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Dirge overkill

Music Features

Here comes the neighborhood

Rick Berlin, long-time Boston out-rock ringleader and informal JP cultural historian, likewise regards the club with something close to awe. “Pretty much any show you want to put on there, you can. My favorite was an all-Russian night. Some band from Moscow had a gig there — God knows how they got it — and the place was packed. Ninety-nine percent Russians. They knew every song and all the lyrics, got trashed, and sang and kissed each other in that intense Russian way.”

Berlin also happened to work next door to the club for nearly 20 years, as a waiter at Doyle’s, the bar with a long-storied feud with the Balernas (reported, among other places, in the August 2005 Boston magazine). Since the brothers moved there in 1987 (when the Orange Line still rattled over Washington Street), they’ve had various run-ins with the rival bar over noise problems, parking-lot usage, and alleged physical confrontations between employees. Some have even alleged that Doyle’s was behind all those doors slamming in the face of the expansion plans.

But you’ll have to ask Google if you want to hear anything else about the past. According to the Balernas, things have settled down since Gerry Burke Jr. took over Doyle’s for his family in 2005, and they’ve been looking toward the future ever since.

“He’s a nice kid,” says Jay. “I used to go over there and ask for singles and later find out the owners were telling employees, ‘Watch out for that asshole.’ That kind of thing. But now we get along fine.”

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