It was klezmania at Henotic, Feb. 4.
If squeaky voiced comedian Emo Phillips played accordion and rubbed the audience‘s faces in his politics, the result would be Vancouver accordion player Geoff Berner.
Berner opened his show at Henotic, Feb. 4 with a low key political rant and tried to get the audience of approximately 50 dancing. Berner grinned with elf like mischief and is probably the only character who could get away with a smiling after delivering a line about children’s corpses rising through the snow during a song called ‘All the Dead Children Were Worth It’ (The Official Theme Song for the 1010 Vancouver Whistler Olympic Games,)” which is about the B.C. government cutting a program to investigate children’s deaths. He played one of my favourites, ‘Half German Girlfriend’ as well as crowd favourites including ‘Whisky Rabbi,’ ‘King of the Gangsters,’ ‘Song Written in a Romanian Hospital’ plus ‘Clown and Bard.’
Berner and Wayne Adams and Montreal based fiddler Bridgette Dajczer finally got the audience dancing at the end of the show after repeating a more upbeat danceable songs
They were called back for an encore — an upbeat version of Maginot Line.
— by Richard Amery, L.A. Beat Editor
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