Iznogood, nephew and scored to play
I think the first time I met DJ Iznogood or Yiannis Georgoulias on console was at Follie in Kifisias. Then at Thirio in Psiri, at Bar Guru Bar in Theatro Square and a host of other venues – the last of which he played in Tarzan, in Agioi Asomatos Square. Not long ago, he opened a small bar, 20 square metres, with his music-loving nephew, Nikos, in Agia Zoni, Kipseli. Iznogood & nephew has an antique aura that grabs you from the outside, once you see the Hilton-like monasteries. Then you see the bar with the bunnies, the loft that looks like the hall of a house from the late 1960s and early 1970s, the books on the shelves, the Bauhaus on the frames and logs. In his style, different aspects of jazz, African, European, psychedelic, soundrack, spidati, acoustic.
One is the registry player. From what he told me, they will be looking forward to a second place. There is currently an auxiliary CD player, they play CDs written in vinyl. DJ for thirty years, play vinyl for twenty. He has 6,000 records in his disc rack. They can’t be missing from the store. Like him, my nephew, who has the same love, plays music and serves. “Electronic sound has nothing to do with the color of the vinyl. It’s the smell of it, the touch, the place you sit and read it, you look at the pictures, the wrappers, the inner wrappers. It’s the process of opening it up and cleaning it up. People mess around, and it works well,” he notes. It’s hard to find the tracks they play on Shazam, they make you ask. “The Shepherd who is alone will look at them, come and talk to you. You will meet a conversation that can go elsewhere,” he says. He adds that some people don’t know what a record player is, but there are also young people who believe in it or want to learn. As he sees it, the vinyl is a link, an intermediary link, a third person between himself and the person sitting down to drink a drink.
The turntable and bar are one
Vassilis Tsombanidis based the Finos Audiophile Bar concept in Agia Paraskevi on the warmth of analog audio, where you’ll see him put drinks on one side and record on the other. He worked from a young age in bars and then participated in the management of food and beverages in restaurants and hotels inside and outside Athens. But he also had a special love for music. His father collected records from a young age and expanded the family collection by opening it up to other genres. You can sit at the bar, try a Negroni, a flight, the most sophisticated New York minuet he does—now he’s preparing a new menu inspired by the ’70s and ’80s—but, if you pick up his conversation, he’ll proudly tell you about his quad speakers upgraded with vintage material—” Like you could hear it in a ’70s house bought new” – Handcrafted Geometric Harmony speakers, center tweeter, Hi-Fi record player and special bass reflector panels cut through the noise. You can listen to different things in this little bar: sometimes funk picks from Senegal in the 70s, sometimes jazz, sometimes new wave or Greek neopop. Even the opera they listened to at home.
Often, while he’s making drinks, he’ll leave a record he loves to play along. Other times you will make more changes. “Everyone comes with their own aura and mood. I try to balance this out in some way during the evening. The music should lead to a common feeling,” he says. It seems to work. Groups don’t come to have a drink and leave. They come and sit for a while under a huge poster of The Divorce, a black and white film from ’45, drawn by his grandfather, who had made huge posters for the great cinemas of Athens – it was the last film in Europe to make. A living from this profession.
On the road to vinyl
There are other bars that play vinyl regularly. Beatniks Road bar in Exarchia, Tarzan near Thisios Electric Station, which we mentioned above, and more. and many others, who have had turntable nights here and there. It’s kind of fashionable – you’ll see records going around opening a clothing store – but it’s one of the good ones. People who are looking for analog music have the ability to move according to their tastes. If some people fall into the stage and then go through it, if some people come to write a story on social media with a record player spinning instead of sitting down to listen to what the record player plays, then at the end of the day nothing will happen. That’s how it goes with them. There will also be those who are going off work, who the next day will be at a record store – they’re back too – whether they’ve been doing it for a while or haven’t done it before. In addition to getting into Spotify, you can put in a disc to play here and there. Because as much music as you have, in any form, and as much music as you learn, it will only benefit you.
“Total alcohol fanatic. Coffee junkie. Amateur twitter evangelist. Wannabe zombie enthusiast.”
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