The Central Jersey Beat

Ever since I was a young boy one of life’s great pleasures has been browsing the bins of a record store. As much as I enjoy the convenience of a CD and find myself downloading more music these days, it’s still not the same as in the days of the record album. To go into a record store in the late 1960’s through the early 1980’s and thumb through stacks of new releases looking for something new and different was a big turn on. Back then an album cover was often a work of art. Although some covers were the equivalent of velvet paintings sold on street corners, many complemented if not transcended the music contained on that record inside. Think Cream’s Disraeli Gears, Big Brother and the Holding Company’s Cheap Thrills or The Rolling Stone’s Sticky Fingers to name just three.

As shallow as it sounds, I’ve bought a fair amount of records over the years simply because of the cover. Sex sells in the music business and I certainly wasn’t immune to the charms of a good-looking woman rocker not that there were boatloads of them plying their trade in the rock world in the days when records ruled. Would I have bought Linda Ronstadt’s Love Has No Pride if it weren’t for the cover? Being the music geek I was and knowing that she was once in the Stone Poneys, a band who had a Top 40 hit in 1967 with Monkee Michael Nesmith’s “Different Drum”, yeah I probably would have bought it anyway. I bought the first Blondie album because of the cover as I did with Lene Lovich’s first album who was much more my type than Deborah Harry ever was. I never bought that Blind Faith album—you know the one I’m talking about with that naked prepubescent girl holding that silver airplane until much later when I stumbled upon it at The Princeton Record Exchange. Then again I doubt I would have every found that album in the record department at Caldor or Korvettes.

In the late 1970’s and early 1980’s my album buying was buoyed by the Punk and New Wave movements as I bought albums by bands and acts whose looks didn’t always kill but were instead a lot more shrill a la The Ramones, Patti Smith, The Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Go Gos, Pearl Harbour and the Explosions, and Suzanne Fellini whose self-titled album, with the FM hit “Making Love on the Phone,” had one of those covers that just begged you to buy it.

Admittedly some of these were impulse buys with the album cover triggering something in my teenage brain that compelled me to plop down $6.99 without much thought and take it home with me. With that came the joy of discovery, particularly when the music was just as good if not better than the cover image that sold it.

Now that I’m older and wiser and presenting concerts at Concerts at the Crossing in Titusville, I’m still a sucker for that impulse buy except I’m buying talent instead of records. Looks sell even in the acoustic and alternative music worlds and when I received an e-mail about a booking agency’s latest signing—two 20-somethings called Dala, I had to stop, look, and listen.

Within an hour of receiving that e-mail I had booked this Canadian duo to play Concerts at the Crossing on January 16. Little did I know then that eight months later Dala would be the buzz of the acoustic music circuit. Word of mouth certainly helps as does good looks and gorgeous voices, which these two young women have. They also have the talent and the material to back it up.

Their appearance at last summer’s Newport Folk Festival is the stuff of legend. Performing on a Sunday morning at one of the Festival’s smaller stages where the up and coming artists perform, buzz quickly started circulating around the festival that these young women were something special. By the end of their set they had received two standing ovations, were invited by the festival organizer to do one song on the main stage in the afternoon in front of 10,000 people and walked out of Newport with the third most CD sales of any act there.

Unlike your average disposable Top 40 commercial radio act, there’s nothing manufactured and no pretense here. Just tremendous harmonies and an engaging stage presence. No wonder tickets are selling briskly and Concerts at the Crossing regulars and performers who have already seen them laud their talents from our stage and via e-mail to friends and fellow music lovers.

Sometimes it pays to be impulsive.  

http://concertsatthecrossing.com and www.dalagirls.com

This entry was posted on Friday, January 1st, 2010 at 12:51 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.