Newton collector offers music memorabilia at weekend concerts

Dennis Farland has a tough time remembering important dates of the year or what he’s told to do some days, but the longtime rock ’n’ roll music aficionado can somehow recollect every detail about the day the music died.

He knows rock ’n’ roll pioneers Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson died in a plane crash, along with their pilot, Feb. 3, 1959. It was on a Tuesday. The three musicians played a show the day before in Clear Lake.

Carroll Anderson, the Surf Ballroom manager at the time, drove the three men to a plane to be piloted by Roger Peterson. Jerry Dwyer owned the Dwyer Flying Service in Mason City and saw the plane take off.

All four occupants were killed instantly when the aircraft crash-landed in a cornfield. Farland remembers how the crash site was described to him.

“It looked like a hog shed rolled up against the fence,” he said. “It didn’t even resemble an airplane.”

Farland can remember all of that and more.

“But I can’t remember birthdays,” he said with a laugh.

Indeed. Farland is a walking, talking encyclopedia of rock ’n’ roll knowledge, a true fan of the genre through and through. If anyone doubted his love of music and of those iconic stars still talked about today, they only need look at Farland’s vast collection of memorabilia he has collected since the 1980s.

Sure, he has vinyl records and posters and collages, many of which are autographed, of all his favorite rock ’n’ rollers, but Farland also has a bevy of news clippings, T-shirts, pennants, mugs, magazines and just about everything you can think of or couldn’t think of, like the booth seats lifted directly from the Surf Ballroom.

After decades of gathering, Farland has decided to downsize his prized collection by auctioning items away at the Spring Fling Dance Party Concert beginning at 6 p.m. Friday at the Newton High School Center for Performance and at 6 p.m. Saturday at the DanceMor Ballroom in Swisher.

Proceeds gathered from the sold memorabilia will go toward the Winter Dance Party Music Scholarship Fund for local students, as well as the Newton High School’s new band uniforms fund. Tickets for the show are available at Mattingly Music & Book Store, Hy-Vee, the front office of the Newton High School and all high school band members.

There’s only one way someone could get their collection, Farland said, and that’s by going to concerts. Sure, he might have formed some friendships with a handful of those musicians along the way, but Farland insists he has a passion for the music they played.

Frequent trips to shows and creating bonds with those who played on stage inevitably grew his collection. Until, eventually, the collection outgrew the space he was keeping it in.

Although he may be saving some of the more sentimental items for himself, there’s still plenty to go around.

“I don’t do this as a ‘look what I got’-type of thing, and I’ve never been that way,” Farland said. “I just like to share with people.”

Contact Christopher Braunschweig at 641-792-3121 ext. 6560 or cbraunschweig@newtondailynews.com