a bit on the songwriting talent at the janey street concert

Of course, the highlight of the Janey Street concert last week, was, of course, Janey Street herself.

But this was also an NSAI event (whether officially or not), so most of the people in the room were songwriters of one sort or another*. I didn't take a survey, but my impression was that most, if not all, of the songwriters there are more accomplished than I am. Of course, anyone who is active in NSAI is, pretty much by definition, more serious about it than I am. Many, however, were much more accomplished, either as musicians, or singers, or -- hell, I'll just say it -- as songwriters.

One of people who played songs after the concert was Freddy Monday. I had talked to him earlier, during the imtermission. That came about because he -- and I forget why -- said "China clipper calling Alameda," which I recognized from the Monkees' "Zilch." We got to talking about singwriting and the Monkees. One of his songs is "I Wanna Be Your Davy Jones." He managed to get Davy Jones to appear in the video:

It kind of reminded me of Eytan Mirsky's "I just Want to Be Your Steve McQueen."

Another songwriter there was Randi Drucker (who hosted the concert). She played a beautiful tearjerking song about an absent father. I'm not sure of the exact title, although I believe it was something along the lines of "Make the Monsters Go Away."

If I can find the time, I need to go to NSAI events in New York.

*I say "of one sort or another" because I want to use a loose enough definition of songwriter to include myself. I briefly described my songwriting in the first post on this blog.

UPDATE: I should have noted this: One of my favorite aspects of "I Want to Be Your Dav Jones" is that the song begins with a rif that's pretty much an exact copy of the opening riff of The Monkees' version of "Mary Mary."