Wow, I know this con report is pretty late in coming, but year-end school stuff has really kept me hopping for the last few weeks and kept me away from fun stuff like con reports.

But, here we go! (Debbie: I'll be adding pictures, too, when I've had a chance to scan them)

FRIDAY, JUNE 13, 1997

Deb, Jodi and I flew into Philadelphia Friday morning, excited and primed for the weekend. We greeted Gary enthusiastically at the airport and he packed us away in his car to start our ConCerto adventure. He was rather bemused by all our questions, "Hey, Gary, what river is that?", "Hey, Gary, are we going to cross over that bridge?", "Hey, Gary, what state is this again?", "Hey, Gary, when will we be in New Jersey?", etc., etc. We learned a lot of US geography on that trip :). Gary detoured us through downtown Philadelphia where he had to drop something off at the mint, so we wandered through a park while we waited for him and sang new UT songs for the pigeons (Debbie: the other people in the park looked at us pretty weird, too!).

We arrived at the con and settled in quickly, as we were anxious to meet the concom and Phil and Lissa Allcock, the Interfilk guests, who we were told were working in the con suite with Debra Fran Baker (who ran a wonderful con suite). It was nice to have some time to relax and get to know people before the con got started that night. We bonded with Lissa over cut veggies :) - Lissa and UT chopped veggies for Debra while we chattered with her and Phil and we got to know each other (Debbie: there's no bonding experience quite like chopping cucumbers). Phil sat in a corner and scribbled song lyrics (Debbie: evil ones, I'm sure :-) ). We were to learn what so many filkers already know, that the guy is a wicked parodyist and we'd better watch our step :). UT and the Allcocks also bonded over cookies- we brought Lissa two bags of Canadian Oreos and Lissa brought us chocolate-covered ginger cookies and made Deb an instant slave for life :) (Debbie: I worship Lissa.). Check out the Deb/Phil ConCerto cookie cartoons elsewhere on our webpage.

We also met Tad Pierson in the con suite, which was a fortunate meeting indeed. Two days earlier I had received a package in the mail from Germany containing a German filkzine called "Let's Filk About" (edited by Kirstin Scholz). There was an article about UT in the magazine, but I hadn't been able to read it since the article was in German :). We discovered Tad -can- read German, so I ran upstairs and brought down the zine for him to interpret for us. Phil helped with some phrases, too, and also told us a bit about German filking and the filkers in the zine. Most interesting, especially since German filkers, Juliane Honisch and Kerstin Droge, will be be Interfilk guests at FKO next year. Tad's going to send me a hard copy translation of the UT article, too. Thanks, Tad!

We slipped off to get some dinner at the restaurant next door before the con officially started at 7:30 and we greeted assorted friends who were starting to arrive from points all over.

The ConCerto coffeehouse was held out by the hotel pool and it was a lot of fun. There was a lovely buffet set out and a large cake to celebrate the con and Phil's birthday! We got a chance to meet and talk with Ian Hanley, the con's Toastmaster and Ellen Kranzer, the Listener Guest. Conversation got briefly interrupted when I looked over and saw Mark Osier walk into the party! Mark hadn't told us he was going to be at ConCerto (the sneak!) and we were thrilled to see him :) (Debbie: and we proved it by all jumping up from our chairs and running over to him, yelling "MARK!!!!!" in delight). Mark will be Toastmaster to Steve MacDonald's GOH at Contata next July, which guarantees a good time will be had by all.

The concom teased the guests with songs and parodies of songs. Check out Gary's "Urban Tapestry Theme Song" :). They also gave us a most appropriate gift- New Jersey T-shirts, Uniball pens (Debbie: which are, as everyone knows, the best pens in entire world) and Jelly Bellies! We really appreciated everybody's warm welcome. We got a chance to debut our goofy new song "We're Urban Tapestry", written especially for The Second ConCerto and we especially enjoyed getting the chance to sing "Two Sailors" with Mark during the open mike part of the coffee house.

Also, it was Phil Allcock's birthday, so we gave him a silly Canadiana package that included a Toronto Star, Toronto City Hall playing cards, a sparkly maple leaf pen and Canadian M&M's (Debbie: a very tasteful birthday gift, I must say). Phil and Lissa are moving to Toronto any day now- we just know it. (Debbie: I also really enjoyed the mini-concerts by the poolside.)

The open filk was a fun way to end the day and it was great to hear many performers I hadn't heard before. Ian did some storytelling, Phil introduced us to some lovely British filk (including some rather twisted parodies :-)), several other filkers did songs I had never heard before. One of the evening's highlights for me was hearing Rand and Tanya Bellavia sing together for the first time. UT has sung plenty with Rand and Ookla The Mok, but we were blown away by Tanya's wonderful voice and we hope to hear her a lot more in the future! In fact, we plan to make sure of it since Tanya and UT are already discussing singing an Indigo Girls' song together sometime soon :). (Debbie: I can't believe Tanya's managed to hide from the musical limelight for so long. Everyone must hear this woman sing!)

Around 2 am we headed off to bed. There was much more weekend to come.

And, oh, yeah... We debuted our new CD, "Myths and Urban Legends", Friday night at the con, too :). We saw the CD for the first time and we got to ooo and ahhh again over Beckett's wonderful artwork. We were pretty excited about that! (Debbie: to put it mildly :-))