Ms. Connie Dover on Napster

[Ramona_A_Stone]

A few days ago, a good roadie friend of mine mentioned in an instant message that he was working a celtic music concert at a snooty downtown venue. "You'd probably like this chick and her band," he told me, but he couldn't remember her name. Since the concert started an hour before I got off work on saturday night, I didn't think much about it. But before work on saturday he messaged me again, and in passing asked me if I knew who Connie Dover was. "I'm a HUGE Connie Dover fan," I replied. "Well, that's the show I'm working tonight," he replied.

Almost more than wishing to see the concert, I wanted to go because I knew Connie would be selling her CDs in the lobby. A number of years ago, I saw her perform at the same venue with her band Scartaglen, Kansas City natives, and I bought the Scartaglen CD and had it signed by all the members of the band. A friend I attended the concert with bought Connie's solo CD, Somebody, which I would later fall completely in love with. This friend moved away, and this CD, I would discover, proved impossible to find.

...Until Napster. I was pleased to find Connie had a small but devoted following on Napster, and was able to download all the tracks from Somebody.

Now, during my Napster career, even though I have only a 56k modem, I collected and burned over 400 CDs, plus innumerable single tracks--but lately I've become dissatisfied with the quality of many of them, and my new hobby has become to replace them all with factory copies when possible. (this actually sort of developed from the fact that I quit smoking at the beginning of the year, and realized I could purchase nearly a CD a day with the money I was saving--I've been finding many at the used shops for $7-$10)

At any rate, I really wanted a real copy of Somebody, so I headed to the concert, arrived an hour and a half into the show, snuck into the standing-room-only house, and caught that last thirty minutes, which was completely spellbinding. Connie was playing with three other musicians, (one an old friend from Scartaglen) and the instrumentation was acoustic guitar, violin, bazouki, bohdran, concertina and Connie with her beautiful, pure voice and occasional touches of her Kurzweil keyboard.

Standing just inside the door, I was the first out of the house and headed straight for the merchandise table and purchased Somebody. They were setting up another table and I heard someone mention that this is where Connie would be signing. I was first in line, and it was only a moment before Connie appeared. I make a terrible groupie--I'm too empathic with how awkward one feels when someone is gushing over you--and I knew I couldn't help but gush over Ms. Dover. She accepted it all graciously though, even angelically, her hands crossed over her heart in rapt attention. We talked until I felt the people behind me grow restless and I tore myself away.

"I have to tell you," I said sheepishly at one point, "I downloaded this album on Napster, where it was fairly popular, because I really treasured it, and couldn't find it anywhere else." (although I have to admit that just this morning I found a place to mail order it online) I must've looked way more guilty about this than I actually felt, because she reached out and put her hand on my shoulder and looked me straight in the eye. "oh!" she said, compassionately, "Don't worry about that. I think it's beautiful. I'm so glad you were able to find it! It's meant to be shared."

...As if I could be more smitten by this lovely creature than I already was!