Date: Fri, 30 May 2008 18:20:58 -0400 (EDT)
From: dicconf <dicconf at radix.net>
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Robert Asprin Obit?
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>

On Fri, 30 May 2008, Steve Smith wrote:
> On May 29, 2008, at 9:55 PM, dicconf wrote:
>> On Wed, 28 May 2008, Steve Smith wrote:
>>
>>> Could somebody who knew Bob (or Yang) better that I did (barely)
>>> please write up something for the WSFA Journal?  The only thing I've
>>> seen is the short notice at <http://www.mythadventures.net/>
>>
>> Here's some information.  NB there seems to be some confusion about
>> the details; what I read first said he had died in bed and I think
>> that's been confirmed. The "on the way to the con" seems to be based
>> on "just before MarCon".
>>
>> =Tamar Lindsay
>
> Thanks, but I was hoping for something by somebody local who knew
> him.  I'm *not* the person to write an obit for him ...

There's a difference between an obit and a reminiscence or eulogy.
You could put out a call for reminiscences.

Here are some of mine:

I wouldn't say I knew him but I certainly have memories of hearing
him sing, teach filking, and comment on various topics at cons for
years.  I got into fandom and the SCA in 1972 and he was quite
active at the east coast cons and visited east coast SCA events
in the 70s.

At one con he taught an Introduction to Filking class and had
the class learn to sing "Turn On The G-Force" (ttto Roll Out
the Barrel) as an example of a song that has no strong repeating
lines and no chorus, but which is learnable and singable; the
point was that a good song doesn't have to have a repeating chorus
and may be better without it.  He also said that songwriters who
knew chords should deliberately use chords they weren't fond of,
to vary their writing so their songs wouldn't all sound alike.

Despite his extensive folk music experience, he embraced the
early filkers' polite acceptance of a wide range of individual
abilities.
He told the story of how he had learned by experience not to
put pressure on shy new filkers to sing before they were ready.
He told it as a warning to other enthusiastic people.

He told the story of his first exposure to filk in the midwest,
where he was trying to play guitar for several writers he greatly
admired and was desperately trying to find a midpoint because they
were all singing in different keys and he didn't dare criticize
because they were his gods.  (He finally settled on the key of D.)
I know one of the writers was Gordy Dickson.

He came up with the idea of the Dorsai Irregulars partly as a
result of his experiences in both Ireland and Israel, where he
learned how real armies work as opposed to the written rules.
Those experiences also show up in the Myth series and in the
Phule series.

He wrote a song about Slippery Jim de Gritz (The Stainless Steel
Rat) on the way to a con and forgot half the rhyming words in
the chorus because he was so tired by the time he got to the
filksing, so he faked it and later he had to correct versions
people had taped and written down from that first rendition.

As a performer he could cope with almost anything, from drunks
to vacuum cleaners, and was even patient with crying babies
for the first five minutes until it was obvious that the parent
didn't realize it was annoying to the rest of the group.

He began to pull back a little from testing his story ideas at
conventions by telling stories between songs when he realized
that if he wore out an idea by telling it, he lost interest
in writing it.

=Tamar