Because of these several impediments, as well as other technical difficulties, you will find typos and occasional replication of text. In our humble opinion, typos show that the logs are of *live* chats, not canned interviews, and minimal editing of these logs has taken place.

Tom Smith's Home Page

[Ryan] Heya Tom.
[Cybling] Folks, please meet Tom...Tom Smith...Filker!
[Cybling] Tom good to have you here with us today.
[St4rchild] hi there Tom!
[Tom] Thanks a lot. So... how do you get any music out of this thing?
[Cybling] Tom, your bio says you specialize in music, comedy, social commentary, and lethal puns
[Cybling] lol Tom.
[Cybling] What isntrument do you play?
[Cybling] instrument that is.
[Tom] Hmmm. No, I specialize in comedy, social commentary, lethal puns, and music. Never trust yourself to write your own bio. I play guitar and MIDI.
* Ryan whispers to Janice, "maybe he's the one thats passing around the filking drug"
[Cybling] LOLOL.
[Tom] I wanna new drug (whap whap wa naa naaa)...
[Cybling] We had a couple of filkers here yesterday, Tom, who were postulating that Filking may be a communicable disease.
[Tom] Well, where do you think the phrase "just filking around" came from?
[Cybling] LOL. Tom, what first attracted you to Filk?
[Tom] By the way, if you handle is Cybling, shouldn't we be doing this on a Brother typewriter?
[Ryan] Someone else who handed down the drug.
[Tom] What first attracted me to filk... a few cute ladies I had it bad for. No, really.
[Tom] About 150 pounds ago, when I was a hottie, I hooked up with a Rocky Horror group.
[Tom] They used to drive down to Ann Arbor from East Lansing, MI.
[Tom] Three of them were filkers, all of them were filk fans, and I had it really bad for two of the ladies.
[Cybling] Rocky Horror group? This was a band? A group that went to see Rocky Horror regularly?
[Tom] This was one of the groups that goes to a movie theater and acts along in front of the screen.
[Cybling] Ah...the glee club.
[Cybling] Toilet paper and toast and garters and all.
[Tom] Pretty much. Anyway, I learned a lot that year... about music! Music!
[Cybling] Wonderful music. You learned about music, but Tom,...
[Cybling] filk is
*more
* than music...or at least all the filkers...
[Cybling] we've had here so far during the convention seem to say so.
[Tom] Anybody
[St4rchild] nice, so you do any MIDI composin'?
* Ryan frowns.
[Tom] who filks is basically involved in a musical version of fan fiction.
[Cybling] okay.
[Tom] There's a whole lot more -- performance non several levels, interaction with the audience....
[Tom] I've been working on more MIDI lately, in prep for a comedy album we hope to have out real soon.
[Tom] Pretty much everything on PLUGGED was MIDI, done mostly on my old Amiga computer.
[Cybling] Tom you say we...you're not a solo act...you have a band?
[Tom] I like SuperJAM, and I'm also fond of the MIDISoft stuff.
[Tom] I have some friends I recruit to sing with me.
[Ryan] Whoa. Midis. The 3k music files that ruled the world like 3 years ago =P
[Tom] They still do. Try editing one wrong note in an MP3 or WAV file.
[Kimmo] Actually, Ryan, the data files used to create serious music, but migrated to computers :P
[Ryan] Now, of course, everything is either MP3 or streamed.
[Tom] And that can be really great.
[Tom] But there's a high degree of variation in the quality of the sounds on any given computer.
[Tom] I try to get the absolute best noise I can BEFORE I commit it to the final recording.
[Cybling] sounds sound.
[Tom] I have a Monster Sound MX300 card, which sounds really great --
[Tom] -- all that noise, noise, noise, NOISE --
[Cybling] lol
[Tom] but I do my final MIDI work on my KORG X5DR rack module, which has INCREDIBLE stuff in it.
[Kimmo] Most the new soundcards have good midi synths..... so Tom, how do you feel abour Rocky Horror today? Did you have enough of it years ago, or...?
