New Year 1996

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Billy Jenkins And The Fun Horns

East And West Now Wear The Same Vest

Ahead of their major forthcoming UK tour Billy Jenkins writes about the Fun Horns:
I would never have found the Fun Horns.
South East London boy am I.
Birthed and based in Bromley, then North to the Thames at Greenwich
and now I'm between the two in Lewisham SE13.
We're talking midget.
VOGC co-ordinator Oliver is much more worldly.
He speaks different languages.
I have said that I am ashamed to talk when abroad - I have no right
to speak if I cannot converse in the host tongue.
It was the inspired invitation from Kulturaustausch Wolf-Peter Stiftel
and deft bilingual negotiations with Our Man at Eccentric that found
me in the Big Fight boxing ring constructed at the Wabe Centre in
East Berlin on 22nd October 1992.
Facing me for the first time was Fun Horn saxophonist Volker Schlott.
We didn't talk much then (though of course all the Fun Horns speak
English).
He just wiped the floor with me.
We don't talk much now.
We meet periodically on some far-flung European concert platform -
the Mayfest '94 CD being a perfect example. What you hear, apart from
the briefest concert 'how do's' and soundcheck, are the first sounds
we'd made together since our previous meeting eight months earlier.
All I need to do is point four fingers at them, and they're off.
I can't tell you of the pleasure and emotions the sound of Volker,
Thomas, Rainer and Jörg gives me - I could only try and explain in
English. If you don't mind let's stick to the language of music.
Or as a Fun Horn puts it at the start of Mayfest '94 -
'Hello, Ladies, Gentlesmen, Boys, Girls and so. Have a good time
- see you!'

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