First a comment about this claim: "Engholm, Ahrvid: Fandboken ... Comprehensive but very biased source." Not true. Except perhaps for minor details in small affairs there's no "bias", because everything of importance rests on documentation on paper. We have eg the fan fund voting fraud with copies of all "votes". And eg the strange early 90's doings of the SAAM foundation, from their own protocols. A photo copying machine has no setting for "distort and lie". And the SAAM board must be expected to be true to themselves, so if it's in their minutes the culprit itself agrees on what's happened. I could go on, but note that KJN has extremely limited insights. BTW, a heavily expanded Fandboken 0.95 PDF is just out. Alas, you can't read it. It's in Swedish. And unbiased. Further notes (KJN in quotes):
"Swedish fandom started in the early 1950s" Make that mid- to late 1940's. 1945 the Atomic Noah club, 1949 Dénis Lindbohm's Strate-Organisation. (However, Sverifandom didn't really take off until Häpna! came with its club column.)
>>Ingvar Svensson sung and played his own "Fandom Song" ...Text from Fandboken. I'm not sure the text there is complete << I think the text is complete.
>>SF Forum 8 (autumn 1962)...Swedish fandom at this time not only had regular international contact<< Such contacts were much earlier. Sigvard Östlund visited British cons through the 1950's (the first was Festivention,1951). Fans like Alvar Appeltoft, Sture Hällström, Gabriel Setterborg, Lars-Erik Helin, Sam J Lundwall and others had contacts (with mainly UK/US) from the late 1950's. Bierbaum and others had contacts with German fandom about the same time.
>>Sam J Lundwall ... but since the early 60's his relation with fandom has been fragile and often very strained.<< KJN has listened too much to JH Holmberg. It's with him Sam's relations been strained but not with fandom as such. But JHH might want to portray himself as being the whole of fandom... (BTW, the Sam/JHH thing started in the early 70's,not early 60's.) Apart from the LP and King-Kong Blues EP, Sam J also made a couple of singles and a final performance on Kjell Alinge's Eldorado LP (title "Elle Dolores"). Side note: It's totally incomprehensible why Worldcon75 picked JHH and not Sam J as a GoH. JHH has had virtuay nothing with Finnish fandom to do while Sam J STARTED Finnish cons, with King-Con 1982. (I have a PDF of the story, in English, anyone interested contact ahrvid(a)hotmail.com. Just send the code word "Wot - me biased?"
"Tretow is known internationally as ABBA's sound technician" Tretow was also neighbour to Sam J on Storskogsvägen in Bromma, Stockholm.
"From Minicon 4 (30 March-1 April 1979, Stockholm) there are references to filk singing in Fandboken, as well as photographic evidence of music playing and filk songs in the programme book." KJN forgets/doesn't know about the one song that became a hit :"The Ray Bradbuty Hate Song" (by "Ray Beam with friends and others"). Another event from a Minocon wa Steve Sem-Sandberg doing Magnus Uggla's "Varning på stan" (but it's not a filksong). In 1980 Kjell Waltman also composed "The Tanith Lee Rag" (no text to it) for Alcocon II.
"Martin Andreasson and Ylva Spångberg proved excellent parodists." I don't remember them doing filksongs. They excelled doing Povel Ramel's "Jag diggar dig", but that's not filk.
"Stefan Kayat, and Staffan Mossige-Norheim." Staffan played, yes (mainly on the 1980's Nasacons) but as I remember Kayat's thing was playing bagpipes, not doing filksongs.
"Martin Q Larsson, but it seems he was only an active fan a short while." Once a fan, always a fan. He isn't totally gafiated. I got comments from him to Fandboken recently.
>>Musically, the inspirations were the Swedish ballads and revue-songs, and popular music of the 60's, 70's and 80's." And from 1930/40's especially, Karl Gerhard. He was often used by Erik Andersson & David Nessle.
"Ahrvid Engholm's fanzine Fanytt 96 from 1981 describes fans singing and improvising singalongs while watching for Roscoe's rocket to appear in the sky on 4 July, drunk and in the middle of the night." That could have been the same gathering that "The Popstars" (Tony Eriksson and Mats Nilsson) had their famed concert.
"The Filksöngs, a cassette and fanzine by David Nessle, Erik Andersson, and Ahrvid Engholm, mainly including songs by Nessle." Not a recording of a concert but a collection of Erik's and David's best cassette zine tracks, plus one previously unreleased track (my own - text - "Borås", music by Kjell Waltman).
"Pappersframmatningen är trasig" (the paper feed is broken) by David Nessle" But sung by Erik Andersson
" "Måns" by Staffan Mossige-Norheim, an original song about a man murdering his entire family, including the cat. It proved quite popular in some parts of Swedish fandom." Ie on the Nasacons, where it was sung. A filker KJN forgets is KG Löfvander, who performed sometimes on Nasacon. (He eg did a filk version of Sweden's 1987 ESC entry, "Fyra bugg..."). And Wolf also did his "Moorcock" song on Nasacon.
