Crabburgers in Paradise

Benjamin Jaffe
Aug 31, 2018 · 4 min read
In a prison of funk

The trees in Cape Cod are all short. Little guys, wallpapering the roads that wind around in the gloom. I was eventually told this was caused by excessive logging that left Massachussetts with a bald lil cape by the 1920s. The little trees were human consciousness, slowly growing back, clearly still in infancy. They also made me feel tall, and I appreciated that.

It hadn’t been sunny in a few days but I didn’t care much and I checked into a roadside motel that had an actual metal key and one of those plastic tags hanging off with the room number on it. I like being given a “key of consequence”. The speck of responsibility imposes that I take better care of the room. Its not just some slutty rental car that I go pedal to metal in the second I hit the highway.

I ditched my suitcase in my respectable room and went down to the club, The Beachcomber. The Beachcomber or, “ COH-MA” ( like if Will Hunting fell unconscious for an extended period) is a shackmansion perched on a bluff just above the ocean, 50 yards at most from the water. I walked in past a floor to ceiling ‘Comber merch booth and into the main dining/rumpus room looking for a place to load my amplifier in. It was overrun. The ratio about 2 to 5 to 12, sun-flushed surf bunnies to weenie little kids to meaty grey-haired flip flop enthusiasts. There was no stage, or at least thats what I thought until I noticed the speakers nestled in among dining tables covered in oyster baskets and fries. When they told me that they would clear the tables out at 9, set up, soundcheck Donavon and get me on by 10, I laughed and immediately released any hope that this show would be my vengeance for Nantucket. No, what would commence over the next two nights was more like the slow, methodical beating of James Bond (me) lashed to a chair in some dank cellar (the Beachcomber) by a gang of wild-eyed goons (the din created by 300 people confined and inebriated and disinterested).

At this point I should cop to a few things. One, I had it coming. To walk into any bar or rowdy performance environment armed only with a set of delicate weirdo folkish songs and a high pitched voice is like bringing a daffodil into a boxing ring. “Can’t we just talk this out?”

There’s no escaping the self however, and I ain’t selling nothing but whats in the store. Besides I was starting to get off a little bit on the vaguely confrontational exchange I was having with these crowds. This speaks Im sure to some of my difficulty maintaining intimate relationships.

Admittedly, its important not to paint these experiences in one shade. There were kind people in that room. Wonderful eyes in the crowd that locked with mine, that engaged with the stories I was telling. That came up to me after the show and wouldn’t stop touching my face, threatening me with drunken sexuality. Telling me “ God it must be tough to come on with everybody already hating you!” It was like looking into one of the James Bond-beaters faces, and seeing recognition, remorse. Myself?

I talked with Matt Grundy before the show. Matt is a dazzling extremist, who had just done 1000 pushups and plays a double necked bass/guitar, the Claymore of stage weaponry. ( See brilliant douchebag Mel Gibson’s movie “Braveheart” for reference). Matt comforted me with his own stories of onstage defeat and threw the gauntlet down too, telling me about when Rayland Baxter, the now successful indie songmeister, opened for Donavon and powerfully chastised a rowdy crowd into an eventual standing ovation. With some of that wind in my sails I took a limp Baxteresque swing at the crowd but was repelled quickly back by decisive “don’t give a fuckery”. It was fine. There is a powerful entitlement that a riveting performer MUST feel, the right to be on the stage and to the attention of whoever isn’t. Like if your patronus is yourself. It can be elusive.

All that said, when Donavon and Co came out, they destroyed at the Beachcomber. The crowd and the band fell in line and went skipping off together, out the proverbial door and danced freely on the beaches of their communal mind. When G. Love emerged from the wing and played a 20 minute harmonica solo there were hysterics.

When it was over I packed up my merch, extracting myself from a kindly woman who was trying equally to climb in my mouth and not piss herself, and drove back to my room. I basked in the calm of 1am Lethal Weapon 2, rebuilding.

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