Our second “new” venue in a single weekend – that is very rare indeed. Sulingen is “only” 90 minutes from our home. And yet it took 22 years to make our first visit. We are greeted by a lovely theatre with a sold-out house.
A brief story about the origins of this band – or rather the time before it existed:
Around 2002 I began making contact with bootleg collectors. These are unofficial concert recordings – today you would probably just call them phone recordings. Through trading I gradually built up a sizeable collection of live Dire Straits recordings that were unavailable in record shops at the time. Officially, only two live albums by the band existed back then.
Thanks to the large number of recordings from different creative periods of Dire Straits – which differ from one another musically in quite marked ways – I was able to build up a very comprehensive picture. Particularly fascinating for me was studying Mark Knopfler’s unique playing technique in closer detail.
One of my trading partners at the time was Matthias from Paderborn. After we had lost touch for almost two decades, he came to see us today at the concert – which made me very happy.
Over the years there have been occasional reunions with companions from that era. These include Matthias from Regensburg, Reinhard from Braunschweig, and above all my friend Holger from Münster, with whom I am still in contact today.
Looking back: without those trading partners the story of our band might have developed quite differently. A huge thank-you to all of you!