We do not normally do birthdays so so please do not expect this to become a regular feature.
However, there have recently occurred a few things of note which are worth considering. Bonn folk club is a truly amazing place and at our last meeting on Friday 03.03.23, I was personally expecting a seriously diminished attendance due to the Verdi strike of workers on both Bonn and Cologne local transport networks. Instead, we were graced with a record post C-19 crowd of over 100 souls.
One birthday of great note was our dear friend Hans-Günter Peters who had passed from being an octogenarian earlier in the year to becoming a nonagenarian by the time he played at the March folk club. What many people do not realise is how long Günter has been attending the folk club and he was a very early visitor when the doors first opened in 2010 in the Schützenhaus in Graurheindorf in the north of Bonn. So he is not only currently our oldest performer, but also one of our longest attendees.
Furthermore, after two successful inaugural meetings in 2010 with many varied performers dear Günter literally saved my bacon on FCB # 3 in April 2010 when for some reason no other performers turned up and I ended up doing 18 songs that evening, plus one with Yvonne Roche-Harth singing, but I had to learn the chords to that song during the break. Günter gave us a wonderful rendering of his piano medleys which saved the evening, and as a folk club we have never looked back since then, and Günter tickling the ivories has become a regular folk club feature ever since, and long may it continue to be so.
Plato once said that "music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything".
So not only is music generally good for prolonging active life and longevity it would appear that performing music specifically in the folk club is particularly enriching for longevity as Günter is a wonderful example of this. So a belated happy birthday to Günter and long may he continue to perform on first Fridays. Günter, whilst now retired, was an architect by trade and has phenomenal drawing skills as an artist as the cartoon below attests, one which he commissioned by himself and gifted to the folk club.
Many thanks for this wonderful gift Günter and a belated happy birthday and many, many more of them!
Some of you may have noticed in the FCB Blog banner there are the numbers 05.03. in white, before the number of years. This is the date when Barry first established the FCB Blog on 05.03.10 so March is also the birthday of the FCB blog and it has just turned 13 years old in March this year. So many thanks to Barry L. Roshto for setting this up.
In Barry's own words, QUOTE
http://folk-club-bonn.blogspot.com/ has evolved into a frequently visited site (the first link when googling Folk and Bonn). Its numerous photos, reports, reviews, and links have made it an information reference for interested newcomers as well as old-timers. It could also be seen as a historical documentary of the Folk Club Bonn. UNQOTE and currently has 324,897. visits at the time of writing.
If you wish to look back into some of Bonn folk club's thirteen years of history then there is a white search box in the top left-hand corner of the blog. The blog is Google-based and, as such, as one would expect, it has a very capable search capability; so if you have any questions or inquiries about past folk club meets, just put your requests in there and be pleasantly surprised. So thanks once again for this amazing facility Barry and for this year's current Folk Club Bonn Blog Banner which you can admire below. The centre piece of the header on the blog is the actual FCB physical banner meticulously sewn by Barry's daughter Emily and which adorns the wall of Dotty's Bar at BTHV at folk club meets and contains at the bottom the folk club's motto:
"Folk is great, beer is good, and people are crazy"
which always was true, still is true, and long may it continue to be true.
Another recent birthday would have been Steve Perry's who sadly passed on in November last year. The folk club owes him a lot for his tireless altruistic work over a decade and here he is in a video from Michael Barfuss of Rock'n Rollator Show fame. This is Steve's take on a song made famous in the USA at the Woodstock festival in 1969 by Country Joe (McDonald) and the Fish's iconic song entitled "I Feel Like I'm Fixing To Die" aka "The Vietnam Song". Steve had both US and Canadian citizenship and knew well that losing in a conscription "lotto" was actually really the biggest win of his life. Many of you may not have seen this before which is a shame;and it is well worth viewing. When Steve was born the US and Germany were still at war during the latter stages of WW II. Luckily Steve himself was able to live a full life without having to go to war. Shalom.
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