Uploaded August 2022 | Updated September 2026, 32 minutes ago

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Tapeworm I track 8. Thanks to rocketman0739 for providing high-quality versions of these songs.
Download the album here: archive.org/details/filk_tapeworm_1
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Lyrics:

A harsh noise echoed throughout the hotel
Till the chandeliers shook in distress.
A noise shrill and piercing as harpies in heat,
With much less restraint and finesse.
So loud was the filksing, so raucous and wild,
The microphones started to burn.
A fool could have told it was no night to be
Too timid in claiming one’s turn.

Chorus:
Filksingers, filksingers, won’t you be kind?
I’ve been here since yesterday morning, you see.
Filksingers, filksingers, let me go next!
And I’ll try not to sing out of key.

He sat there alone at the back of the room.
He was pale, and he shook with fatigue.
His hands were clenched whitely upon his guitar.
It was plain he was out of his league.
“It won’t be your turn for an hour,” they said,
“An hour until it comes ’round.
Be sure that you get our attention next time;
We missed you there, slumped on the ground.”

(Chorus)

The filksing wore on; it lasted all night,
With the songs getting more and more gross.
Grimly one filksinger clung to the spotlight
And sang twenty minutes of ose.
The boy in the corner sat slumped in defeat:
The filkers had missed him once more.
They’d seemed not to notice his feeble attempts
To rise from his spot on the floor.

(Chorus)

“I hear that the ghost reappeared here last night,”
The janitor said with a yawn.
“It certainly did,” said the bellboy who brought
The pitchers of water at dawn.
“They say the convention that killed the poor kid
Was held here the same time last year,
And now any night that they sing in this room,
That spirit is like to appear.”

(Chorus)

“A ghost? At the filksing?” the filksingers asked,
And some of them paled with fright.
“Oh yes, folks, and that’s why we can’t hire a bellboy
Who’ll dare bring you water at night.
The poor fellow died of no food and no sleep,
And no way to keep himself warm.
His soul must be bound by some unfulfilled wish,
Some last act he has to perform.”

(Chorus)