Satyricon: Portland's Notorious Music Venue, Fellini's Film, and Petronius' Classic

“Satyricon was a punk rock Disney land, you could go there you could buy drugs, you could have sex, and that’s not all” – Tom Robinson  

Satyricon Revelers

In the documentary, Satyricon- Madness and Glory, Tom Robinson along with many other musicians and music enthusiasts recount the heydays of Portland's most notorious punk venue, Satyricon. They tell the whole history of the venue, all the countless crazy, absurd, and downright scary stories that took place over the twenty-seven years of its operation. What started out as shitty dive bar in Portland's seedy Chinatown neighborhood in 1983, became the most respected and significant music hub on the west coast by the 90's. Unfortunately, the venue closed in 2010, but not without leaving a mark on music history.   

Opening credits of Fellini's Satyrion

In the documentary, the founder, George Touhouliotis reveled that he named the club after Frederico Fellini's Satyricon, a film released in 1968, which Fellini himself characterizes as a "free adaption of the Petronius classic". The reasons why George decided to name his club after the film, however, are not clear in the documentary. So, what about Fellini's film enticed George to name his nightclub after it?

Death is a significant theme that pervades Fellini's film. Fellini's film and Petronius' work share this theme of death, but Fellini seems to have departed from the tone in which Petronius presented death. According to classicist, Erich Segal, Fellini's Satyricon is morbid and joyless. It is a film that constantly whispers memento mori throughout. Joanna Paul, another classicist, recounts various critics' responses to the film: "The Corriere della Sera called Fellini’s Romans “an unhappy race searching desperately to exorcise their fear of death” (September 5, 1969), and for Panorama, “The atmosphere is almost always morbid, claustrophobic, and nocturnal” (September 18, 1969)." Many argue that in Petronius' work, death is presented within a light and comedic context. However some, such as Fellini himself, see that a dismal moral critique of Neronian Rome underpins the comedic nature of the Petronius' text.  

Screen Shot From Fellini's Satyrion

It seems that George thought that Fellini's dim take on Petronius' work was quite fitting for his nightclub. Satyricon was located on the shady corner of NW 6th and Davis. It had blacked out walls, graffiti filled bathrooms, sketchy lighting, and dark hallways. The space sure did embody the same noir mood of Felini's film. Jasin Fell, a cabaret performer, told Willamete Week in an article filled with the various accounts of Satyricon patrons, titled "I think I was there," that some of the performances at the venue "would be the doomiest, we're all gonna commit public suicide sort of events". 

However, George's Satyricon wasn't a place solely for the morbid expression human mortality. As Erika Meyer told Willamete Week, Satyricon was about "poetry, music, theater, writing and art. 'A free stage for all' is what George called it – to which anyone with energy and creativity could contribute." While some of the performances were quite morbid, Jasin tells us that other performances were the happiest and most ridiculous. What is for sure, however, is that Satyricon was a space that centered on performance.  

Likewise, the theme of performance pervades both Fellini's and Petronius' Satyricon. During the Cena Trimalchionis, so many fantastic theatrical events take place, such as the when the ceiling of the dinner room opens up and all kinds of luxuries descend. Shelly Hales, a Petronian scholar, writes that such scenes in the Satyricon transport the characters to a "world beyond normality". Similarly, Joanna Paul writes how the characters in Fellini's film are always performing for each other, often pretending to be something they are not. We see this in the marriage scene between Enculpio, the bride, and Lica and in the scene where Enculpio takes on the role of Theseus and fights the man sporting the Minotaur head. Paul claims that these performances and they way in which Fellini frames them seem to blur the line between reality and fantasy. In both the film and the text, reality is thrown away and supplanted with illusions and fantasy.

As the Satyricon patrons tell us in Madness and Glory, their favorite nightclub was a place to escape reality- patrons would leave their responsibilities, anxieties, and normal lives at the door.  Performances at the Satyricon brought music fanatics into a new reality. Bands that often played at the Satyricon, such as SMEGMA and 20 Foot Man, surely transported their audiences in to a fantasy world.

