Dim light, low tables and chairs, cigarette and vermouth, a piano, a guitar, music from the New Wave, but also Hatzidakis, Theodorakis, Spanos, Loizos and Moutsis. Concert and sensual atmosphere. Mystagogy.
This was the case in the boutiques that appeared in Athens in the area of Plaka, with their main characteristic, the small and warm spaces and the direct communication between the artists and the audience. The same thing happened in Larissa... Esperides, Romantika, Petit Pale, Take Five, Cafe Santan, Studio 53, "Lampyrides" room in the Dionysion music hall, The Club... during the post-colonial era.
Almost half a century later, the buat is reviving in Larissa from tonight and every Saturday night at Sonata piano bar on the hill of the Fortress. The musical style and ethos of the boites seems to be returning to this space that seems ideal, with its Lilliputian stage and immediacy with the audience, placed within breathing distance of the patrons...
Nostalgia or a need for musical expression?
Maybe both…
But for the band "Familiar" the concept "Familiar in boite style" it is something much more. Because "Familiar" has something completely special and authentic. It is about a whole family, the Patsianopoulos family, who are the owners of Sonata piano bar and they have one more thing in common: music... The pater familias Thanasis Patsianopoulos, his wife and mother Efrosyne, and their two sons Evangelos and Sotiris play music and they sing and decided to take us on a journey with a program reminiscent of the old boites. With a repertoire that includes songs from the new wave to the latest hits, under the sounds of piano, guitar, percussion and brass, they promise unforgettable nights like those of the old boots....
"If you find the common element that unites a hundred people, then you can address a hundred thousand people. That's what the booty taught me. Look for the common element" Dionysis Savvopoulos once said...
The "Familiars" have found their own common element; and it's not just one, there are more, just like what we Larissaians will find with them.
Because the bouets were one of the most healthy, lively and direct manifestations of Greek song as a way of entertainment and communication. There were places of acquaintance and meeting; not just simple music venues, entertainment and entertainment centers. And this is what we need so much again today...
The rebirth of the buit climate, not as a memorial and obituary but as a modern proposal with a point of view and reason for existence, is a possibility that gives us joy and optimism. If anything, the spontaneity and simplicity of musical "boxes" are missing elements from our song, and from his nightly wanderings in bars and clubs, on big dance floors and music stages. Spreading their aesthetics to a wider audience is a bet that can and should be won. It is enough to find the meeting points with the current era. And for the "Familiar" the points exist through the family coexistence of two generations, the great passion and the vision for the future.
After all, a new vision for the future had to be presented by the boites when they started appearing in Plaka in Athens in the 60s. Let's not forget that boites were hives of emotion and were associated with the New Wave, which is a translation of the nouvelle vauge film movement of the same name, which prevailed in France during the 1950s and was transferred to the Greek music scene by Yiannis Spanos. Spanos was the one who also established the name Bouit as soon as he returned from Paris. The specific word comes from the French boîte which means box.
So let's open the "box" of Sonata every Saturday night and with the "Familiar" let's travel through time, from the past to the present, through the freshness and familiarity of the family music group!