Dion

And so Happy New Year!

I had a really nice thing happen to me yesterday on Facebook, and here's the story. I am a long time Dion fan, goes back into the 50's. I first saw him at the Oakdale Theater, in Wallingford, CT, on 7/5/88. We lucked out and had front row seats for the show, which was on a revolving stage. Anyway, his daughter Lark appeared with him as part of the tour, and did a few songs by herself, and she was actually pretty darn good. I snuck my camera in, and took a few rolls of film, and finally had a chance to get a few of those pictures posted to Dion's Yahoo group in the early 2000's.

Anyway, Dion now has a fan page on Facebook, and he's been posting a lot lately. I believe it's him both due to the content and style of the posts, as well as the Bronx exuberance which comes across clearly in his writing. So last night I posted a few pictures from that 1988 show to my Facebook page, and then added them to his fan site. A very short time afterwords, I got a thank you from him for the pictures, and, after that, he asked about my "talented" daughter :). I was told that he had seen a video of Lisa that I had put on YouTube and mentioned on his Yahoo board, and was told that he liked it, and was really surprised that he remembered :). Now, I don't know how he recalled that, or if he was prompted (which I know is a possibility) but I was very impressed that he took the time to both acknowledge the pictures, as well as mention my daughter.

You Facebook folk might consider becoming a Dion Dimucci fan just to check up on the banter going on over on his fan page. He has about 1600 fans right now, and I'm sure it's growing everyday. I'm sure that part of the attraction on this site (as well as on the sites of Barry McGuire, Scott Kempner, Andrew Gold, Will Lee, and a few others) is that these artists are personally involved with the sites and in direct contact with their fans. Makes a big difference, believe me.

I'd slacked off a bit on my Dion stuff, but with his recent appearance on the HBO Hall of Fame 25th Anniversary special, and recent opening act appearances for Bob Dylan, the interest is re-building. The guy turned 70 in July, and has the vocal chops he used to have 30+ years ago. And there are rumors of a release of some outtakes from the early 90's that will no doubt rekindle interest in his work from his Yo Frankie CD days.

Alas, no Chad and Jeremy news, other than that my apparent ban from posting on the Yahoo group continues :). No tragedy, as there is not much happening anyway, though my new year's wishes remain unpublished. Nor is there any news on the DVD or CD as far as release dates go, though I will let you know as soon as I hear anything. I will note that I am somewhat perplexed with the comment on the MySpace site that, in referring to the forthcoming new CD, "This album will feature almost entirely brand-new songs - for the first time in over twenty-five years." We have been told that the title will be Zanzibar Sunset, and we know that the title song first appeared back in the early 80's and is really one of their classic songs. I hope this is an indication that a few of the songs from the CD-R's we spoke about will also be making an appearance. Patience people, patience :)

That's it. Dinner awaits.