WTF's Up With Berbati's?!
It's rainy and piss-cold and our basements will have soggy carpet 'til April BUT that's all the more reason to go out. Indeed, break away from your space heater, leave that ugly blue bathrobe on the floor (it stinks like shit and sheep dog anyway), and hide in the sweaty, dark innards of a good club with some good live music. This week's jam-packed with it: Berbati's Weird Weeds show on Thursday is gonna kill; Fryk Beat's record release party on Friday at Holocene is gonna kill; the Tractor Operator show same day at Valentine's is gonna kill; Grayskul at Doug Fir on Tuesday's gonna kill. It's a week of murder and we can all be accomplices with bloodstained hands. And now the news.
First off, is Berbati's really gonna close? I talked to the venue's former booker, Chantelle Hylton, and she says there's a good chance the family that own the place are going to sell, or turn it into a rental space. Latest word comes from family member/staffer Penelope Papaioannou (AKA Opie), who says, "My dad and uncle started this place 20 years ago, we love it and have/had no intention [of] selling, closing, or turning it into a rental space... and about re-immigrating to our beloved homeland... completely untrue." Stay tuned for updates.
Exodus—movement of the people—news: Bands move to Portland all the time for the music scene, but how often do you hear about them leaving? I guess if you're gonna split, New York's a better place than most, and that's where Jerry A from Poison Idea has gone. His band's final show was at Sabala's last week.
Adam Forkner, you crazy sonofabitch, I salute you. Send me your address and I'll mail you gift baskets of fruit and bottles of Babycham, and singing telegrams because your set at Vision and Hearing knocked me over like a rake to the face. Your new project White Rainbow is outstanding and trippy and made me think of Santana, light shows, and San Francisco in '67—all of which I was too young to catch the first time around, but got a good atavistic echo of it on Saturday night. Next morning, I listened to side one of your old band Yume Bitsu's Golden Vessyl of Sound for three fucking hours and stared out into the gray-ass day lost in mantric drone and haze.
Type: adam@portlandmercury.com
