It isn’t every day that a dried crab in a jaunty santa hat looks down at one as one eats. It also is not every day that one gets the chance to make pilgrimage to a place that will, one day, be hallowed ground, fer shur. Let me explain.
I’ve been to some seminal musical experiences, public and private. I was at the Hammersmith Odeon back in ’64 when the Yardbirds opened for the Beatles. I was at the same venue some years later when a mob of Hawaiian-shirted fans were discomforted and confused by a black-clad Ry Cooder. I encountered hot knives at the back of the Maple Leaf Gardens in the company of Bob Marley. And so on and so on. But I missed the night the Harridans brought the house down.
So when The Squeeze and I found ourselves at a loose and hungry end in Arlington, VA, round about lunch time on New Year’s Eve, there was only one place to seek: Jay’s Saloon and Grill. It wasn’t easy, 10th Street being a bit of a complex thing, but eventually we found it. Mecca. The crab watched as we wrapped ourselves around a tasty bowl of chili and a frosted mug of beer, to say nothing of a pile of fries smothered in unguents of a delicious nature. There is something deeply satisfying about simple home cooking wherever one finds it, though I have to admit that while I could happily do lunch at an Italian hostaria every day, it would take arteries of steel to contend with Jay’s fare on a daily basis. Still, a little of what you fancy does you good, not doubt about it.
And how did I know to go there? Neddie told me.
The miracle, looking about the place, was how they ever found space for a band, albeit only a three-piece, and the patrons to goad them on. We asked the bar-person. She seemed a little fazed by the question. “Well, they just set up kind of over here,†she explained with a vague wave of the hand. And we were none the wiser.
I love music, but I am deeply jealous of people who know music. Maybe that’s why I am so enjoying the drubbing that Neddie is busy handing out to know-nothing noodleheads. And I don’t mean Pastafarians.
I try not to do regret, but I wish I had been off the Strand in 1971 for Bob Marley Live at the Lyceum. And I wish I had been at Jay’s in late October 2005. Still, at least I have been at Jay’s.
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Drummer-boy XTCFan told me that a friend who caught the Harridans gig also caught a nice case of the trots from the Calamari that night. I gazed out the windshield, slackjawed and bemused, at the notion that somebody would be so naive as to walk into Jay’s and order the Calamari…
I once watched a friend flounce into the greasiest, most flyblown truck stop in upstate New York — we were on our way to ski in Vermont — and while the rest of us ordered our burgers and chili, he ordered a swordfish steak. I asked him later if it had been just memorably delicious, prepared with love by Chef Luanne (subbing that night for One-Eyed Eddie who’d called in drunk). “No,” was all he said.
Oh, I forgot to tell you to say hi to Jay for me. That is if you could find him. When last I saw him he was enjoying a knee-trembler in the back alley with a tragically drunk patroness of some girth.
Ah Ned, the perils of even knowing people who don’t know how to order appropriately …
My favourite such anecdote concerns an occasion in The Other Cambridge, after a night of too much drink. A mob repaired to some greasy spoon or other — I forget the name of theplace — and were waiting patiently in line for a restorative breakfast. Just as we approached nirvana we heard One-Eyed Eddie, or his locum, sout downstairs to a hapless busboy: “Bring up more grease”.
We nearly did.