CD Release - Space & Freedom
Mark Horning
So, I'm calling it official:
After several years of effort, we can finally announce that Space &
Freedom is at press, and should be in hand in time for an official CD
release at WesterCon. For those attending FiestaCon, we have a
release party scheduled for Saturday night. For those not attending,
you can hopefully be able to obtain the album from your friendly
neighborhood filk dealer within a week or two.
As there is another album set to release at WesterCon, we are planning
a combined party. (Double Ampersand Party?)
Mark E. Horning
Pick, Pass, Play Productions
Space & Freedom is a full length 16 song album of space and SF themed
songs.
Mark E. Horning, lead vocals, 6 and 12-string guitars.
Jennifer G Horning, duet vocals
Jennifer Aronson, vocal effects and lead recording engineer
Gary Swaty, recording engineer
Patrick Connors, mastering
I have the preview art up at:
http://rocketsong.blogspot.com/2009/06/cover-proof.html
http://rocketsong.blogspot.com/2009/06/space-freedom-artwork.html
Freedom
> 'tis the season to announce CDs after all.
>
> So, I'm calling it official:
>
CDs arrived at my place on Thursday a couple hours before WesterCon
officially got started. Very happy with the job Oasis did on the
press. Now, where do I put 10 big boxes of CDs?
Dealers who have ordered CDs either have them, or they are already en
route.
Mark
John from Detroit
> Now, where do I put 10 big boxes of CDs?
Let's see 10 big boxes of CD's and Westercon is about to start.......
How about in the car, on the table and out the door for.... Cash
Joe Kesselman
Somehow, I don't think those 10 boxes of CDs are likely to be sold in a
single convention. Quite probably not in a single year, unless they're
smaller boxes than I expect or Mark's unusually good at finding an
audience wider than filkdom. Especially since other boxes have already
gone out to dealers.
But, yeah, that's always the goal. It just takes a bit longer.
Does anyone know what the "best selling" filk album was/is, and roughly
how many copies were sold? I presume that it would be one of those which
crossed over to at least one other demographic group, but the answer
might be surprising...
Rafe Culpin
keshlam.c...@verizon.net (Joe Kesselman) wrote:
> Does anyone know what the "best selling" filk album was/is, and
> roughly how many copies were sold? I presume that it would be one of
> those which crossed over to at least one other demographic group, but
> the answer might be surprising...
I think it would be very difficult to define what counts. For instance, Chris
Conway has a live CD recorded at filk conventions, and a CD of effectively all filk
songs. These get sold at his normal gigs - he's a professional musician playing
hundreds of gigs a year. He's also selling his other CDs - he has a huge number, in
many different music styles. How would you count the sales of "Alien Salad
Abduction" in all those?
--
To reply email rafe, at the address filk co uk
Information on filk in the UK: http://filk.co.uk/
Rob Wynne
> In article <9jN4m.2793$9l4....@nwrddc01.gnilink.net>,
> keshlam.c...@verizon.net (Joe Kesselman) wrote:
>
>> Does anyone know what the "best selling" filk album was/is, and
>> roughly how many copies were sold? I presume that it would be one of
>> those which crossed over to at least one other demographic group, but
>> the answer might be surprising...
>
> I think it would be very difficult to define what counts. For instance, Chris
> Conway has a live CD recorded at filk conventions, and a CD of effectively all filk
> songs. These get sold at his normal gigs - he's a professional musician playing
> hundreds of gigs a year. He's also selling his other CDs - he has a huge number, in
> many different music styles. How would you count the sales of "Alien Salad
> Abduction" in all those?
>
If Christo calls it a filk album, who am I to argue? :)
What might be more interesting is tracking filk sales numbers by decade.
It's a LOT easier to buy stuff today than it was 25 years ago, especially
with the a LOT of stuff being available on CDBaby.com and such.
--
Rob Wynne / The Autographed Cat / d...@america.net
http://www.autographedcat.com/ / http://autographedcat.livejournal.com/
Gafilk 2010: Jan 8-10, 2010 - Atlanta, GA - http://www.gafilk.org/
Aphelion - Original SF&F since 1997 - http://www.aphelion-webzine.com/
Karen Rodgers
Our first one sold over a thousand copies. That's usually pretty good
for a filk album.
Karen R.
sffilk
"Freedom" <spacean...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:246c5f7d-26af-42d5...@d15g2000prc.googlegroups.com...
Mark
CDs arrived. Check forthcoming.