[Tom] A sound card with more than a few MB of sounds costs upwards of a thousand bucks....
[Tom] Rocky Horror? Still love the show, like the movie, hate the crowds.
[Cybling] lol. There was a group trek to Rocky Horror planned from the convention this year.
[Tom] The audience participation has degenerated into a whole bunch of swearing at the screen.
[Kimmo] Cool. I just ordered the 25th anniversary DVD version of the movie today
[Tom] No wit anymore.
[Tom] It's finally out on DVD? When?
[Cybling] Tom, you have a concert planned for this Sunday in the Acapulco room here at the convention.
[Ryan] I want a DVD player ^_^
[Cybling] Will you be doing songs from your new album and will it be onsale here?
[Kimmo] I think now, or very soon. In september. I ordered a bunch spanning hte entire fall... not sure
[Tom] 2:45. I'll also be hanging around at the open sings tonight and/or tomorrow.
[Tom] My most recent album was DEBASEMENT TAPES, and yeah, I'll be doing stuff off that.
[Tom] DVD players are great, but I'm not getting rid of my DVD ROM drive.
[Cybling] Excellent. Your albums are on CD? Tape?
[Ryan] I want one of those too
[Tom] Besides, it gives me an excuse to save up for one of those big honkin' monitors.
[Cybling] LOLOL.
[Tom] QUAKE 3 AT 22 INCHES!!
[Kimmo] Tom: re Rocky Horror on DVD: Release Date: October 3, 2000
[Cybling] WE all neeed big honking monitors.
[Ryan] Definitely, Cybling.
[Cybling] Kimmo thanks!
[Tom] I've got two albums on tape, Who Let Him In Here? and Domino Death...
[Tom] -- thanks for the release date...
[Cybling] And we can get these from dealers here or from you online?
* Kimmo hugs his 19 incher lovingly. (feel free to presume I mean the monitor)
[Cybling] lol
[Tom] -- and three CDs, Plugged, Debasement Tapes, and Tom Smith And His Digital Acoustic Compilation.
[Tom] If you're at ChiCon, you can get them from any of several dealers...
[Tom] ... or you can order them from us at www.tomsmithonline.com.
[Kimmo] Guess ordering is my only option... since I'm chatting from Finland. ;)
[Ryan] Tom: Are you for or against full-length songs on mp3s?
[Tom] We also will have our first T-Shirt in a few weeks.
[Tom] Finland! Way cool. Thanks for checking this out.
[Cybling] Ryan, let's make yours the last quesetion. I promised him I would undo the duct tape right about now and let him flee.
[Cybling] question that is.
[Tom] I'm sure I should put something kinky right here....
[Cybling] lol
* Kimmo is getting a tad bleary-eyed... it's 1.15 am in finland
* Ryan chuckles.
[Tom] MP3s. I'm on Napster, although I didn't ask to be.
* Cybling hands kimmo a cup of green room coffee virutally [_]D
[Tom] But I don't mind it. If I had one track on every hard drive in the world, that would be a whole lotta people who knew who I was.
[Ryan] Ewww.. Green Room coffee :P
* Kimmo grovels before Cybling in gratitude of the caffeine fix
[Tom] I've got some free tracks on my MP3.com page, and we'll be doing more of that soon.
[Ryan] Whoo :)
[Tom] In fact, we also plan to have some previews of the comedy album up soon.
[Ryan] I'll have to check that out.
[Cybling] Great. So we can go hear your music and get a taste. thanks Tom!
[Tom] Thanks very much for having me here.
[Cybling] folks...let's thank Tom for taking time out from the endless SF party that is about to kick back into gear here in Chicago.
[Tom] Thanks to all of you for joining in.
* Cybling applauds
[EveningStar] Thank you Tom for coming
*applauds*
* EveningStar hands Tom a rose
* Ryan claps and chuckles at EveningStar.
[Tom] So does Tom. So... what are you doing after the Chat....?
[EveningStar] hehe