects, exploding glitter confetti, and made creative use of the various media screens. Plus I'm a sucker for girl groups. :-)

But I got the biggest kick out of the energy in that place. It seemed like everyone around us was deliriously happy, dancing and waving and singing along on the lyrics. The Spice Girls themselves exuded confidence, benevolence and seemed to be having fun on the stage. I realize that things may be very different once they're off-stage and our seats were too far away for us to see the expressions on their faces, but their energy was contagious.

So Craig and I had fun dancing and yelling along with the rest of them, though I admit to plugging my ears when the screaming escalated beyond a certain decibel level, usually when Posh Spice had a close-up on the tv screens. Is this extra popularity just because she's married to David Beckham?

And wow, were there a LOT of cameras and camera phones in that place; I could see a zillion glowing screens wherever I looked. I had asked Jeff to take my camera home because I figured photography wasn't allowed, but I was WAY wrong.

I'm not about to go rushing out to buy any Spice Girls albums but I have to say, they put on a good show.



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Greg McMullan: 1963-2008

Above: Greg at GAfilk a couple of weeks ago.

(Updated Tue Jan 29 at 5 pm EST) LINKS: Maya | Greg | Greg's brother | Faeryn | Dave Weingart Memorial service info McMullan family fund donations List of things Maya could use Dave Weingart's update Monday night: mailing list, snailmail address Annie & Tim Walker's fundraising.

I was deeply shocked and saddened when Dave Weingart told me about Greg McMullan's death in a house fire on Saturday night. Maya (Greg's wife) was at work, and Faeryn (his stepdaughter) was out, so neither was in the house at the time.

More info: Dave's first post and follow-up post. Faeryn also wrote a detailed post, as has Greg's brother. The family has organized a memorial service.



Greg's brother says that if you have specific memories of Greg to share, he would appreciate if you would consider posting them in his LJ. Since most of their photos were destroyed, Faeryn asks that if anyone has photos of Greg that could be used at a memorial service, to please send them to her (delete the "REMOVE" from the e-mail address).

My memories of Greg at GAfilk: he seemed to be enjoying himself, especially during the MyFilk panel (when I shot the photo taken above). During the weekend, we talked about his success in running, and he encouraged me in my own running.



He posted in my blog comments section, and liked my photography; he's been using a crop of one of my photos as his userpic for his LJ for several years. The full photo is below:



It first appeared in a Blathering I posted in 2005 about an incredible experience we shared at FilKONtario. Greg was delighted that he was in my photo of that memorable afternoon, and asked if it was ok if he used part of it as his LJ user icon. I said yes, of course.

Whenever I saw Greg at a convention, he was always smiling, friendly, and involved. He was a quiet, gentle man who never pushed himself into the limelight.

Other memories: at a convention we both attended last year, I ended up sitting beside Greg at a singalong, and we shared a songbook. I remember being once again impressed by his voice, and how beautifully he sang. I told him so afterward, and he seemed a bit embarrassed but pleased.

My strongest memory of Greg: his obvious love of singing and of the filk community. Whenever he sang, there was such joy on his face.

My heart goes out to Maya and Faeryn, and the rest of Greg's family.

Greg, you will be deeply missed.





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Discovering The Ditty Bops - and seeking other music videos

I am perpetually behind in blog-reading. The main reason is time: these days there are SO many interesting and well-written blogs, and if I didn't have anything else to do, I could easily spend hours and hours just reading those. But blog-reading can be a real time-sink, and I'm not about to give up cable tv just to find something else to spend way too much time on.

But from time to time I do try to catch up on my LJ Friends List. I usually never get past the first few pages, however, because I end up following someone's link or photo or video and then end up digging deeper as I get sucked into the Web.

Like today. This time I got as far as thechasingiamb's LJ (blogger in India) where she posted some tunes to start the day that included this Ditty Bops video:



Intrigued, I checked The Ditty Bops Web site...and then, of course, I was doomed, especially when I discovered their photo and video room. Like this Extra video/interview, where they talk about their 2006 bike tour. Sadly, it doesn't look as if they're coming to Toronto anytime soon. :-(

Photo: Kevin Abosch.

The Ditty Bops Web site is fun to explore; it's much more interesting than the usual standard band site. They even have their own comic strip! Anyway, of course I bought one of their albums from iTunes, which I'm listening to as I write this Blathering; my favourite so far is "Ohh La La."

YouTube and other free video sources have been a major boon for musicians wanting to promote themselves. Not only can people hear someone's music, but they can also get a sense of their personality and (if the video is of the artist) what they look like, making it that much more personal.

One challenge, though, is that (like blogs) there are just SO MANY videos out there.

So I'm inviting you all to post a link to one or two videos (just a LINK to the video, please, not the imbedded video) to an artist or a song you think some people may not know about and SHOULD know about. If you're the artist, feel free to post a link to your own video.

Please avoid linking to a page requiring users to register or download specific software. This is where a place like YouTube is especially handy -- I know I can just click to be able to see the video.

I'll post a selection in an upcoming Blathering. Hopefully this will be of benefit to both the artists and those of us open to discovering new music but not always sure where to look.



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