Well, the first Friday monthly folk club meet in April was something of a humdinger! It was the first folk club for three months which did not take place under the shadow of a local transport strike of trams and buses. As actually arriving in Dottendorf was so much easier this time, this resulted in a crowd of some ninety souls and we had some excellent performers lined up on the evening and so "all was good". There is an old saying that "one gets what one deserves." Indeed, karma, the Indian Hindu and Buddhist concept of this, that a person's actions determine their fate in this life and in the next incarnation, can work in both directions, both negative and positive. A folk club evening is, in my humble opinion, and having witnessed them all, invariably a positive event and certainly Simon Wahl and all the other performers had the joy of the type of audience that they so rightly deserved and the audience too were richly blessed with both the quality and the variety of the performers on the evening, It's a bit like a chicken and egg problem, what is the cause, and what is the effect? One thing that I cannot praise enough is the quality of the audience. It would be inconceivable that our concept of playing unplugged and totally acoustic in front of so many amassed people, without the ability of our audience to be so absolutely quiet when required, so that one can literally hear a pin drop, and yet, when spurned on, turn into the most wondrous spontaneous choir, quite capable of singing along and raising the roof when called upon to do so. Moreover, the spontaneous in situ choir always chirps in so tunefully!
No less a character than Goethe (Johanne Goethe [1749-1832], German philosopher, poet and writer) once very wisely said,
"One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words."
Now this would be a rather busy schedule if one was expected to do it each and EVERY day, but on the first Friday of each month, it is often comfortably within your reach, when you come to the Bonn folk club in Dotty's Bar in BTHV in Dottendorf. As for "little songs" we often have 30-40 of them, and Elena ensures that they do not last too long, so there is always a very diverse variety. Poems are also part of the evening, and budding poets are welcome to recite their own poems, or more well known ones. As for fine pictures, there are often wonderful photos taken by John Hurd and Sabine Büttner, both on the FCB committee, which are later up on the Folk Club Blog for your kind perusal. Furthermore, John Hurd very often writes a few reasonable words in one of his wonderful English language reviews of folk club events, and if you really get lucky, you might find Barry L Roshto, co-founder of FCB and creator of the FCB blog sometimes even performing some excellent spoken words himself live in the folk club. So, not only does this tick all of Goethe's boxes, which is quite something in itself, for an ostensibly anglophile folk club in a small town in Germany, but as Detlef never ceases to point out, it is also "admission free", but as I prefer to say, never "umsonst".
Poems indeed broke the ice on the evening and it was surprising to discover how many owners of magnolia trees were amongst the audience, and these sympathetic people had their times cut out in the past few weeks clearing up the residue of their magnolia trees, which are a wonder for so many to behold, but a backbreak for their carers to clear up afterwards.
Just after the magnolias finish the dandelions begin creating carpets of resplendent yellow over so many unsuspecting grass lawns. Dandelions are amazing plants and flowers, the English word "dandelion" came about as a corruption of the French " dents de lion" because while the English elite were often very proficient French speakers from the second half of the 11th century onwards, the ordinary folk were not proficient in French pronunciation. So what the Germans still know today as "Löwenzahn" which still refers to the lions' teeth. The Dutch know it as "Paardebloem", because horses like to eat the yellow flowers in the meadow, and the French always eager to keep thinking people on their toes, changed the name from "dents de lion" to "pissenlit" which accurately describes the diuretic qualities of the the plant, and is exactly what it makes you do if taken in excess, i.e. to wet the bed!
DAN D LION
The brilliant yellow tempest of his lawn
A veritable crescendo of April sunshine
Canned solar colour and power
Languishing at ground zero
The bain of neighbouring gardeners
Proclaiming the, for them irresistible, yet for others malaligned,
benefits of botanical ethnic cleansing
Slightly bitter young leaves
Enhancing green spring salady of rocolla
Older leaves prepared for the chomping of ever hungry
Neighbourhood pet rabbits
The yellow flowers harvested and blanched
And fermented for dandelion wine
Down below the sod
The roots entwine
Preparing to offer a roast coffee-ersatz
In times of need
'tis not rocket science
and indeed in times of need
after excessive greed and climate trashing
a most welcome kind of common weed
The humble dandelion once more shines forth
Resplendent and ever resilient resisting
Eradicate, Ex(s)tincticate, Exterminate,
Not even Daleks could do it.
John Harrison
Apart from dandelions giving untold pleasure to children in the later stages of the flower stage being able to tell the time with sufficient lung power to blow off their seeds and count the remainig stubborn ones, dandelions are also an important source of vitamin A and their roots can be roasted and ground in order to provide a coffee substitute in times of need.
All in all the dandelion puts on a magnificent show for a mere "weed"!
Vitamin A and Dan D Lion
An army of a million marching Greens
with fluffy white Afro-haircuts
and a serious balding problem
A time piece of bronchial precision
almost a weed
the butt of much derision
Ubiquitous beautifier
malaligned diuretic pacifier
if roots be freedom
if words were reason
God bless your season
simple flower power
Tower over grassy lees
and spread your shoots with glee
for oft you may confront one less benign than me
Your happy yellow face
has graced so many dark spring hour
woe be the tide indeed
should they
not deem
thee flower
John Harrison
(Upon hearing that the only difference between a flower and a weed is a judgement)
First amongst the walk-ins were Konstanze & Joshua with Konstanze singing a wonderful cover of Canadian singer–songwriter Alanis Morissete's iconic song "Ironic".
Folk club regular Holger Riegel took to the piano to give us an “Annette” with his own song. “Shranken Blues” . The folk club is on the western side of the raiway line which runs north-south up the Rhine valley. John le Carré once wrote that in Bonn, “it's either raining or the railway barriers are down.” On a bad day both things sometimes happen simultaneously, and people travelling to the folk club on a Friday evening can sometimes be stood, in the rain, on the eastern side of the railway lines for 10-15 minutes, but don't let that put you off! Holger's Tom Waites' style song sums up this situation wonderfully.
There followed a succession of floor spots and Annettes, with the Jermexicana band. Peter Bachman
and folk club favourites “Zwei von Zwei”.
During the break the audience graciously filled up their bottom drawers with future Christmas gifts for their loved ones and seriously lightened Simon's load on his return to his parents' home.
After the break we had our longest Walk-in ever in the form of the forrester Robert Hrubes who had walked in all the way from San Francisco and he tickled the ivories most regally for us. Robert has previously visited us and performed in 2016 and 2019 and has threatened to begin a new folk club tradition and visit us on his birthday each year when it coincides with a folk club on the first Friday of the month in April.
It's always a pleasure to welcome Tom Kannmacher the Ur-folker of NRW regaling us on the uillean pipes with tunes from the turn of the century, not this century, nor even the previous one, but from around 1800!
Simon Wahl, on his fourth visit to the folk club gave it a “Julius Caesar” with veni, vidi, vici. He came, he saw and conqured, blowing everyone's mind with the fact that he had even improved his alread momentous guitar skills since his previous visits. The audience received even more than they deserved and Simon certainly received the audience he deserved. The collective FCB “choir” is already renown for its passion and willingness to sing along and Simon's cheeky mid-shanty tune switch from The Wellerman to What Shall We Do With A Drunken Sailor and back again, failed to catch them and they continued singing throughout without missing a beat.
Simon smiled and continued playing! Looking forward to welcoming you back again Simon!
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