"Costuming and media interest were also marginalised. Contacts with other fan groups, like the Tolkien societies, declined" Sverifandom's doings with tolkienists, media-fandom etc has ALWAYS been limited. It's best that way.
"Nasacon 2000...the con was an experimental collaboration between classic sf fandom and Stockholm Trekkers" No, that was the Swecon 2004. We did some help by, as I remember, trekkie Peter Söderlundn & friends in 2000 but it was rather limited. The collaboration was the 2004 con.
"The Swedish Tolkien societies have a rich musical tradition...SCA and various other reenactment groups also have active musicians...Swedish Lovecraft and horror fans" Right. But that's not fandom.
"Ralph Lundsten, composer, musician, and pioneer of electronic music, was active in club Sigma TC and GoH at at least one sf con during the 80s. He often includes themes of cosmos, space, and mysticism in his works, but can hardly be described as a filker." Lundsten only records. He never make concerts. But he's a professional musician/composer. Does that count as filk? (Daviw Bowie sung about space. Is that filk?)
"The rebirth of Swedish filking can be traced to when I myself, more or less on a whim, sent a brandonisation of the opening monologue to one of Carl Michael Bellman's songs to the main Swedish fandom mailing list. It got a fantastically positive response. I completed the adaptation and followed it up with another brandonisation of a Bellman song. Both were performed at Confetti in Gothenburg on 4-6 April 2014" Rebirth for performing perhaps, but not for writing. I have constantly written little song texts on the sf writers' list SKRIVA, as long as it has existed (since 1997). The present SKRIVA archive goes back to 2007 but I posted songs there earlier. I believe I wrote "Good Save the Spleen" (only one word needed to be changed...) and a song to Lars-Olov Strandberg to the 2005 Worldcon (where Lars-Olov was Fan-GoH). And there are earlier ones.
"The American theme of heroic exploration (like in "Hope Eyrie" and "Fire in the Sky") is entirely absent." Except perhaps singing about Roscoe's rocket in the sky (David Nessle with his text to "When You Wish Upon a Star") and my own "Till rymds!" (means "Towards Space" - I've done other space themes texts too).
Corrections and additions
Date: 2017-07-17 10:53 pm (UTC)"Engholm, Ahrvid: Fandboken ... Comprehensive but very biased source."
Not true. Except perhaps for minor details in small affairs there's no "bias", because everything of importance rests on documentation on paper. We have eg the fan fund voting fraud with copies of all "votes". And eg the strange early 90's doings of the SAAM foundation, from their own protocols. A photo copying machine has no setting for "distort and lie". And the SAAM board must be expected to be true to themselves, so if it's in their minutes the culprit itself agrees on what's happened.
I could go on, but note that KJN has extremely limited insights. BTW, a heavily expanded Fandboken 0.95 PDF is just out. Alas, you can't read it. It's in Swedish. And unbiased.
Further notes (KJN in quotes):
"Swedish fandom started in the early 1950s"
Make that mid- to late 1940's. 1945 the Atomic Noah club, 1949 Dénis Lindbohm's Strate-Organisation. (However, Sverifandom didn't really take off until Häpna! came with its club column.)
>>Ingvar Svensson sung and played his own "Fandom Song" ...Text from Fandboken. I'm not sure the text there is complete <<
I think the text is complete.
>>SF Forum 8 (autumn 1962)...Swedish fandom at this time not only had regular international contact<<
Such contacts were much earlier. Sigvard Östlund visited British cons through the 1950's (the first was Festivention,1951). Fans like Alvar Appeltoft, Sture Hällström, Gabriel Setterborg, Lars-Erik Helin, Sam J Lundwall and others had contacts (with mainly UK/US) from the late 1950's. Bierbaum and others had contacts with German fandom about the same time.
>>Sam J Lundwall ... but since the early 60's his relation with fandom has been fragile and often very strained.<<
KJN has listened too much to JH Holmberg. It's with him Sam's relations been strained but not with fandom as such. But JHH might want to portray himself as being the whole of fandom... (BTW, the Sam/JHH thing started in the early 70's,not early 60's.)
Apart from the LP and King-Kong Blues EP, Sam J also made a couple of singles and a final performance on Kjell Alinge's Eldorado LP (title "Elle Dolores").
Side note: It's totally incomprehensible why Worldcon75 picked JHH and not Sam J as a GoH. JHH has had virtuay nothing with Finnish fandom to do while Sam J STARTED Finnish cons, with King-Con 1982. (I have a PDF of the story, in English, anyone interested contact ahrvid(a)hotmail.com. Just send the code word "Wot - me biased?"
