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Dino Flintstone's Blog
Topic: the FuMP at Balticon 41
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fiogf49gjkf0d Hunt Valley, MD (approx. 12 miles north of Baltimore, MD) May 27th, 2007.
What a great experience meeting many of the FuMPers in person! Present were the Great Luke Ski, Rob Balder, Devospice (Sudden Death), Shoebox (Worm Quartet), and Bud Sharpe (Possible Oscar).
I arrived about 30 minutes before the FuMP concert was about to start, and walked into the hotel ballroom where the concert was to take place. I found Luke Ski in a panic because the hotel service had not delivered a table downstairs in the ballroom for selling CDs right after the concert (this wound up happening during the concert). I introduced myself and told him I just made a 75 mile drive down to Balticon primarily to see the FuMP artists. He was appreciative of this. Other FuMPers came in to do sound checks. When I saw Rob Balder I made a request for “Always a Goth Chick” which he did during one of his performances.
The FuMP concert was in “round robin” form where each artist would do one song and pass the mic to the next artist. I believe they wound up doing 4 songs a piece. Most of the audience was fairly receptive, especially when Rob Balder took the stage (many seemed to know the words and sung along). Some of the songs required fellow FuMPer’s to participate (e.g. - Shoebox becoming Devospice’s “Inner Voice”, and all the FuMPers participating at pegging Rob Balder during “Don’t Shoot”. Shoebox (Worm Quartet) was very impressive performing “I’m Going to Procreate” – this song is much better when seeing him perform it live. Luke Ski did some good Star Trek shtick impersonating Quark using some killer puns using marketing ideas for making money. Luke Ski also did his “Stealing Like a Hobbit” routine – he was very convincing in his role as a hobbit. If you haven’t seen Luke Ski live it is well worth it, he has great stage presence (he really gets into character) and does some very clever costume changes (you can also see this on his “Ego has Landed DVD” available at www.Lukeski.com ). Seeing him live adds another dimension. Devospice did a nice job using his computer to provide visuals for “SPAM” and “Cellular Degeneration”. Bud Sharpe (Possible Oscar) performed “Talk Nerdy to Me”, “Earn Hollywood Earn” with the help of his fellow FuMPers, “Dead Nintendo”, and “At the Con”. Rob Balder finished with a serious song "Rich Fantasy Lives" which was nominated for FILK song of the year. Overall the afternoon concert went very well; the audience was very responsive and appreciative.
After the concert I proceeded over to the CD table where I found great deals! A couple of the artists were offering their CDs: one for $10, two for $15 and 3 for $20. The rest were primarily $10 a CD. Luke Ski’s newest CD unConventional was going for $15, but since I purchased a total of 6 CDs from him he let me have it for $10. I wound up buying a total of 16 CDs from all of the FuMPers present plus Carrie Dahlby's CD. All the FuMPers told me that I rocked. I found out that CDs tend to be cheaper at the Cons since Pay Pal doesn’t take their cut.
About an hour after the concert I ran into one of the organizers of Shore Leave, another Sci Fi convention happening in the Baltimore in mid July. I asked him if any of the FuMPers would be performing there. He gave me a very strange look and in a “you gotta be kidding me” type voice asked: “You really liked them?” He then told me that he had bought a couple Luke Ski CDs in the past and found many of the tracks a big waste of time. He also told me that he did watch the FuMP concert and was pleasantly surprised by Rob Balder’s last song "Rich Fantasy Lives" (the one serious song in the whole concert!) I told a few of the FuMPers about this, and they had a good laugh over it. During the day I had some good conversations with the FuMPers, they are great people!
In the evening Rob Balder, Shoebox, and Luke Ski each performed 30 minute concerts in the Garden Room upstairs. A half hour before they were scheduled to perform, there was a Pod casting seminar. When this finished the organizers of this seminar told some of the participants that they needed help carrying all of the sound equipment downstairs to a room leaving no sound equipment in the room for the concerts. Shoebox inquired about where is their sound system, they told him to go to Con Central to call the tech in charge. While this was all going on there was a storyteller in that room performing from the middle of the audience. The sound tech came in to scout the situation, while most of the FuMPers took the tech outside to tell him what they needed. He scrambled to find what equipment he could scavenge so that the concert would work. When the storyteller was done the equipment had just arrived. Everyone scramble to set it up. Sheeeeeew!!!!!
Rob Balder went first, and again had a very receptive audience (I believe many of them were friends of his). He did “Skull Crusher Mountain” and his adulterated version of the same song: “Muppet Laboratories” in which he had a great prop: an Elmo with the “Cookie Monster” sewn to its back (or was it the other way around?) Rob Balder’s girl friend had done this, she also did the sound! Rob proceeded to do his newest FuMP song “I’m Going to Procrastinate” and forgot the words to one verse (how appropriate! This brought out a new layer of Meta to this song and worked out even though it was not intentional.)
Shoebox went next with his 30 minute set starting out with a couple of songs he had already performed earlier. He then proceeded to a couple of songs that would not get by the censors, including his latest, and most offensive song which you can hear at the FuMP. He asked the audience if this would be O.K. before he performed them, and they sounded affirmative, but when he started a few people left.
Luke Ski ended the show with his Grease War’s medley with a very clever Princes Leah quick costume change during the song with the hair bun attachments. It was absolutely hilarious watching Luke play the different parts. More people entered the room during this and seemed to really get into it. Luke closed the night with “It Takes Who”, which wound up being a great segue to the Dr. Who events happening in that room afterwards. An inflatable TARDIS appeared in the back of the room when the next panel arrived while Luke was performing.
This was a great experience. If you have the chance to see any of the FuMPers live, I strongly encourage you to do so.
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Member Comments:
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fiogf49gjkf0d This is one way for me to catch up on the 25+ years of the Dementia genre that I have missed out on. Before last December I had no idea that such a great new talent pool has materialized since I last listened to the Dr. Demento show in the 70's.
Rob Balder told me that corporate radio is to blame for this, and how the FuMP project plans to do an end around corporate radio in order to promote this genre (they have looked at other artists who have been successful at this and developed a model from it). In the few months that the FuMP has existed it has drawn much new traffic and is being linked to from some very popular sites. He told me that Robert Lund / Spaff have also generated a great deal of traffic to the FuMP site and are very happy to have them. They are currently working on getting Lemon Demon aboard.
Anyway, I have gone a bit crazy purchasing CDs of Dementia since December. This was a great place to do one stop shopping for the best deals. There was another vendor there selling CDs of this genre, but I decided I had spent enough money at this event. Hopefuly I will get out to some more Con fest (this was my first) to purchase some Tom Smith and other artists.
--- peterpuck9
Yeah, they kinda like that.
--- Tim P. Ryan
Yes, the quickest way to become freinds with all the FuMPers is to buy 16 CDs at a time!
;)
-Tim
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fiogf49gjkf0d Yeah, they kinda like that.
--- Tim P. Ryan
Yes, the quickest way to become freinds with all the FuMPers is to buy 16 CDs at a time!
;)
-Tim
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fiogf49gjkf0d Yes, the quickest way to become freinds with all the FuMPers is to buy 16 CDs at a time!
;)
-Tim
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