Cape May Diaries
33- Blast from the past
I never expected to get the urge for rock and roll again – at least not in Cape May.
But like with cigarettes, rock and roll hits you at odd times no matter how long it has been since your last taste.
Since I had spent all of the 1970s and a good portion of the 1980s on the New Jersey club circuit with this no name band or that, the urge came whenever I caught a riff of music I knew.
So when we made our usual stroll through the historic streets of Cape May before making our way back to our motel, the rumble of familiar rock coming from two clubs on Beach Ave immediately made me nostalgic and curious.
We had passed these places before and heard music, but paid little mind to it.
On this night – a rainy Saturday night after a full day rain during the day – I felt the longing more than ever, the back beat hurrying my heart and my step until we stood outside the window of one club.
The band in back blasted away at some newer tune I did not know, as the drummer pounded out the beat. We watched the singer work up a sweat, a trashing around in the corner in imitation of some semi-famous heavy metal star.
We moved on, passing through the turn of the century covered walkway towards Carney’s – where we had dined a few times, though had never ventured through the round hobbit-like doorway into the rock and roll side.
Here, the music grabbed me with tunes straight out of the end of the punk era New York or the later, but equally powerful Seattle’s grunge movement.
A charge went through me and for a moment I stepped back in time to 1980 North Jersey each note flowing through me with energy I could not resist.
Then, we stared through the window and saw the band ripping out several tunes. Like one band I had worked sound for, this band – Love Train – was a three piece with a female lead who belted out Stevie Nicks and Ann Wilson as well as anyone I had heard in years. Although it was her doing Janis Joplin that won me over.
We went in – forking over the five dollar door charge to a guy giving us the eye for not coming in sooner. I guess nobody window shops rock in South Jersey the way they did up north.
The woman singer turned out to be named Heather, and like other members of the band, she came from the area – Aston, PA as it turned out – while the band itself hailed from across the bay in Delaware.
The bass player, John, who came from Mount Laurel, was one of those steady performers whose contribution grows invisible because he and the drummer Dave (from Springfield, PA) work at building a bottom that allows the lead guitarist Rob steal the spotlight.
Love Train was the perfect bar band, belting out high energy yet tasteful music that that transcended generations so that older folks like me could sit and appreciate them without feeling alienated.
We slid into one of the booths out of line with the speakers so that we would not be overwhelmed with volume and could better evaluate the talents.
Three piece bands are tough because they leave no room to hide your mistakes. The bass and drums have to be right on all the time, and the guitarist has to slip in and out of modes with skill, slicing the air with lead then slipping back into rhythm without a clunk.
Rob did paraded through party songs with great agility, although half the audience on the dance floor was too drunk to notice. Numerous drunks stumbled by our table, looking for something we could not figure out.
The waitress arrived early and returned offend, each drink eating up the few bills I had set aside for this unexpected adventure. We did not dance, so we drank – the alcohol doing even more to stir up those old feelings of the elder days, and when the band struck on songs my bands played, I wandered in a haze of nostalgia so thick it choked me more than the waves of cigarette smoke from the bar did.
A times, Heather’s voice (far better than most bar band singers) recalled the women singers I had worked for, and for moments I was transformed to places such as the Chatter Box in Seaside Heights or Dodd’s in Orange.
Being more than a decade older than average aged patron of Carney’s that night, we stayed only for one set, though the next morning, and the performance reverberated in my head along with the hang over.
For me, the experience brought up questions of what exactly historic means.
Punk, glitter, grunge and other so called movements of rock and roll are as historic to my life time as the big band and brass band performances we might have caught in other places of Cape May. Sousa moved me because my grand mother used to listen to 78 records of marching bands in nostalgia for her childhood – she also liked dance music from the flapper era. I expected to connect to Cape May’s music through her experience, hearing her voice, seeing her face, when we eventually made our way to her the Atlantic Brass Band a day later. But what took me off guard was the fact that I would get as choked up as I did hearing Bruce Springsteen or Fleetwood Mac.
These thoughts knotted my thinking the whole ride north a few days later making me realize that Sharon and I had seen the turn of a century here just as the Victorians had, and that I still sometimes craved outmoded musical devices such as long playing records and eight track tapes the way my grandmother had wax cylinders and 78 rpm records.
It is a terrifying thought to see myself as historic, too, to hear time ticking passed me and to find myself in a bar in Cape May as one or the artifacts.