|
The Dubliners:
Frankfurt, Germany -
18 November 2006
The German tour start sure was, to quote
Eddie Chochran, Somethin' Else.
A look a-there, here they come
There comes that band again
When they start to play man, wow, that's somethin' else
(Slightly adapted, we admit)
Mind you, Eamonn Campbell simply would
pick up his guitar and strum any rock'n'roll tune with ease! Talking about
Eamonn, he left a lasting impression on the crowd as usual, and Julia
Ehrenfried applauded his instrumental virtuosity and explained his big
impact with "his great guitar playing, good mood and vivacity".
We received so many emails and comments
we could not put these all in full online. Also, the guestbook got a few
new entries, of which we'd like to quote Heike Ingenhoven:
"Never before, something touched my soul like this... Your music was indescribable. After the show, I went backstage and it was a very special moment for me talking to John. I'm a flutist of my own (classical flute in an opera orchestra) and I have heard many good musicians, brilliant soloists and great
flutists. But none of them made my crying. John did. Thank you!"
Heike Becker is striking a similar note
when she told us:
"The first Dubliners concert in Germany couldn’t have been better! What a brilliant start in Frankfurt!
The so called “Alte Oper” (old opera) is a wonderful building with a fantastic concert room good acoustic, and a very nice room backstage (especially compared to – I have grudgingly to admit - the horrible backstage at the Meistersingerhalle in Nürnberg where I’m from.) The audience was the usual mix from 8 to 80 and I met a lot of people from Bavaria due to the fact that Frankfurt was the nearest concert to the south of Germany and hey, we really miss you down in the south and hope there’ll be some concerts for us next
year!!"
Peter Sonnabend and Barbara
Wichers-Sonnabend freely admit that they were on cloud number nine, partly
owing to the fact that they got backstage as well where they had a nice
long chat with the lads:
 "On their first gig with Patsy Watchorn at Frankfurt, the
'Alte Opas in der Alten Oper' (=old granddads in the Old Opera house;
quote by Sean Cannon) showed yet another marvellous performance of well over 2 hours.
The band was greeted by a hugely exited crowd, chorusing to classics such as "The Spanish Lady", "All For Me Grog", "Whiskey In The Jar" and of course the final "Molly Malone".
Naturally, some extra training for the audience will be required to finally get the clapping right on
"Finnegan's Wake"."
Heike Becker lovingly describes more
about the show and the aftermath and we gladly quote more of her report:
 "So the firework of music started just when the last one in the audience found his seat. Very unusual for a German audience we were hand-clapping from the first song on (because it was impossible not to) and also soon found out that the concert hall has a wooden floor which
"is made" for foot-stamping. Even better for the already good mood where some girls from Ireland/England(?) who obviously came over with the same plane as some of the Dubs and where cheering and celebrating with so much fun, that it was infectious. Patsy made us sing along and showed us some perfect step-dance. In fact it looks like he has been with the Dubliners for years and years and not that he’s in Frankfurt for the first time. Eamon made fun with the people on the balconies above him, John made us hold our breath with his awesome fiddle and flute playing, Sean started to welcome the audience in English, but soon found back to his perfect German and said in the end:
"Ich hoffe die ALTEN OPAS kommen nächstes Jahr wieder in die ALTE
OPER". His voice and especially his version of "Cill Chais" is always one of my personal highlights, but it is very difficult to
single out your personal favourites from all those tunes. And Barney was and is of course the absolute favourite of the audience. Do I have to mention that they had standing ovations in the end?
 But it wasn’t over when it was over. I tried to get one of the new DVDs and that was a hard job. At least half of the audience must have bought one. Then I was looking for backstage and
again, I was not the only one. Sean was already downstairs signing everything possible and impossible, but security didn’t want to let us go upstairs to the others. After half an hour patiently waiting for the others to come down (what didn’t happen) they finally
 opened the doors - thanks again to Sean because he refused
to go upstairs without his fans and stayed with us till they gave in. Nevertheless a big THANK YOU to the security – even at 2 o’clock in the morning no one was in a hurry or wanted us to get out!
[...] I think it was around 4 o’clock when finally one after one disappeared in the directions of their beds. So I finish with the highest expression of joy over a wonderful evening a Franconian has: “Had scho bassd” (= das war schon ganz in
Ordnung = 'twas alright)!!"
Photographs by Barbara
Wichers-Sonnabend, except third picture which is by Julia Ehrenfried, and
last picture which is by Heike & Martin Ingenhoven; see
more pics from Frankfurt in our dubs2006 gallery! We'd like to thank all
those super nice people for supplying us with info and photos so we can
share these with countless fans worldwide!
|
