Music Reviews

By The Con Curmudgeon

Serious Steel

Leslie Fish, Joe Bethancourt

If you go out to Encanto Park in Phoenix on any given Wednesday night, and you head for the baseball field just south of the parking lot, don't be surprised if you see a bunch of armed gangs trying to beat each other up over territory.

Another night in gang-infested Phoenix, you say? No. It's just the weekly gathering of the Society for Creative Anachronism, local chapter.

Begun in Berkeley at the height of the hippie movement, the SCA attracts people who like to dress up like knights and damsels of old, and, well, beat the shit out of each other with sticks.

These people take this stuff seriously. Every February or so, "kingdoms" from all over the west get together at Estrella Mountain Park in very west Phoenix to commingle, conflict and, quite often, copulate. Just like those rowdy folk of old!

Needless to say, such a well-developed culture spawns a musical arm. Locally, Joe Bethancourt, under his SCA name of Ioseph of Locksley, and Leslie Fish, appearing as Leslie the Bard, are the most well-known SCA minstrels.

Predictably, they've finally gotten together to make an album of SCA-inspired songs, Serious Steel. It is, as it should be, a rollicking, entertaining acoustic hodgepodge of songs about everything from fighting to having your honor and sexual prowess insulted.

If you're not too familiar with the SCA, which I'm not, then some of these songs are going to go completely over your head, like they did mine.

Bethancourt's "Atenveldt Invasion," about a monkey who confounds an entire village that has never seen one, is (I was finally told) a reference to one of the Phoenix area SCA groups. Okay. Whatever. I enjoyed the song, but I missed the joke.

Another one that threw me (until I asked an SCA-knowledgeable friend of mine) was Fish's "Cripples' Shield-Wall," which, even after it was explained to me, still kind of has me wondering what she's talking about.

My favorite songs on here are the ones that explain just what the SCA is and what the people do when they get together. Bethancourt's "Estrella War Song" and Fish's hilarious "True Story" (which details her apparently true grilling by the FBI to explain the group's motives) are both excellent.

Sonically, this is the best filk album I've heard in ages. Kudos to producers Bethancourt and Todd Hallawell.

Both parties play their instruments wonderfully, and sing well together. Pick this up -- but check out an SCA gathering beforehand, so that you at least have an inkling of what's going on here.

Order the album here!