{"id":36113,"date":"1998-12-29T00:00:00","date_gmt":"1998-12-29T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/tom-smith-and-his-digital-acoustic-compilation\/"},"modified":"1998-12-29T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"1998-12-29T00:00:00","slug":"tom-smith-and-his-digital-acoustic-compilation","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/tom-smith-and-his-digital-acoustic-compilation\/","title":{"rendered":"Tom Smith And His Digital Acoustic Compilation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Outside my existence as a Daily Vault reviewer (yes, there is
\nsomething<\/i> outside it), I am a somewhat active member of the
\n‘fen’ community. For those unfamiliar with the term, ‘fen’ is a
\ncollective noun for SF fans, gamers, convention goers, SCAers, and
\nweirdos. Yet for many years, I had managed to -avoid- filk music,
\nthe soundtrack of fen. Filk is folk, but with a twist — it’s
\nhandcrafted music, new or parody, that is distributed mostly by
\nword of mouth through SF conventions and filk events, usually
\ninvolving SF, fantasy, pagan, or humourous themes; Internet
\ndistribution has become very common, as many fen are also computer
\nusers. Musically most of it is folk or Celtic, although
\nrock-filkers, country-filkers, and at least one rap-filker exists.
\nSee
\nthis
\nsite<\/a> for more information than anyone needs about filk.<\/p>\n

Enough academia. Let us get to the meat of the matter: Tom Smith
\nis the man responsible for making me
\nlike<\/i> filk — nay, actively enjoy it, and want more. Smith is
\ncalled ‘The World’s Fastest Filker’; he has been known to write
\ncompositions at SF conventions to order while stopwatches tick, and
\nhis faculty for verbal and musical puns is astonishing and
\noccasionally painful, often reaching Tom Lehreresque
\nproportions.<\/p>\n

\nDigital Acoustic Compilation<\/i> is his new greatest hits
\n(sort-of) CD. It includes tracks from his first two albums,
\nWho Let Him In Here?<\/i> and
\nDomino Death<\/i>; redone acoustic tracks from his experiment
\ninto keyboard-accompanied music, “Plugged”; and a couple of early
\nsongs he re-recorded for aesthetic reasons. The production and
\nengineering on this CD are an improvement over normal filk. (Much
\nfilk tends to sound like it was recorded in someone’s bathroom.
\nSometimes it is.)<\/p>\n

Smith’s sense of humour and timing is exemplary, and his
\nselection of targets for parody is keen, reminding me of a
\nguitar-bearing Tom Lehrer. “I Want To Be Peter Lorre” is a
\nside-splitting look at old movies and who usually survives them;
\n“My Unicorn Song” neatly deflates the cult of the monohorned beast;
\n“Return Of The King, Uh-Huh” sends Elvis to Middle-Earth; and
\n“Operation: Desert Storm” is an insiduously funny tribute to one
\nlone desert warrior. (Note for the patriotic: this song is NOT
\nabout the United States military).<\/p>\n

Laughs aside, what raises Smith above the legion of puerile
\nValdemar fans with guitars is his serious side. “Starlight And
\nSaxophone,””Mandela,””Rocket Ride” and the dark-edged “PQR” are all
\nexcellent, but two tracks stand even above those: the faerie story
\n“Storm Dancing,” whose haunting melody will echo in your head long
\nafter it is over, and the magnificent Jim Henson tribute “A Boy And
\nHis Frog.” There aren’t too many songs that make me cry; this is
\none of them.<\/p>\n

Not everyone will like filk. The relentless in-jokes and varying
\nproduction will turn off many; it requires an appreciation for
\nguitar folk and science fiction at the same time, also difficult at
\ntimes. But there are very few real songwriters in the world; Tom
\nSmith is one of them, a bearded SF geek with a pen and a stopwatch
\nwho turns out music with substance and style.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":24908,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[6045],"rating":[5646],"class_list":["post-36113","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-tom-smith","rating-rating-a"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36113\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36113"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=36113"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=36113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}