I think this is probably either in G or D, 6/8 time, and should be sung with as much vigor as possible. I’m totally hearing it as a drinking song in my head. And now, I give you…

“Quebecois Boys”

Some girls like to rock with electric guitars
Some girls like their operas sublime
Some girls like the rappers, or metal, or country
But none of this music is mine!

Oh the north wind is blowing, and I want to follow
Where it leads me to tales of times past
Where beavers are flying, and coalmen from hell
Rouse my boots to be smiling at last!

(chorus)
And it’s sing to me, Quebecois laddies, oh sing to me
Sing to me, Quebecois boys!

You could spend seven verses on the Montreal phone book
And I’d think you’d still sound quite grand
As long as you’re tapping away on the board
And you’ve got a bouzouki in hand!

So warm up your fiddles, break out your accordions
Play till the morning has dawned
Let’s dance to the reels and sing sweet turluttes
Till the wee hours of evening are gone

Sing to me, Quebecois laddies, oh sing to me
Sing to me, Quebecois boys!

(bridge here)

They say we American girls have no culture
But I say the doubters are wrong
For music transcends all the borders of language
And makes the soul rise up in song

Vertical movement requires no translation
For this Anglophone southern-bred gal
But teach me your lyrics, boys, and see just how fast
I’ll engage dans la danse verticale!

And it’s sing to me, Quebecois laddies, oh sing to me
Sing to me, Quebecois boys!

(no instruments, and layer the English with the French for this a cappella bit)

Sing to me, Quebecois laddies, oh sing to me
(translation, four measures after)
Sing to me, Quebecois laddies, oh sing to me
(translation)
Sing to me, Quebecois laddies, oh sing to me
(translation, and hold out the final French word for a couple extra measures before returning to the English)

Sing to me, Quebecois boys!

(four beats of stomping, and then this should kick into a reel in the same key, with as much dangerous podorythmie as possible!)

This was the first year that solarbird and I got to attend the whole convention, which was nice. We still pulled a commuter con, which was not quite so ideal; next year, I think we’ll be getting a hotel room, just because driving all the way back to Kenmore at 2am or later is crazytalk. Especially when things like the Jury panels happen around 10:30 in the morning!

Dara did of course do more active music playing than I did since she has a CD in progress; me, I mostly hung out and beat on one of the novels in progress. And a nice lady I hadn’t met before even told me she quite liked Faerie Blood, to which I double-taked hugely, and was all ‘wait, a complete stranger actually read my novel? Whoa!’ (Nice Lady Who Read My Novel, if you’re reading this, I have forgotten your name and LJ, but if you drop a comment I shall make sure to note it again properly for the future!)

I did periodically also whip out Rags and do impromptu jamming near the registration table, which was also good fun. Special shout-outs on that are due to doragoon and Jeri Lynn who was managing the registration table, and whose LJ, if she has one, I do not know! We managed to play a not too bad little pass through “Si Bheag Si Mhor”, a song to which I am partial of course from its connection to Mr. Crowe and the Grunts. (Mmm, “Judas Cart”, I should listen to that again.)

Also participated in the Band Scramble, which let me meet a few nice folks and play music with them; we did “Elf Glade”, which is a standard at the Murkjams, and it was an interesting musical exercise to try to follow somebody else’s version of the guitar line. Also fun to try to invent piccolo twiddles on the fly since I never play flute on this thing at home.

The main attraction of the whole shebang was filkertom, though! Since my original exposure to filk was in the Midwest and my and Dara’s housemate at the time, amethyst_dancer, was an old college buddy of Tom’s, I’m real familiar with Tom and fond of his music quite a bit. He’s a superb musician, and I was very pleased to see that he hasn’t missed a step in live performance since I saw him last. His voice and guitar playing are both very strong, still! It was with great glee that I plunked down money for three, count ‘em, three of his albums at the con–and furthermore picked up two more off of iTunes when I got home. Tom’s just that awesome.

Secondary highlight: seeing Alexander James Adams perform. I really want Alec to start writing more new stuff, just because as a long-standing Heather Alexander fan I have the original versions of a lot of his songs stuck in my brain and they don’t really want to be budged out by newer versions. He’s got a quite nice new vampire song though as well as a new one called “The Dance of Hoof and Horn”, and of course his fiddle playing is still sublime. Extra bonus points for Dara and I getting to sit near him in the big Sunday afternoon Jam, too. And I got to remind him of the incident in 1997 when he looked me in the eye at a room party and said “Play something!” and I squeaked and almost melted into the floor. Now? Now I can actually whip out a guitar and do something with it. He told me he was pleased to have inspired via terror. ;)

(Another shoutout to doragoon as well for whipping out that fiddle of hers and duo’ing with Alec on “Si Bheag Si Mhor”. Lovely and very well done!)

Alec has a work print of his next new album, so although it’s mostly reworked versions of Heather-era songs, I put down for that too since hey, again, awesomeness. And it may amuse damara as well that I bought a Heather Dale album–one of the CD vendors in the tiny dealer’s room had a whole bunch of her albums, so I got The Hidden Path and in fact listened to it tonight on the way home from work.

All in all a pleasant and relaxing way to spend the weekend. I may have been “hanging out on the periphery” girl for the most part, but it was a lovely periphery to be at. And “surrounded by musicians” is strangely conducive to getting actual writing done, not to mention guitar playing. <3 Looking forward to next year!

And maybe next year, I’ll actually have a proper chord line to “How Many Hugos?”, one of the few filk songs I’ve actually written. Not to mention, maybe I’ll finish that Doctor Who filk still haunting my brain, and also have that shiny green guitar!

But at least I have on good warm socks and a cup of tea is steeping at my elbow.

Meanwhile I blew the weekend playing way more of our game Unwell Mel than I probably should have done, but hey, we make good games, what can I say? ;) And solarbird has been digitizing a lot of my old filk tapes, finally–which means I can at last get this stuff onto my iPhone. We’re focusing on stuff that has not to my knowledge been released on CD, like the Technical Difficulties tapes, the Where No Man… Trek tape, the general-folk Brandywine tape that’s got some good Julia Ecklar and Leslie Fish on it, and best of all, the original Elfquest tape, the one that isn’t remastered to within an inch of its life.

And this does of course mean I’ll have “Banned from Argo” on the iPhone too. <3

This'll be nice to listen to. I've missed a lot of this; when it comes to filk, I'm really more a fan of the older stuff than I am current, although I do of course like me some vixyish and tfabris and s00j and seanan_mcguire. The Technical Difficulties and Julia Ecklar were really the people who got me interested in filk in the first place!

Aside from that, I have also fixed some broken links on my Rellawy character page, updated the reference to AetherMUSH on my MUSHes page to reflect that Aether II has opened up in Aether’s place, and fixed other little minor things as I’ve found them. Anybody sees anything else broken, do please let me know!