[Bards] modern inspiration

[Ken Theriot]

Alden, Bravo!

I absolutely love it.  Great idea.  I love "Lies," and Adelaide recorded it
on one of her CDs, so it has great significance for us.  Your piece would be
a perfect example of how to do something wonderful with a modern song, and
bring it into the SCA.

And in defense of the filk (I know....whose mouth is this coming from?),
what makes it such a great source of new material is many-fold.  The
ready-made words often serve as a great source of comedy (I remember first
hearing Weird Al's "My Bologna" to "My Sharona," and "Still Billy Joel to
Me."  My dad made me laugh as a kid when the song "Feelings" was popular,
and he said he kept picturing a soldier on KP duty peeling potatoes singing
"Peelings....nothing more than peelings."  Those would not have had the
comedic effect if all the words had been changed.  The comedy comes from
changing just the right ones strategically, especially when most folks know
what's coming from the original words.  My only plaint was the singing of
such things in certain SCA settings (see yesterday's truncated version of
the issues).  But I think that when writing more serious filks (in praise of
the kingdom, for example) we should strive to completely replace the lyric,
even if you want to still use the original tune.  I sometimes am confused
when someone has replaced like 75% of the original lyrics with their own.
Why not just go the extra mile and totally replace the lyric?  

In addition to the comedy potential, the ready-made template of meter, rhyme
and lyric make it a good place for a beginning songwriter or poet to start
their craft.  We often recommend to folks who want to write original pieces
to take an extant one, and use it as a template.  You can first alter the
lyrical content, using the same meter and rhyme scheme, and keeping the
tune.  But once you've don't that, you're half-way to writing your very own
song if you just put a new tune to it!  The lyrics are now yours, now just
dump the original tune, and you have a completely new song for not much more
effort.  Note: this only works if the lyrical content is entirely new for
this purpose though (as opposed to the comedy versions), not just with a few
words changed here and there.

What you did, Alden, is yet one more way to use extant works to create your
own.  One more quick story...after Master Baldwin of Erebor wrote "Burden of
the Crown," the Queens of the two primary Kings Baldwin had in mind when he
wrote the song came up to him and asked "you wrote a song about kings, what
about the old used queens?"  So he used his own song as inspiration to write
"The Wilted Rose" ("Old Used Queen").  We're not sure if that's what they
were after....but.

So for the record, I am not "anti-filk."  Like any power, it can be used for
good or for evil:).      

Kenneth

-----Original Message-----
From: Alden Drake [mailto:alden_drake at sbcglobal.net] 
Sent: Wednesday, May 28, 2008 9:42 AM
To: bards at lists.ansteorra.org
Subject: [Bards] modern inspiration

There are a lot of modern/contemporary songs out there that inspire us 
to create an SCA filk, and taking on such a project is fun - even if the 
desire behind it is to make someone groan (and secretly wish they 
thought of it themselves).  So here's an idea I came up with (though I 
suspect I'm not the first to do so) - rather than take a modern tune and 
apply period/SCA words, take inspiration from a modern piece and create 
a period-style version.

I wrote the following after "Lies" by Stan Rogers got stuck in my head 
for a while.  Sir Kenneth's mention of Stan Rogers reminded me of this 
piece, so I thought I'd share it.

Sonnet 17

How oft you stare intently in the glass,
And note each mar and blemish witnessed there.
The woeful scars of years gone by, Alas!
Where went the springtime maiden, young and fair?
The mirror shows the remnants of what was
With every glance into the past.  You see
Effects of life gone by, but not the cause,
And so you hide the sight of life's debris.
The mirror lies a little more each day,
By which it lures you into false pretense,
To don the mask of Hebe and betray
The glory that I see without defense.
Eternal beauty, time cannot disguise;
As seen in the reflection in my eyes.


Cheers,
Alden
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