Tuesday, February 27, 2024

Geburtstag: Raini (69)

February 27, 2024, at home

Happy Birthday to my all-time favorite pop singer-songwriter Rainhard Fendrich, who was born in Vienna, Austria, on February 27, 1955. He also plays guitar and piano.

I became a fan of Fendrich in 1983 while visiting many of my Austrian cousins in the western Austrian province of Vorarlberg. (Fendrich released his first album in 1980, so I have been a fan since close to the start of his career.) He is still releasing albums and performing concerts.

I have 49(yes, forty-nine) of his CDs: 48 music CDs and one interview CD. This includes duplicates of two of those CDs. I am missing one of his from several years ago, and he has a new CD being released in a few months.

Fendrich sings all of his songs in the German language, with his earliest albums from the early to mid-1980s sung in the Viennese dialect of German. As he became popular, he wrote his songs using "high" German, which is the "textbook" version of the language.

I also have vinyl record albums from the 1980s, which I purchased on multiple trips to Austria, including at the record store at the airport in Zürich, Switzerland, which is the closest airport to my cousins in western Austria. I have several of his DVDs and videotapes; and two of his autographs, even though I have never met him. I also have a hardcover biography written in German and a 1987 photo calendar.

At one time, I was the only non-European member of his official fan club. I lost that title when a man from Japan joined the club.

I attended a Fendrich concert at the Stadthalle (arena) in Vienna, Austria, on October 30, 1997, with one of my many Austrian cousins, her husband, and more than 16,000 other fans. It was terrific.

Here is a link to a live performance of one of the songs from that 1997 concert tour. It's one of my favorite Fendrich songs: "Über meinen Horizont."

https://youtu.be/zNOLTImfadc?si=AAGdkyrXBsII_oFQ

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