Soon there will be a bulletin board and photo album for that purpose. I intend for this to be a place where you and I can re-connect with old friends. So the function of this section is not to say “ain’t it awful that it’s not happening anymore,” but to celebrate an era, the adventures we had and the friends we made. The Internet, this site and the ones recommended here, are information resources that we could only have dreamed about a few years ago. area and organizations around the country that meet on a regular basis and there are tons of places to perform. There are numerous wonderful workshops in the L.A. There are organizations like Just Plain Folks that maintain an international community online. Future Songwriters Expos are still a distinct possibility. Song critiques and contact with the industry that we accomplished with Cassette Roulette and Pitch-A-Thon are now done extremely well on a large scale by TAXI which also produces an annual Road Rally (just for members) that has substituted, in its networking aspects, for LASS’s annual Songwriters Expo. Many of the events the Showcase created have taken other forms and are addressed in other ways. Though it hasn’t happened that way, I’m pleased to see that you have created your own services and opportunities and I thank you for keeping me in the loop with your e-mails and newsletters to let me know that the spirit of the songwriting community is still very much alive. It was our hope that the services LASS and NAS created would continue under new leadership. Later, NAS in turn, joined forces with the Songwriters Guild of America. In 1996, the organization Len Chandler and I founded in 1971, The Los Angeles Songwriters Showcase (LASS), joined forces with the National Academy of Songwriters.

April by Mackey Chandler