Michael
sffilk
"Joe Kesselman" <keshlam.c...@verizon.net> wrote in message
news:9jN4m.2793$9l4....@nwrddc01.gnilink.net...
I think you might want to ask Eli Goldberg. He might know.
Mark Horning
> In article <9jN4m.2793$9l4.1...@nwrddc01.gnilink.net>,
> Joe Kesselman <keshlam.cat.nos...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> > Does anyone know what the "best selling" filk album was/is, and roughly
> > how many copies were sold? I presume that it would be one of those which
> > crossed over to at least one other demographic group, but the answer
> > might be surprising...
>
> very wild guess on my part.
>
Minus Ten would be my guess as well, possibly "Firestorm". (heck, I
still have my Firestorm T-shirt)
Most likely though, only the publishers know how many copies actually
sold. Tracking these things is not that easy, even in the modern
age. My album, as most new albums, has a UPC and barcode. Sales are
tracked through Soundscan. I can directly report sales to Soundscan,
as can say major retailers. I highly doubt that Michael at SFF or
Mary at Random Factors can do so however. CDbaby presumably does
report.
I know of several albums that have sold over 500 copies, and I know of
some that have sold over 1000. Tom Tureff had to reorder "Something
to Sell at my Gigs" because he ran out, but then again, Tom does a lot
of gigging and singing out, and sings funny songs that appeal to a
wider audience than say a bunch of space songs.
I would be willing to bet that "Lock & Load", properly marketed, will
set new records though.
Mark E. Horning,
Physicist, Mesa AZ
John from Detroit
> <1fe19333-2988-4aee...@24g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>,
> Mark Horning <mhor...@eskimo.com> wrote:
>
>
>> I would be willing to bet that "Lock & Load", properly marketed, will
>> set new records though.
You know.. I made mention to that very CD just a couple of days ago in a
thread on Community.Compuserve.Com (Or if you like
community.netscape.com, same place)
We were talking about who is most likely to survive should, society, as
we know it, fail.. I know there are "Survivalist" groups out there and
frankly feel they will be the first to die, likely shooting each other.
Then come the cities (Cue song "Grain Train" from said album (Saves me
a ton of typing here to do it that way)
The ones who survive will the the farmers. particularly the small
farmers, For they have the skills, and the means to provide for the
table and in fact everything else they need.
Oh, may be kicked back to around 1800 or beyond. but they will be the
only ones with FOOD on the table, cloths on their back and a place to
sleep. And that, is what's required, to survive.
Lee Gold
>
> We were talking about who is most likely to survive should, society, as
> we know it, fail..
If civilization crashes, then I won't survive more than 3-6 months no
matter where I live and no matter what I do because I need thyroid
supplements to have enough energy to do anything unless galvanized by
fury or terror. Barry would probably have a fatal heart attack in 1-5
years.
And a lot of other people who've been getting on nicely due to modern
medicine would die.
Anyone who needs glasses would have highly impaired functioning when
their current glasses broke, got scratched, or needed replacement.
A lot of women would die in childbirth, including those currently using
birth control pills not to have babies. A lot of babies wouldn't
survive their first year. A lot of old people would die.l A lot of
people would die from infections. A lot of people would die in fires.
If you want to live well through a temporary collapse of technology, go
find a hospital and do all you can to befriend its staff and help them
survive. Its doctors will be worth even more than its food, power
generators, medical equipment, and medications.
Protect the hospital from assault. Try to convert it to solar power.
Bring in dentists and veterinarians and chiropractors and any other
healers local people will find useful. Start its doctors teaching young
people to become more doctors, and try to find other knowledgeable
people interested in teaching at the school: engineers and poets and
historians and philosophers and agronomists and.... Restart civilization.
--Lee
Karen Rodgers
wrote:
>Protect the hospital from assault. Try to convert it to solar power.
>Bring in dentists and veterinarians and chiropractors and any other
>healers local people will find useful. Start its doctors teaching young
>people to become more doctors, and try to find other knowledgeable
>people interested in teaching at the school: engineers and poets and
>historians and philosophers and agronomists and.... Restart civilization.
Musicians, and story tellers, to keep up moral through the long
nights...
Karen R.
Rich Brown
> The ones who survive will the the farmers. particularly the small
> farmers, For they have the skills, and the means to provide for the
> table and in fact everything else they need.
Also see episode 1 of James Burke's "Connections"
(Karen R.)
