has been active in filk in the Northeast US since 1974. Since then, he has run or assisted with filk programming at many Northeast conventions. He was also instrumental in maintaining the inclusion of filk programming at these cons when their concoms were inclined to drop it. He co-ran filking at two WorldCons, Noreascon II (1980) and Magicon (1992), and ran filking at Noreascon III (1989) where he set a new standard for filk programming at WorldCons. He is always creative in presenting the music. He set up different rooms for varying filking styles, and introduced the notion of scheduling formal concerts, rendezvous filks, and workshops, and of doing so during main programming hours. He helped introduce the East Coast to filk written to original tunes, and to the bardic circle and the chaos filk. Between 1981 and 1984, he ran filk contests for Boskone, collecting songs which were later published as the NESFA Hymnal, Volume 2, 1987.
For many years, he has encouraged new people to enter the community and encouraged listeners to take on performing, writing and organizing. With an idea and much urging from David Union, he founded MASS FILC, the Boston area filk club, persuaded them to meet monthly, and motivated them to be more than a local club. When ConCerto folded in 1992, he convinced MASS FILC that it was possible to organize a con in four months, and formed Concertino, then helped persuade the Baltimore and New York City fans that they should take a turn in running a filk convention.
For years, Spencer taped filk in the Northeast and at cons all over the continent, and he introduced excellent sound systems to formal concerts. In 1993, he formed Love Song Productions, driven by his desire to improve the sound quality of filk albums. His company’s debut release was the stellar “The Pegasus Winners, Collection 1”.
Finally, Spencer was one of the four founding members of Interfilk and continues to serve both as treasurer and as one of its most active directors. He has been inexhaustible at drumming up enthusiasm for Interfilk, scouting out new potential guests, making bookings, working on publications and much more.
For these contributions to filk music and the filk community, Spencer Love is inducted into the Filk Hall of Fame, this Twelfth day of April, Nineteen Hundred and Ninety-Seven.
Photo credit: Dave Weingart