Fellini's Commentary

Although George Touhouliotis says he named his nightclub only after Fellini's Film, I can not help to believe that he was also influenced directly by Petronius' classic. In the documentary, he holds up Fellini's commentary on the film, which goes fairly in depth not only into Fellini's film, but also into Petronius' text. If only he would have spoke more about it! Regardless of whether Petronius directly influence George, the spirit of Petronian indulgence, sexual deviance, and drunken revelry surely prospered in the dark depths of Portland's Satyricon.  

Here are a few testaments from Satyricon patrons that recall all to well scenes from Petronius' classic:

"One night a friend of mine began hitting on this girl who was with two Marines who were in town on vacation. The two guys began to beat up my friend, so I broke a bottle thinking it would scare them, but fuck, they're Marines. The next thing I know they were on me and we all started fighting. Luckily the bartenders at Satyricon kicked them out and not us. It wouldn't happen that way in many places—let the drunk idiot music freaks stay and kick out the Marines."- Willy Vlautin (Willamete Week)

"Eulmpous yelled back: "are you threatening us?" and at the same time he hit the man hard in the face with the flat of his hand. Reckless from so much drinking with the guests, the fellow hurled an earthwear pot at Eumolpus' head, split his forehead in mid-shout, and flung himself out of the room. Eumolpus was not standing for this insult; he snatched up wooden candlestick, followed him as he made off and avenged his pride. (Exclamat Eumolpus: "Etiam minaris?"; simulque os hominis palma excussissima pulsat. Ille tot hospitum potionibus liber urceolum fictilem in Eumolpi caput iaculatus est, soluitque clamantis frontem, et de cella se proripuit, Eumolpus contumeliae impatiens rapit ligneum candelabrum, sequiturque abeuntem, et creberrimis ictibus supercilium suum vindicat.)-Petronius, Satyricon Section 95; trans. Sullivan.

More Drunken Revelry

“I didn't wanna be outdone by any of the porno that was behind me. SO, I picked up the guitar – by this point in the night there was like three strings left, it's going through like a small, shitty Peavey amp – and, so, I get up on stage and start playing some song and was like, "This isn't feeling good", so, I just take off my pants and play with my balls on the chair. I played three songs naked in front of mushroomed folks. That was my first experience at that club. I'd been in town a week.”- Fernando Viciconete (Willame Week)

"Lichas, who knew me best, as though he too had vocal testimony, ran to me and without considering my hands or face, but immediately stretching out an investigating hand to my private parts, he said: ‘how are you Encolupius?’" (Lichas, qui me optime noverat, tanquam et ipse vocem audisset, accurrit et nec manus nec faciem meam consideravit, sed continuo ad inguina mea luminibus deflexis movit officiosam manum, et: ‘Salve, inquit Encolpi’) - Petronius, Satyricon Section 105; trans. Sullivan

Martin T. Dinter, a classist, wrote a paper titled, Neronian (literary) “Renaissance”. He writes on how Nero’s love for the arts facilitated such an artistic renaissance during his reign, on how the works of Lucan, Seneca, and Petronius came to be. Just as during Nero’s emperorship, the reign of Portland’s Satyricon facilitated a renaissance in Portland’s artistic world. Satyricon gave Portlanders’ a place to express themselves and create some truly great art.

Futher Readings:

Segal, E. (1971). Arbitrary Satyricon: Petronius & Fellini. Diacritics, 1(1), 54-57.

Dinter, M. (2013). A companion to the Neronian age (Blackwell companions to the ancient world). Chichester, West Sussex, U.K.: Wiley-Blackwell.

Paul, J. (2009). Fellini-Satyricon: Petronius and Film. In: Prag, Jonathan R. W. and Repath, Ian D. eds. Petronius: A Handbook. Oxford, UK: Wiley - Blackwell, pp. 198–217.

Sullivan, J., & Seneca, Lucius Annaeus. (1986). The Satyricon (Rev. ed., Penguin classics). Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England ; New York, N.Y., U.S.A.: Penguin Books.
Hales, S. (2009). Freedmen's Cribs. In Petronius (eds J. Prag and I. Repath). 

Willamete Week Satyricon Article (2010): https://www.wweek.com/portland/article-12560-i-think-i-was-there.html