"Tretow is known internationally as ABBA's sound technician"
Tretow was also neighbour to Sam J on Storskogsvägen in Bromma, Stockholm.
"From Minicon 4 (30 March-1 April 1979, Stockholm) there are references to filk singing in Fandboken, as well as photographic evidence of music playing and filk songs in the programme book."
KJN forgets/doesn't know about the one song that became a hit :"The Ray Bradbuty Hate Song" (by "Ray Beam with friends and others"). Another event from a Minocon wa Steve Sem-Sandberg doing Magnus Uggla's "Varning på stan" (but it's not a filksong). In 1980 Kjell Waltman also composed "The Tanith Lee Rag" (no text to it) for Alcocon II.
"Martin Andreasson and Ylva Spångberg proved excellent parodists."
I don't remember them doing filksongs. They excelled doing Povel Ramel's "Jag diggar dig", but that's not filk.
"Stefan Kayat, and Staffan Mossige-Norheim."
Staffan played, yes (mainly on the 1980's Nasacons) but as I remember Kayat's thing was playing bagpipes, not doing filksongs.
"Martin Q Larsson, but it seems he was only an active fan a short while."
Once a fan, always a fan. He isn't totally gafiated. I got comments from him to Fandboken recently.
>>Musically, the inspirations were the Swedish ballads and revue-songs, and popular music of the 60's, 70's and 80's."
And from 1930/40's especially, Karl Gerhard. He was often used by Erik Andersson & David Nessle.
"Ahrvid Engholm's fanzine Fanytt 96 from 1981 describes fans singing and improvising singalongs while watching for Roscoe's rocket to appear in the sky on 4 July, drunk and in the middle of the night."
That could have been the same gathering that "The Popstars" (Tony Eriksson and Mats Nilsson) had their famed concert.
"The Filksöngs, a cassette and fanzine by David Nessle, Erik Andersson, and Ahrvid Engholm, mainly including songs by Nessle."
Not a recording of a concert but a collection of Erik's and David's best cassette zine tracks, plus one previously unreleased track (my own - text - "Borås", music by Kjell Waltman).
"Pappersframmatningen är trasig" (the paper feed is broken) by David Nessle"
But sung by Erik Andersson
" "Måns" by Staffan Mossige-Norheim, an original song about a man murdering his entire family, including the cat. It proved quite popular in some parts of Swedish fandom."
Ie on the Nasacons, where it was sung.
A filker KJN forgets is KG Löfvander, who performed sometimes on Nasacon. (He eg did a filk version of Sweden's 1987 ESC entry, "Fyra bugg..."). And Wolf also did his "Moorcock" song on Nasacon.
"Costuming and media interest were also marginalised. Contacts with other fan groups, like the Tolkien societies, declined"
Sverifandom's doings with tolkienists, media-fandom etc has ALWAYS been limited. It's best that way.
"Nasacon 2000...the con was an experimental collaboration between classic sf fandom and Stockholm Trekkers"
No, that was the Swecon 2004. We did some help by, as I remember, trekkie Peter Söderlundn & friends in 2000 but it was rather limited. The collaboration was the 2004 con.
"The Swedish Tolkien societies have a rich musical tradition...SCA and various other reenactment groups also have active musicians...Swedish Lovecraft and horror fans"
Right. But that's not fandom.
"Ralph Lundsten, composer, musician, and pioneer of electronic music, was active in club Sigma TC and GoH at at least one sf con during the 80s. He often includes themes of cosmos, space, and mysticism in his works, but can hardly be described as a filker."
Lundsten only records. He never make concerts. But he's a professional musician/composer. Does that count as filk? (Daviw Bowie sung about space. Is that filk?)
"The rebirth of Swedish filking can be traced to when I myself, more or less on a whim, sent a brandonisation of the opening monologue to one of Carl Michael Bellman's songs to the main Swedish fandom mailing list. It got a fantastically positive response. I completed the adaptation and followed it up with another brandonisation of a Bellman song. Both were performed at Confetti in Gothenburg on 4-6 April 2014"
Rebirth for performing perhaps, but not for writing. I have constantly written little song texts on the sf writers' list SKRIVA, as long as it has existed (since 1997). The present SKRIVA archive goes back to 2007 but I posted songs there earlier. I believe I wrote "Good Save the Spleen" (only one word needed to be changed...) and a song to Lars-Olov Strandberg to the 2005 Worldcon (where Lars-Olov was Fan-GoH). And there are earlier ones.
"The American theme of heroic exploration (like in "Hope Eyrie" and "Fire in the Sky") is entirely absent."
Except perhaps singing about Roscoe's rocket in the sky (David Nessle with his text to "When You Wish Upon a Star") and my own "Till rymds!" (means "Towards Space" - I've done other space themes texts too).
--Ahrvid