Over the past dozen years, the barely noticeable yet renowned club, its storefront painted a stark, mysterious black, has developed an impressive list of musical guests, including the likes of Elliott Smith, Fiona Apple, Aimee Mann, Flight of the Conchords, and of course, Jon Brion. Musicians were drawn to the venue not only by the irresistible charm of Irish owner Mark Flanagan but by its artist-friendly attitude. All proceeds from the door would go to the artist performing, and the staff would enforce a strict no-chatter, no-cell phone policy during the show. Largo itself would only profit from food and liquor sales, overpriced commodities at the venue of which audiences are forced to by a minimum. However, watching an artist perform in the tiny red room with its impeccable attention to sonic detail is an incomparable musical experience. For the last five years since I discovered Largo as a wee lad, I gladly paid my fifteen bucks for what was practically a glorified Hungry Man dinner served on a ceramic plate in order to watch and listen to some of my favorite musicians perform on what was my favorite stage.

I vividly remember the first time I stepped inside Largo. I was sixteen-years-old and had recently discovered the wonder that is Jon Brion after buying the Punch Drunk Love soundtrack. "Here We Go," the lone JB pop song featured on the soundtrack, was in constant rotation, and I eventually bought his brilliant self-released LP Meaningless after returning some terrible David Lynch album for credit at Amoeba. I refused to believe that one man could simultaneously be an incredible score composer, pop songwriter, producer, guitarist, bassist, pianist, and drummer (yes, I left out vocalist). I even more vehemently refused to believe that all of these aspects of his musicianship could be represented in one show. My obsession with Brion had reached a boiling point by that summer, and I was counting down the days until I would get my driver's license so I could finally venture down to this mysterious hole-in-the-wall on Fairfax.

I brought along twenty bucks, my dad's pickup truck, and a good friend that fateful Friday night, the first in which I had my driver's license. We parked a ridiculous distance from the club and wore out our feet walking to the club at around 6 P.M. Little did we know that we would have to conserve what stamina we had in our teenaged feet, as Jon Brion didn't hit the stage until 10:30. After being swindled out of ten bucks for bottled water from the waitress who demanded that we buy something, anything, this exhausting and costly little expedition seemed to have no chance of being remotely worth the trouble we'd gone through. But once JB sat at the piano, unleashing his virtuosity on the keys and working in bits of calypso, ragtime, and neo-classical seamlessly into his improvised piece, we knew we'd be back, time and time again.

So let us both mourn and celebrate the loss of this great place for music. Hotel Café will never be anything more than a pale shadow (directed towards middle-aged people who buy their music at Starbucks and take musical recommendations from Zach Braff seriously, no less) of this trendsetting venue, no less; the original Largo is truly irreplaceable. As heartbreaking as it is that Largo will irreversibly changed when it moves to the Coronet Theatre, its intimacy threatened by the (still small but comparably huge) 280-seat theatre, we must remember how remarkable it is that such a place was able to survive more than a decade by selling frozen dinners and beer for only four hours on each of the six days of the week it hosted events. As we bid farewell to Largo, we can be proud that we took part in something that was incredibly special, arguably the only venue in Los Angeles that was truly all about the music.