> Musicians, and story tellers, to keep up moral through the long
> nights...
A nice add-on, but you'd better have a day job. ;-)
And _my_ skill set is all in stuff that would go away in a dystopian
future.
--
Rich Brown -- rab -- Song Assasin -- FreeMars.org
John from Detroit
> Protect the hospital from assault. Try to convert it to solar power.
> Bring in dentists and veterinarians and chiropractors and any other
> healers local people will find useful. Start its doctors teaching young
> people to become more doctors, and try to find other knowledgeable
> people interested in teaching at the school: engineers and poets and
> historians and philosophers and agronomists and.... Restart civilization.
>
> --Lee
I too have medical issues that will give me fits.
However, as I said, Farmers produce food, without food the hospital
won't do you much good.
Joe Kesselman
> won't do you much good.
ObSF: _The_Roads_Must_Roll_, which points out that in a modern economy
no profession reliably stands alone. In particular: How many farmers
could still produce a crop sufficient to feed more than their own
families without the chemical and mechanical infrastructure? How many
(heck, how many communities of farmers) still produce enough variety of
crops to feed even themselves without malnutrition, or to survive the
first time a blight or pest comes through? How many still have soil that
will bear without chemical fertilizers? How many people can the food get
to without transportation that's larger and faster than horse-drawn
carriages.
Food is an essential, granted. But beware of oversimplifying.
And if you're really worried about this, you should probably make sure
_you_ have a suitable garden plot and know how to manage it sustainably.
Otherwise the food may exist but be priced beyond what you can trade for
it...
Cindy Wells
$N5....@nwrddc01.gnilink.net:
<snip>
Also note that manure is not an ideal fertilizer. One of our neighbors
has as much manure as he wants for his garden (he runs cattle). He put
on manure without soil test or tests of the manure values. Mom took a
little handheld conductivity soil tester and found why he didn't have a
good yield.
Cindy Wells
(The pH was way off in places.)
Joe Kesselman
> has as much manure as he wants for his garden (he runs cattle). He put
> on manure without soil test or tests of the manure values. Mom took a
> little handheld conductivity soil tester and found why he didn't have a
> good yield.
Depends on the crop. Some of my fruit-bearing plants really like
composted manure, I'm told, but I think they're also ones that like
somewhat acidic soil. Others... well, there's a reason vinegar works
pretty well as a weed-killer.
Of course pH can be adjusted with naturally occurring materials. (Says
the man who periodically resorts to flavored chalk tablets to manage his
own internal pH.) But those may need to be shipped in from elsewhere,
which gets us back into the question of interdependencies.
Life runs on entropy gradients. Homo Sap is remarkably good about
finding ways to tap, and in the process eliminate, entropy gradients.
John from Detroit
> And if you're really worried about this, you should probably make sure
> _you_ have a suitable garden plot and know how to manage it sustainably.
> Otherwise the food may exist but be priced beyond what you can trade for
> it...
I agree, epically with the line I did not quote back about food being
essential
Now, when I say the farmers will be the ones most likely to survive,
because they have the skills to grow, And I might add process, their own
food.
This is not an "Exclusive" statement, it does not mean others can not
survive, in fact, by cooperating with the farmers (So that they can get
food to eat) there are many who may well survive.
But without food, you starve, and thus do not survive.
John from Detroit
>Depends on the crop. Some of my fruit-bearing plants really like
> composted manure, I'm told, but I think they're also ones that like
> somewhat acidic soil. Others... well, there's a reason vinegar works
> pretty well as a weed-killer.
I know this is not a food crop but an uncle of mine proved, beyond a
doubt, that is is quite possible to "Fall into a pile of manure and come
out smelling like a rose"
You see, he raises (or rather raised) prize winning roses, IN fact if
you visit the city of Battle Creek, Michigan, and visit one of the parks
there such as the one across from Kellogg Community College and/or
Community Hospital (Different sides of the park) the rose gardens, He
planted, and for many years tended, those roses.
Well... I got to go out in the cow yard and bag his ferterlizer for him
And the roses grew so well that the judges at the contest accused him of
budding... Till a representative visited his garden and observed he had
not done that
(Budding is pinching off all but a few buds so the remaining buds, the
ones you leave on the plant, Grow to amazing size).. He had rose bushes
FULL of amazing blooms)
Joe Kesselman
Agree with the statement, disagree with the sociological implications
being drawn, and I don't think further debate's going to convince either
of us so I'll leave it at that.