I was noodling around with a couple of chords, one of which I don't normally use, and tripped over a chord progression that led me to this song. And it probably doesn't sound anything like you think that it does.

I think. :) But it does have a beat.
( Lyrics inside... )

Here's the last entry for this batch, which I think finishes off everything that was already typed up and on the computer, but which had -- for some reason -- not managed to make it to the website.

It was 1981. Worldcon was returning to Chicago for the first time in a long time. And the overlapping committees had decided to hold WindyCon downtown as a trial run of the Hyatt Regency Chicago. Of course, the problem was that the hotel was booked in October when the con was normally held. But December! December was available. And so there we were.

There were problems. There were lots of problems. And Clif got caught by several of them, so his mood was foul. daisy_knotwise was running the Masquerade and had asked Clif and I to perform at halftime. And we decided to write a song. We played it for Gretchen and asked if it was ok with her. She said, "Sure!"

We went on stage at the Masquerade halftime. And they turned up the lights. And everyone started talking. We were undermiked and barely audible past the first row, which is where our friends came up to so they could hear us, along with some of the convention guests.

But mostly we were ignored. Until Gretchen signaled us to wrap it up and we launched into our new song.

And the room got really quiet all of a sudden.

And before we were done, the Fan GoH, Mike Glyer, fell off his chair laughing.

Later, Ross recruited me to help run cons up here in Chicago, so I guess he got even.

Did I mention that Chicago is bidding for 2012? :)

(Did I mention that I'm not on the committee? I've stopped trying to run Worldcons. Too much politics for my blood...)
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Suffice it to say that I've worked a lot more conventions now than I had then. And the hotels are still standing.

Mostly. And the ones that aren't, you can't pin on me.
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And another of the really old things in my filk book is this song. Jim Detry left the lyrics in the contribution drawer for the fanzine that I was editing for ChUSFA (the Champaign-Urbana Science Fiction Association) when I was down at the University of Illinois. They're essentially all his -- I tweaked them a hair. The tune is mine, save for the fact that the first line is essentially identical to Clif's "Mama Rosa's".

I blame the Melancholy Elephants.
( Lyrics inside... )

As I continue cleaning up missing items in my filk book and on the website, I've got this song. It was my second attempt at writing a song about a soldier far away from home. I never liked it as well as I do "One Last Battle", which probably has a lot to do with why it's been buried for a long time.
( Lyrics inside... )

It's getting to be time for dinner, so this should be the last song that I type up today. (Is that cheering I hear in the distance?) But I actually had someone ask for this one, so for your filk historical pleasure, I bring you this -- God help us all! -- Pegasus-winning ditty from 1983.
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This is written on a flyer for Congenial, which was in March of 1989, so I'm guessing that I wrote this in 1988. I'm not sure what caused me to write it, but it comes in handy occasionally when min0taur is leading a jam and running the changes on "Johnny B. Goode".

I don't think I've ever actually seen all of a Godzilla movie. I suppose I should...
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As Operation: Total Recall continues, we find this little ditty, which daisy_knotwise and I wrote while sitting on the runway out in California waiting to fly back to Chicago. We'd just spent several days with Teri Lee in her studio, where she explained to us some of the entertainment involved in recording with an 8-track reel-to-reel machine. Although we bought a used machine out there (and took it back on the plane with us), we never actually did any recording on the machine. We did use it to transcribe a number of old projects to ADAT some years later.

We probably made the lady in front of us crazy as I tapped out the rhythm for the song on the tray table. Fortunately, we finished before the plane took off, so she didn't have to kill us.
( Lyrics inside... )

So when my good buddy, Clif, got married to Carol, they put little notes on the tables at the reception that said that they would not kiss when people clinked glasses. They would have to get up and sing a little song that included the word "love". And if that was too hard for us to do, we could do a song that contained "Albuquerque".

Needless to say, there were a lot of songs that contained "Albuquerque" that were sung, although many of them simply substituted that city for, say, Kansas City.

I think I wrote the words for this by myself. I know that MEW and Steve Simmons sang it with me, because everything's better with harmony.

So, with apologies to Clif, Carol, Billy Joel, and the Capitol Steps:
( Lyrics inside... )

And here's another song that Clif and I wrote back in 1981. If memory serves, it actually got into the second volume of the Westerfilk Collection. Can you tell that we were both trained as chemists?
( Lyrics inside... )

After I finished recording, I discovered that I still needed to put the filk book back together after the concert at FenCon. And then I decided that -- as long as Julie was asleep and Katie was watching Tarzan -- it might be a good time to type up some of the things that were stuffed in the front flap of my book.

So here's a song I wrote with my good buddy, Clif Flynt, back in 1981. We were asked to write a song about mad scientists. Instead, we ended up writing a song about scientists who were certainly annoyed. It was a wonderfully designed experiment. It just didn't measure what it set out to measure.
( Lyrics inside... )

I got the idea for this while driving down to Wrigley Field last week. Then it was just a matter of pulling it all together. Of course, that requires a little free time with the guitar, which can be just a little bit harder when you have two little girls. Especially when you've sugared them up well...

