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.
Robert Hrubes our long distance walk-in from San Francisco.
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!
John Hay continued Holger's earlier railway sub-theme's song of
waiting, waiting, waiting at the railway barriers with another
railway song “In der Bahn.”
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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