Dirty Linen

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or email to editor@dirtylinen.com. Letters may be edited for length or at the discretion of the editor.

I read with great dismay the review that Mr. Bond did of The Masterharper of Pern in your August/September issue [#83]. I have no issue with what he had to say about the CD; it was a nice enough recording. Rather I object to the disparaging remarks he made about filk music.

I would like to know what Mr. Bond's qualifications are to critique filk music. I have been involved in filk music for over 20 years. I do not recall ever having met Mr. Bond. I go to at least 4 filk conventions a year and listen to many artists sing in concert and in group settings. How many of these functions has Mr. Bond been to? I just looked at all the covers of my 20+ "noxious" filk CD's. The only one that has a dragon on it is the one Mr. Bond reviewed. I don't have the time to look at the covers of my more than one hundred tapes but I'm quite sure that very few of them have dragons on them either. The CD's usually have up to 70 minutes of music and the tapes 1 hour. I don't know what qualifies as "drag(ing) on for much too long." How many filk tapes or CD's has Mr. Bond listened to?

Mr. Bond refers to filk as "in which amateur musicians sing generally nauseating diatribes to, or song based on their favorite authors' work." Filk does include songs about science fiction and fantasy author's work but it encompasses a great deal more, again showing Mr. Bond's lack of knowledge of the genre. Filk includes songs about space and space exploration, various fantasy and horror themes, TV and movies with science fiction themes. There are a lot of other subjects that qualify as filk, but realistically the filkers can't agree on all of them. Filk has been played on Dr. Demento and has been played on the space shuttle to awaken the astronauts.

Filk is by its very nature amateur as it is a very grassroots movement. Amateur is just amateur, not nauseating. There are active filkers in the USA, Canada, Great Britain, Germany and Australia. Some of the filkers are very good performers and some are semi-professional. There are many wonderful and creative filk songs. To dismiss them as "generally nauseating" again tells me that Mr. Bond has heard very little filk. I would guess he ran into a nauseating filker (they do exist) at a general Science Fiction convention or two, and was forced to listen to some bad filk (that does exist too) and has judged an entire folk subgenre based on the experience. Not all filk is great music. To quote Theodore Sturgeon, noted science fiction author, "80% of everything, including science fiction (and I would add filk and folk music) is s***," but there are a lot of filkers and a lot of filk music that is worth listening to. The comments Mr. Bond made in his review dismissed all filk as "nauseating" and "noxious."

Shame on you, Mr. Bond for criticizing a category of music you obviously know very little about. I would expect more from someone who presents themselves as a music reviewer. I will skip reading your reviews in the future; I will never be sure if you actually know much about what you are reviewing.
- Kathleen A. Sloan M.D. (Arvada, CO)

I nearly choked on my Cornflakes. There was Duck Baker slagging me in your magazine for my quote: "The Irish make saints out of singers like Niamh Parsons." [issue #82, June/July '99]

"Penned by some reviewer who knows nothing of the Irish, singers, or the canonization process," huffed and puffed Mr. Baker. And then goes on to make the neophyte remark that Parsons is a practitioner of sean nós. Ha!

Anybody with the merest inkling of Irish traditional music knows that sean nós (literally, in the old style) is a highly decorative form of singing developed largely in the Gaeltacht areas in the west of Ireland. Predominantly used in epic Gaelic ballads, its best known singers today are possibly Iarla O' Lionaird and Maighréad Ní Dhomnhaill. Never in a million years would Niamh Parsons consider herself a sean nós singer. Believe me, I've asked her. People in glass houses... Mr Baker.
- Rod Campbell
(Edmonton, AB, Canada, via email)

I write to you as director of the Aztarna label which issued the CD by Basque traditional band Alboka, recently reviewed by Steve Winick in your fine magazine [#82, June/July '99].

Mr Winick has on several occasions, including in a review of Alboka's first CD, shown himself to be well informed about and sensitive to Basque culture, and his assessment of the music on their new CD Bi Beso Lur again evidences these qualities. Bi Beso Lur includes a CD ROM track, a standard feature of all Aztarna editions which has been the subject of widespread praise for its quality, originality and marketability. Unlike his comments on the music, Mr Winick's negative critique of the CD ROM contains a number of serious errors which have disconcerted us at Aztarna and which need to be set right. He states:

1) that there is no accesss to the music from the CD ROM. As this is completely untrue we can only conclude that his computer has a configuration problem. The multimedia component was designed by Zut Creativos!, one of the most prestigious programme designers in the Basque Country. Furthermore, our CD's are manufactured and carefully tested by Ibermemory Sonopress, one of the most respected companies in Europe.
2) that exit from the CD ROM is slow and troublesome. He should know that all that is required to exit is to press the Escape key. Nobody is obliged to read the credits at the end of a film, although it is important that such information be included.
It seems a pity that, despite a favourable review of the music, the readers of a magazine of the quality of Dirty Linen should unnecessarily be given a less positive overall impression of the CD.
- Joxan Goikoetxea (Hernani,
Basque Country, Spain, via email)

While reading the July-August [sic] issue of DL [#83, August/September '99] we could find the review of our disc In Aid of Amazonian People (reviewed by PEC). Well, we are not going to pretend everyone likes this record but claiming that most of the artists appearing on it are "unknown" and so they are gonna be in the future sounds really banal to us. How can he predict these artists are gonna remain unknown in the next future? We didn't expect to read something gross like that in your mag.
- R. & S. Grossi (Blue Flame Records, Italy, via email)

I recently moved to Syracuse from Toronto, and feeling a little homesick, some new found friends invited me to a concert featuring a popular Celtic band from Canada. I'm a Celtic music enthusiast and it wasn't long after they started playing, the over-packed crowd were on their feet crowding the stage, Celtic slam-dancing. They quickly brought me out of my mini-depression as I joined in the sweat induced frenzy. They were quite simply awesome! We all bought their CDs, and went to a near-by party. Sitting beside the coffee table, I picked a well read copy of Dirty Linen [#82, June/July '99]. I'm sorry and must confess that I've never heard of your fine magazine before!
It was an excellent read. Flipping the pages I ran across this very band. It was a recording critique on possibly the best "Celtic stomp" group I've ever heard... the Glengarry Bhoys! It was surreal experience.
Thanks Dirty Linen, and the Glengarry Bhoys for making me feel right at home, and the first thing I do after I find a flat is to subscribe to your superb mag!
- Lindsey McNaughton
(Syracuse, NY, via email)

This is from Dirty Linen #84 (October/November '99)
To read it all, buy it on the newsstand or subscribe!