Is A Part Of
I had never even heard of “Filk Music” until I saw the following webcomic:
(text too small to read? Then go look at it at DorkTower.com)
Now remember, I’ve written a few song parodies myself. Does that make me a Filker? Does that make Weird Al King of the Filkers? Apparently not, according to Filk.com, which I would have to assume is the ultimate authority becasue they got to the domain name first!
Many things fall under the category of filk, filking, and filksongs. Perhaps you’ve heard Weird Al Yankovic’s song Yoda, where he took the tune from The Kinks’ Lola and wrote a song about a STAR WARS character. Yoda is classified as a filk song a tune from a known song, with original words that have a science fiction or fantasy theme even though Lola is not a folk song. (Most of Weird Al’s music is more mainstream- -if you can call Eat It mainstream so Weird Al himself is not classified as a filk singer.)
A song specifically written with a science fiction theme, with original music as well as lyrics, also falls under the category of filk music. Star Trekkin’ by the Firm the best-known original STAR TREK song, is in that category, as are David Bowie’s and Peter Schilling’s ballads about Major Tom. Elton John’s Rocket Man is perhaps the most popular science fiction song of all time based upon a Ray Bradbury story, yet! Despite what William Shatner did to it (don’t ask, you’ll sleep better at night).
Songs about real happenings in space songs to honor astronauts and missions, or the space program also count. The Byrds had a song called Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins, and Casse Culver honored another astronaut with Ride, Sally Ride. These are filk songs in the truest sense of FOLK, that honor modern laborers like astronauts in lieu of the farmers and miners of yesterday’s folk songs.
Instrumental pieces do not fall into the category of filk; filk music contains both music and lyrics. Holst’s THE PLANETS, Mozart’s JUPITER SYMPHONY, and John Williams’ numerous scores for blockbuster science fiction movies do not, therefore, count as filk music. Drug songs are NOT filk songs. The Moody Blues’ Floating, the Byrds’ Eight Miles High, and Jefferson Airplane’s White Rabbit are full of space or fantasy references, but these are references for people who need to take drugs to experience spaceflight or flights of fancy. The rest of us read science fiction.
Many successful mainstream artists have written filk songs. Allan Sherman, Donovan, Neil Innes, Frank Zappa, Chris de Burgh, Justin Hayward, Julie Brown, Sting, Billy Preston, Jethro Tull, and (appropriately enough) Jefferson Starship, among others, have done at least one space-themed or outright science fiction or fantasy song. But you will not hear Billy Preston or Donovan referred to as a filker, for the same reason Weird Al Yankovic is not called a filker. One space song doth not a filksinger make.
Okay, then, the example in the comic isn’t Filk, because it’s not about Science Fiction and other ‘fan-cult cultures’, but about the fans themselves. Let’s go to the Wikipedia:
There is no consensual definition of filk, though one could divide the different proposed definitions by their focus on the content and style of filk music or the cultural aspects of filking as an activity.
Thanks a lot.
One definition focuses on filk as a genre: filk is folk music, usually with a science fiction or fantasy theme. But this definition is not exact. Filkers can also write filk songs about a wide variety of topics. Examples include computers and cats. The origins of filk in science fiction conventions and its current organization emphasizes the social-network aspect of filking.
Whichever definition one chooses, filk is a form of music created from within science fiction & fantasy fandom, often performed late at night at science fiction conventions. And whichever definition one chooses, the boundaries of filking are muddy.
So a song about Gamers and Furries can be Filk. A Weird Al song about Star Wars or Spiderman is Filk, but his Forrest Gump song isn’t. “Space Oddity” is Filk, but how often do you see David Bowie hanging around after hours at Sci-Fi conventions?
Why is this an issue to me? Because, through the joint efforts of a couple of MetaFilter members who are more creative than I am, there has come into being “Mathowie’s Community Blog”, a 22-minute tour de farce that starts simply as a parody of Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant” (itself an 18-minute mostly-monologue) and works its way through a contemporary horror story of the Internet and Civil Rights (paralleling the original) which is fall-down-on-the-floor-and-don’t-get-up-until-it’s-over funny! (But does require significent knowledge of the subjects, including MetaFilter, to be fully appreciated).
… came to the realization that it was an atypical case of actual American justice, and there wasn’t nothing he could do about it, and the judge wasn’t going to look at the registry files, wiretap logs of my cellphone calls, RIAA RFID DRM bug records from my breakfast cereal boxes, and the twenty-seven DNA samples. And I was fined $50 for indecency and charged $150,000 for room and board for a year-and-a-half, but that?s not what I came to tell you about.
Came to talk about Web 2.0.
They got a marketing blog, it’s called [censored], where you log in, you get prepped, repped, strepped, fapped, and FPP?d. I went down to get my sockpuppets darned one day, and I logged in, I checked in, got good and drunk before posting, so I?d be undetectable from the rest of the blogosphere. `Cause I wanted to sound like the all-American kid from Wankerville, man I wanted, I wanted to feel like the all-, I wanted to be the all American kid from Wankerville, and I logged in, sat down, I was hung over, rung over, fired up and wired up, and all kinds o’ mean nasty ugly things. And I logged in and sat down and they gave me an EULA, said, “D00d, PM HR, LOL!!OMG.”
Be prewarned there is NSFW language therein, and the name of that marketing blog is the only thing that gets bleeped. But it’s so… so… [sniff] inspirational!
And the only reason I’m singing you this song now is cause you may know somebody in a similar situation, or you may be in a similar situation, and if you?re in a situation like that there’s only one thing you can do and that’s log onto the Net wherever you are, go to the first viral marketing blog you can Google and post “D00d, You can get the best of the web, at mathowie’s community weblog.” And log out. You know, if one person, just one person does it they may think he’s really sick and they won’t listen. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think they’re both liberals and they won’t listen to either of them. And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people logging on posting a bar of mathowie’s community weblog and logging out? They may think it’s a denial of service attack. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day logging in posting a bar of mathowie’s community weblog and logging out. And friends, they may thinks it’s a movement. And they’ll have so many meetings trying to figure out how to profit from it that maybe they’ll leave us alone for awhile.
And it’s based on a folk song and it’s about a web-based entiry with cultish fans and the story gets seriously into X-Files/1984/cyberpunk territory, I say it’s Filk, and I think all the MetaFilter fans (a.k.a.MeFites) will agree. Besides, the MeFites and the Filkers should be friends.
