I spent the weekend in Salt Lake City, at CONduit XXI, “Utah’s longest-running and largest general science fiction and fantasy convention.” I’ll spend the next few days reporting on things I did there and related observations and links.
I drove down to Salt Lake for the event, and coincidentally I brought one of my guitars (my Fender Toronado, for images of which see below). I say “coincidentally” because I had not planned on participating in any of CONduit’s filking events, but since I had a guitar with me anyway, more or less on impulse, I entered the filk songwriting contest.
The contest was judged by a panel of three, comprised of convention guest of honor Joey Shoji (pics) and special guest Kathy Mar (bio with pic) and a senior member of the Utah Filk Organization (UFO) (who might have been Danica West, but I could be mistaken). I entered in the “original song” section, and played The Gift of Solomon Kane.
And won!
Here’s my nerve-wracked, fumbling, award-winning performance.
The filk folks were all very generous and gracious with me, an interloper. Filk is really cool. I’ve never seen so many basically shy people being really brave to participate in an art they love.
I was unable, incidentally, to collect a portion of my prize after the awards were announced at Masquerade, which was to be a copy of UFO’s CD (see the link above), so I can’t review it. If the CD is as fun as their live performance, though, it’ll be worth the $10.
CORRECTION: Per Joey Shoji, in the comments, the third judge was Dawnya Thill. My apologies, Dawnya, and thanks again to UFO, Joey and Kathy!
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