Update: daisy_knotwise suggested that I might want to change a few things. So I've nipped here and tucked there. :)
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I finished writing this, turned to daisy_knotwise, and said "I've just written a singularly unpleasant song."

*sigh* Well, she was the one who once said to me, "You're not writing ose songs. If you're not writing ose songs because you're too happy, I can fix that."

Fortunately, I am happy. The fellow in the song, not so much.
( Lyrics inside... )

I started working on this at Marcon, where I came up with the chorus. Then I had a heck of a time coming up with a compatible tune for the verse that wasn't busy infringing on other things that I've written -- which I suppose is a hazard when you're writing in A with major 7th chords. :) And after two verses, I realized that I needed a bridge to get to the third verse, which meant I needed a third unique melody line. Ack!

So after last night's marathon coding session for work, I pulled out the guitar, found the tune, wrote the bridge, and realized that there wasn't going to be a third verse, because the song was done.

This was good, because daisy_knotwise really wanted to go to sleep then. (We used to have spare rooms upstairs suitable for slinking off into with a guitar. Those rooms are now filled with little girls. :) )
( Lyrics inside... )

daisy_knotwise gave me the chorus for this song right after FilkOntario. I put chords to it a few weeks ago and we picked it back up in the last couple of days to put together the verses.

Did I mention that Katie wants to go to the moon?
( Lyrics inside... )

And here's the song I wrote for the FilkOntario songwriting contest. The required words were:

Penguin, elemental, preservation, maple, graphic.

Piece of cake. :)
( Lyrics inside... )

I started this last night. Actually, that's not quite true -- I started this at catalana's house when I found the riff that I used to construct the chorus. The melody line's morphed a bit since then, but is still recognizable, I think. And since daisy_knotwise had bunches of Capricon work to do tonight, I had time to put the rest of it together.

Now I just need to figure out how to get there from here. :)
( Lyrics inside... )

I was reminded that today is the anniversary of Gordy Dickson's death. This prompted me to post a rather old song that I wrote with some of my friends down at ChUSFA.

And I wish we could still see Gordy wander into a party...
( Lyrics inside )

I got back from Confusion a bit before 10 PM Chicago time, making good time after catalana and I packed up the table. More about Confusion later. Like tomorrow.

I discovered that I was tired enough on the way home that listening to music was more likely to put me to sleep than keep me awake. Writing music, on the other hand, worked pretty well as a device to keep me from falling asleep while driving.

So I have a new song.

(Note to Erica: Yes, this is what the chord progression in the Dealers' Room was for. No, I don't think the chord progression actually managed to survive into the automotive version. I wonder what the chords are actually going to end up being...)
( Lyrics inside... )

Below is what I was working on when I couldn't sleep night before last. The lyrics and music are done, but the song is being stubbornly resistant to any title that I try to give it.

Any suggestions?
( Lyrics inside... )

I'd been fooling around with some chords in this zone for several days and the song decided to pop up and mug me tonight. With the remnants of the cold, I'm not sure if I can actually sing it in the key I wrote it in (D), but the capo is my friend. :)
( Lyrics inside... )

I've been thinking that it was about time to write something else for the musical that I've been kicking around, given that I haven't written anything for it since, oh, January of 2006. So I figured that I'd start thinking about the big production number near the beginning of the show.

Somebody had other ideas.

And I do like a villain who enjoys his work.
( The synopsis... )
( Lyrics inside... )

Well, you see, there was an Iron Filker round at ConClave that included me, Wulf, and filkertom. We had half an hour to write a song where the secret ingredient was "table lamps". Wulf won the competition with Table Lamps of Cthulhu. Tom also wrote a funny song.

This one, not so much. :)

The chord progression? I was in a hurry, so the verse is the Major/Minor 7th version of C / Am / F / G -- that is, Cmaj7 / Am7 / Dm7 / G. The chorus is different.
( Lyrics inside... )

Writing's running a bit slower at the moment due to kidlet schedules being what they are. This idea grabbed hold of me on the way to work a week or so ago and I finally managed to finish it up Tuesday night, but by then it was too late to type it up. Last night, we were at the Cubs game. So I'm taking a moment to type it up now in advance of ConClave so I can stop trying to read my own handwriting. :)
( Lyrics inside... )

I was digging through and cleaning out old e-mail, when I found this little bit from around the time of my last colonoscopy. Apparently, I came up with the first two lines when the tech told me that many people try to schedule their colonoscopy around a holiday so that they don't have to take time off from work. This somewhat boggled me, at which point I came up with the first two lines of the little ditty below.

Sadly, I came up with a few more lines over dinner.

So to the tune of "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas":

I want a colonoscopy for Christmas.
A colonoscopy is all I want.
Don't want a truck or a pole for catching bass.
All I want's a doctor who will --

And Gretchen said, "Thank you, dear!"