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AM:PM PR Employee to Raise Funds for Bosnian Flood Relief

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Fenbi at Sirens Port Townsend

Fenbi at Sirens in Port Townsend

Several years ago I performed part-time in a pseudo world music band called The Fenbi International Superstars. Willamette Week reporter Nick Jaina caught a Fenbi show at a punk venue on Alberta called The Know in 2010 and wrote:

“Portland’s Fenbi International Superstars have fomented a welcome frenzy. The six-piece borrows its twin loves for gypsy punk and throaty sing-alongs from the likes of Gogol Bordello and Flogging Molly, and like both those groups FIS realizes that the essential element in that witch’s brew is a palpable sense of fun, though a talented fiddle player doesn’t hurt … Fenbi International Superstars hit their marks exactly, executing accordion flourishes, scissor kicks, and back-of-the-throat odes to drunkenness with a fine balance of exactitude and slop.”

fenbi logoIt was during a world music class in college that I first became interested in “gypsy” music. That interest led me to explore the history and people of the Balkans. It was through Bill Carter‘s 5-star memoir “Fools Rush In” that I truly caught the Bosnian bug, and was able to visit the country in 2012 as they commemorated 20-years since the beginning of the 90’s war.

Tonight our band is reuniting for the first time in three years to stumble our way through old songs and to raise money for Bosnian flood relief for a region that has just experienced devastating 100-year floods that have altered and shifted already treacherous land-mine fields and caused devastation across the country, which already experiences 44% unemployment. Here is a recent article about the floods: Click Here

While we can’t promise scissor kicks (or even amplification) we can promise that we’ll have a grand ol’ time at one of our favorite local haunts, the 442 Soccer Bar at 17th and Hawthorne. We’ll perform from 7-8 p.m.

For the Facebook invite: Click on this link

If you are unable to attend, please consider a donation to the Bosnian Red Cross.

 UPDATE: We raised over $600 for Bosnian flood relief efforts, and to help one individual who had lost most of his home.
bosnian building with bullets

I took a photo of this contemporary dwelling in 2012, check out those bullet and grenade marks!

 

Reading Event at AM:PM PR on Thursday – Please Join!

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shards by ismet prcic

Thursday at 7:00 p.m. we’re hosting Ismet Prcic for an evening event at AM:PM PR headquarters. He’s the critically acclaimed author of the the award-winning novel “Shards.” This intimate, fun and conversational discussion will cover his book and recent film success. A film Ismet co-wrote titled “Imperial Dreams” was recently selected for an audience award at the Sundance Film Festival.

If you’d like to join our reading event, please reserve a spot at Eventbrite so we know how many people to expect. Here is the link.

ABOUT SHARDS – Ismet Prcic’s brilliant and provocative debut novel is about a young Bosnian, also named Ismet Prcic, who has fled his war-torn homeland and is now struggling to reconcile his past with his present life in California. He is advised that in order to move forward he must “write everything.” The result is a great rattle bag of memories, confessions, and fictions: sweetly humorous recollections of Ismet’s childhood in Tuzla appear alongside anguished letters to his mother about the challenges of life in this new world. And as Ismet’s foothold in the present falls away, his writings are further complicated by stories from the point of view of another young man—real or imagined—named Mustafa, who joined a troop of elite soldiers and stayed in Bosnia to fight. When Mustafa’s story begins to overshadow Ismet’s New World identity, the reader is charged with piecing together the fragments of a life that has become eerily unrecognizable, even to the one li

ving it. Shards is a thrilling read—a harrowing war story, a stunningly original coming-of-age novel, and a heartbreaking saga of a splintered family. Remarkable for its propulsive energy and stylistic daring, Shards marks the debut of a gloriously gifted writer.

ismet prcic

ABOUT ISMET – Ismet Prcic was born in Tuzla, Bosnia-Herzegovina, in 1977 and immigrated to America in 1996. He holds an MFA from the University of California, Irvine, and was the recipient of a 2010 NEA Award for fiction. He is also a 2011 Sundance Screenwriting Lab fellow and in 2013 he received the Ken Kesey Award for Fiction, presented by Literary Arts. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife.

AM:PM PR Public Relations Professionals Off The Clock: Mike Phillips

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At AM:PM PR we take our work seriously – but ourselves – not so much. When we’re not working, we’re people with personalities, or so we believe. We thought it might be fun to take a step back from our public relations work to share a little more about ourselves: what we’re reading, what we’re listening to, the news we’re following, how we’re preparing to enjoy the summer, and we wouldn’t be using social media properly if we didn’t talk about what we’ve been eating!

This is the first blog in our five part profile series.

Name: Mike Phillips

Currently Reading: Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt by Chris Hedges & Joe Sacco. I became a big fan of both of these individuals after seeing their appearances on Moyers & Co. and Democracy Now! but I haven’t found time to read their actual work. This book allows me to kill two birds with one stone!

 

mike in the columbia gorge

During a recent trip to the gorge

Currently Listening To: Thanks to Pandora, I rediscovered David Bazan from 90’s Seattle-based group “Pedro the Lion.” He’s continuing to produce music, and I’m finding some of it to be quite interesting. This is a particularly great track.

News You Are Following: I’ve been following the so-called Baby Revolution in Bosnia. No, babies aren’t taking to the streets. In a nutshell, babies born after February 2013 have been denied I.D. numbers due to partisan political gridlock, so their parents cannot travel with them outside of Bosnia. This came to a head earlier this month when a Bosnian couple was unable to travel to Germany to seek medical treatment for their infant. The root of the cause is that vapid Bosnian Serb lawmakers from the predominantly Bosnian Serb part of the country (Republika Srpska) are demanding that Bosnian Serbs have separate I.D.’s from their fellow Bosnian and Croatian countrymen. This gridlock, despite being driven from disappointing political partisanship, has inspired a positive and optimistic display of post-war unity in a country that has been politically deadlocked along ethnic divisions for far too many years. Hopefully this is now changing!

Plans for the Summer: Enjoying the bounty of the Pacific Northwest, and planning a trip to Macinac Island later this summer.

Favorite Restaurant Experience In Recent Weeks: The other day I went to Olé Olé off 21st and East Burnside. It was a refreshingly un-pretentious restaurant experience with friendly staff and the most affordable prices in town. Shockingly affordable.

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We invite you to share your stories too! What we need from you:

Name
Currently Reading
Currently Listening To
News You Are Following
Plans for the Summer
Favorite Restaurant Experience In Recent Weeks