[referring to Janis Ian, a hero of mine for many reasons, Kate said] <<I agree, she is really great. I saw her last summer at a festival here...she played solo & had some great effects on her acoustic guitar...great show...I also love her monthly column in Performing Songwriter...its my favorite part of the mag...a brilliant & funny writer!>>
Kate -- I didn't know she had a column -- for that matter, I wasn't aware of this magazine -- I'll try to find it, maybe even subscribe. I first fell in love with Janis's songwriting even before her big breakthrough "At Seventeen" (remember "Jesse", "Stars" and all of those songs -- not quite as good -- written when she *was* a teen?). "At Seventeen" is one of the most amazing lyrics ever written: "I learned the truth at seventeen that love was meant for beauty queens and [something] with clear-skinned smiles who married young and then retired... And those of us with ravaged faces lacking in the social graces desperately remained at home inventing lovers on the phone who called to say, come dance with me and murmered vague obscenities It isn't all it seems at seventeen... [memory gap] ...with debentures of quality and dubious integrity; their small-town eyes will gape at you in dull surprise when payment due exceeds accounts received at seventeen..." *Any* lines at random from this song are as brilliant and poignant as these. The feelings this song inspired in me and every other geek of either sex, when it came out in '75 (I think), are hard to describe -- my god, there's someone who not only knows how I felt at that age (I was 19 when the song came out), but who puts it so eloquently, and makes a hit of it -- what triumph! How appropriate that Janis would be a columnist for a songwriting magazine! My favorite Janis Ian anecdote: The one and only time I ever watched Howard Stern's usually execreble syndicated show was when Janis Ian was on, shortly after she'd officially come out. How was *this* going to go? To my complete shock, he was almost courtly to her -- barely lingering on the lesbian thing, which is one of his schticks -- and when she sang "At Seventeen", he was clearly moved!! It occurred to me only then that *Stern* had, of course, been a geek in high school, too. Warmly, Walt
