Largo gets new lease on life at the old Coronet
JON BRION'S last night at Largo was epos. The singer-songwriter's brawl Fridays at the tiny Fairfax Boulevard night club had been draft capacity crowds for more than a decade, but his Whitethorn 2 show was historic: his final turn ahead possessor Sign Flanagan closed up browse to move to a bigger outer space, the Coronet Theater on La Cienega Avenue, which is due to open up June 2 with a performance by Aimee Mann.
Brion had a bigger-than-usual parade of guest stars, people like E (Mark Oliver Everett) from the Eels, wHO was pressed into playing drums and singing Prince's "Raspberry Beret" with Brion, Heartbreakers keyboardist Benmont Tench and bassist Sebastian Saul Steinberg. And in that location was an extra silliness to the typical anything-can-happen humor.
"I'm not sad at totally," said Flanagan, 42, while introducing Brion.
For more than a 10, Largo had nurtured his favorite singer-songwriters and comedians -- people world Health Organization as well happen to be more or less of L.A.'s more character, intelligent and critically acclaimed artists. Flanagan demanded that listeners persist silence during sets, which kept the focal point on the performers. He refused to pimp to Hollywood or music-business crowds: You mightiness notice famous, powerful faces in the interview, only Largo was for people world Health Organization wanted to see the prove, not just be seen.
Certainly, the club didn't consume a proper salad dressing room or still a tell restroom for the artists. But for a lot of performers, Largo had a vibe to touch the finest concert halls. And so, during Brion's last Fairfax depict, the unknown future seemed both exciting and unnerving.
"At the new Largo," E observed wryly, "everyone's gonna be like, 'You shoulda been at the old Largo.' "
Old school possessor
IN A city where so much live music is booked by big companies such as Endure Nation and Goldenvoice, Flanagan has thrived as a hands-on owner-operator, dealing directly with artists. In 1996, he remodeled and reopened the night club at 432 N. Fairfax Ave., which he'd earlier started with deuce partners in 1992. The musical fare included such topical anesthetic legends as Brion, Rickie Lee Jones, the tardily Elliott David Roland Smith and Grant-Lee Phillips, plus touring favorites such as Robyn Alfred Hitchcock and Neil Finn.
Flanagan too supported such acts of the Apostles as singer-songwriter John Lackland Mayer and Jack Black's comic-rock duette Tenacious D when they were distillery start come out of the closet, and his healthy appreciation for comedy meant that performers including Apostle Paul F. Tompkins, Patton Oswalt, Sarah Silverman, Greg Proops and Zach Galifianakis were frequently on the docket.
"Comedians want to turn over with musicians, and frailty versa," says Proops, whose "Greg Proops New World chat Show" debuts June 14 at Flanagan's new joint, dubbed Largo at the Coronet. "That's been the about fantastic constituent of Largo -- interfering with each other's worlds."
Like nigh artists, Proops appreciates Flanagan's famous insistence on absolute quiet during performances. "But I take heed that, at the fresh stead, we'll actually be able to regard the crowd," he says with deadpan dashing hopes. "It was incredibly, impenetrably darkness in that [old] room. I adored that. I never saw the audience for 10 years."
Largo at the Coronet power or power non be as night, only it volition feel familiar. "It's release to throw what I truly want, which is everyone facing the stage and no distractions," says the Belfast-born Flanagan.
The 60-year-old Coronet has a 280-seat house with a huge microscope stage and a smaller, 65-seat space called the Little Room, in summation to an up the stairs studio that functions as Brion's artist's retreat. The area was erstwhile used as a dance rehearsal/teaching space by the likes of Betty Grable and Roland Dupree.
Flanagan merged the names to preserve the theater's bequest patch making it his own. The edifice is painted Largo burgundy, and the club's old sign hangs in the theater's brick-paved court. The Largo ginmill is in the Little Way. More important, the calendar is filled with Largo-associated names: Brion, Tompkins, Silverman, Oswalt, Colin Hay, Nellie McKay and others.
Higher split and increasingly restrictive parking helped force Flanagan away from Fairfax, only he'd been searching for a "bigger, better" place for days. "What I think of by better is, I don't want to military unit people to eat and drink," he says. "I simply require to do shows."
Largo at the Coronet will proffer refreshments -- from beer and wine to coffee and gelato -- merely the notorious Fairfax dinner seating is done. "Lawfully, I had to serve more solid food than drinks, and it had to be a eating place," Flanagan says. He's happy to be unloosen of those rules, and he expects that spell just the ticket prices volition be higher than cross charges at the old blank space, prices will be comparable, and sometimes frown, without the cost of nutrient and drunkenness.
"The other thing is, we've been turn people away for so long today that it's genuinely frustrating," he says. For representative, shows by Freshly Sjaelland couple and HBO sensations Flight of the Conchords, Silverman or Brion routinely attracted twice as many people as the 120-capacity room could hold.
Coronet's charm
THE Coronet was perfect tense, only getting it wasn't easy. Afterward learning last October that the fresh possessor planned to rupture it land, Flanagan began a campaign of genial torment that became a lengthy negotiation with the possessor of the venue, Hersel Saeidy. By mid-March, he'd secured a 15-year engage and acquired 80 spaces in an adjacent parking garage.
The theater's wildly varied creative legacy made it look care an most magical find. It launched with the 1947 public premier of Bertolt Brecht's play " Galileo Galilei," starring Charles Laughton. A shoot from that eRA shows a court crowd containing Charlie Chaplin, Jimmy Dugald Stewart and Angela Lansbury. Later, celluloid archivist Raymond Rohauer screened Buster Keaton movies there.
