Thank you, friends.

You know I didn't want to say that this song is bad. It's only at the very very edge of being misunderstood in some way that may cause catastrophies.

Once you are buried in shit (like war) you will appreciate friendship. Yes. A song (or a story, or a movie) showing friendship in front of a background of shit will sell better, just because of the contrast. But beware! There will be people who "understand" that there must be shit before there can be friendship, AND THEY WILL CONCENTRATE ON CREATING SHIT!!! Don't doubt, just look at the evidence. Taking advantage of this is one of the cheapest tricks in politics (Too bad for poor Saddam that his friend Khomeini had to die so soon...)

Edi - there is a rich tradition of german folk music, and there are people doing it, but they are hardly ever noticed. I have to accuse myself of some prejudice: I'm not that interested in this stuff, I'm biased against it because I was once forced to learn all that crap that is commonly known. This is absolutely unfair but also one of the consequences of what I mentioned above.

May I quote Liam Clancy quoted by Pete Hamill in his foreword to "The Irish Songbook, The Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem" (if you are living in Germany you should have access to it: it's the big black one with the green map of Ireland on the title) referring to the situation of irish folk in the 40's: "... The comeallyes, as we called them, were often associated with things they didn't want to remember. ..." I think that this is what german folk is suffering from right now. We would need something lucky like the Clancys & Tommy Makem or that historical encounter of Peggy Seeger and Ewan McColl to recover.

No young, crispy female banjo player going to fall in love with me? But alas, I'm not an expert for german folk, so forget it... ;-)

Love

Joerg