Bernie Gonzalez, who is producing the show though his Latin Rock Inc. company (Salvador Santana will also perform), decided to make it a tribute to the club after hearing Jafari was losing his space he had leased for the last nine years to developers who are expected to put in a medical center.
“He called me in January, and let me know something was up, that he was fighting something with the landlord,” says Gonzalez. “In March, he asked me to fill in a date, and he let me know he was only going to be going to June or July. I thought this would be a good way to let people know, by calling it ‘Last Days of Avalon.’ I actually wanted to do a series of shows, but they knocked the date up a month.”
Indeed, Jafari is tired of battling. “I did fight it,’ says Jafari. “But I can’t afford to spend any more money on lawyers.”
Letting it go means losing all the money that he’s put into improvements and additions, but it also means getting out of what has been a tangle of litigation and mediation.
“It’s really sad that I have to leave everything we created behind,” he says. “It’s been a very, very difficult eight or nine months.”
For almost a decade, the Avalon has been not just the center of nightlife in Santa Clara, but also one of the most important live-music clubs on the South Bay scene. Various promoters regularly book everything there from rock to hip-hop to metal to punk. Just this last year saw acts as varied as OK Go, Mickey Avalon, the late Ronnie Montrose, Andre Nickatina, the Misfits, Exodus, the Lemonheads, Immortal Technique and Portugal. The Man.
.Santa Clara Concert Venue Avalon Set to Close June 30
