I've been filked!
Many and great are the delights of Finncon -- at least, when you're GoH. As we've been burning the midnight sun here in Jyvaskyla, and have a train to Tampere to catch in the morning, I will not enumerate them for you here . . . (
deliasherman 's been doing her best, but seems to have fallen behind; she is, however, writing in her journal even as I type). I've done a bit of tweeting (@ellenkushner), but that's about it.
I couldn't wait, though, to post the lyrics to the very clever song they wrote and sang for me last night. You can't possibly enjoy it as much as I did - I
howled - but try to do your best.
Riverside
(tune: She’ll be coming ‘round the mountain when she comes)
(lyrics: Marianna Leikomaa)
Now we want to sing a song of Riverside,
it has many places for a man to hide.
There are prostitutes and murders,
scary place where your blood curdles
but we always want some more of Riverside.
If you like your life stay clear from Riverside,
if you look too posh just kiss your ass goodbye.
All you rich and noble scholars,
better keep track of your dollars,
even if you don’t care much of your own pride.
Crazy people seem to drift to Riverside,
it’s a place where inhibitions all subside.
You may cause a lot of loathing,
dress your niece up in your clothing,
and in general be a bit on loopy side.
Fantasy of manners, that is Riverside,
politics and duels, often someone dies.
It is all so very clever,
and we don’t think that we’ll ever
get enough stories which tell of Riverside.
While Thomas the Rhymer's the only book of mine to be translated into Finnish, an astonishing number of Swordspoint fans have been coming out of the woodwork. In their honor, today, I read "The Man with the Knives" at my reading (having done a gigantic performance of Thomas, with music, for my GoH "speech" the day before).
I made boys cry.
It started with the band Garmarna and their album "Vittrad." Heard it, the top of my head was ripped off, and Omnium licensed their first two records for the US (1994-1996).
Beginning in 1997, I had the best job in the world: working at a record company releasing amazing music (including my own).
Part of my job was doing "graphic remixes" -- taking the original European release and giving it a consistent graphic identity for NSD, and adding English translations. We also produced a 10-year run of the Nordic Roots Festival in Minneapolis and helped a lot of the bands to tour in the US.
That business model is now extinct. Around 2002, Rob Simonds (now directing http://thecedar.org) and I developed a "remote control record company" -- the office in downtown Minneapolis closed and I started working as an independent consultant.
Today, you can still purchase anything from our current catalog at http://hearful.com - most CDs are $12 with shipping $2
A couple of years ago, ESD and NorthSide decided to close out all their licensed titles, and the rights have reverted to the artists. You can still find the music on iTunes, via the original European CD releases, and direct with the artists. Unlike the 20th Century when "out of print" was literally a death sentence, all the music that we released is still available to purchase (or steal / "audition") in one form or another.
(Shout-out to Cliff Furnald at http://cdroots.com who continues to bring a dizzying array of Nordic CDs to the US.)