Album Notes

Steve Savitzky is a hacker/songwriter who learned both hacking (in its original sense of "programming for fun") and folksinging back in the 1960's; he discovered organized science fiction fandom and filk, its indigenous folk music (i.e. was dragged to his first SF convention) in 1978, and wrote his first "real" filksong shortly thereafter. About half of his songs are about computers; some, like "The World Inside the Crystal", are even serious. He occasionally performs as part of a group called "Tres Gique".

In his professional life as a computer scientist (a glorified term for "middle-aged hacker"), he is currently interested in such minor arcana as web publishing, lightweight content-management systems, online communities, macro-based HTML formatting engines, peer-to-peer filesharing, and RESTful web service APIs. He is a strong proponent of open-source software, a heavy Linux user, and a card-carrying member of the EFF and ACLU. Deep down, he is convinced that computers are gateways to an alternate universe where magic works.

Coffee, Computers, and Song is about computers and computing folk in all their aspects: funny, weird, occasionally serious, often seductive, and sometimes hauntingly beautiful. It includes songs about mushroom management, vampire computers, artificial intelligence, natural stupidity, blogging, hacking, hackers, hacks, kids, bugs, surplus joints, virtual bars, and real people.