The Comeback Inn Faces a Sound Barrier : Courts: An irate neighbor gets a restraining order to limit noise levels at the club. The club has been silent since.

It was just one decibel too many for Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa.

Tagawa, an actor who lives with his wife and child next to the Comeback Inn on West Washington Boulevard in Venice, had complained for more than three years to the police about what he considered excessively loud music coming from the club. As a result of a court order, Saturday night the music stopped at the Comeback Inn. Now the club may be closed.

“Everyday, I’m losing a lot of money,” said owner Will Raabe Tuesday. “By Sunday I’ll make a decision whether to stay open or close.” His club is open for meals, but there’s no jazz at the Comeback Inn.

The turn-it-down order for the music came from members of the LAPD’s Pacific Division, who were armed with a restraining order issued by the Santa Monica Superior Court that limited the Comeback’s operating sound level to 5 decibels over ambient sound (approximately 34db).

Tagawa had called the police to complain about a soundcheck by guitarist Ciro Hurtado’s band. According to the court order, Tagawa was told that if music from the Comeback could be heard in his home--a converted garage that is adjacent to the establishment--the inn was in violation of the law.

According to both Tagawa and Raabe, who has owned the Comeback since 1979, a policeman arrived on the scene at 7:30 p.m. The officer told Raabe that if the musicians, who had by then stopped playing, resumed at 9:30 p.m., when their performance was scheduled to begin, he would have to impound their instruments and arrest Raabe.

“Naturally we complied, and since that night, there has been no music at the Comeback Inn,” said Raabe.

The dispute between Tagawa and Raabe began in November, 1986, when Tagawa and his wife, artist Sally Tagawa, moved into the apartment at the rear of the lot adjacent to the Comeback. Sally Tagawa, nee Phillips, has owned the property, which includes a neighborhood market/liquor store as well as the converted gararge/apartment, since 1979.

Tagawa and his wife were often disturbed by what they felt was excessively loud music from the Comeback, and they spoke to Raabe about their concerns. “At first the discussions were friendly,” Tagawa said. “We’d call and say it was too loud, and they’d turn it down for a while and then it’d go back up. The musicians were just playing their music without the control of the owner.”

Tagawa put up double insulation, but it didn’t help, he said. He asked Raabe to do the same, and though Raabe promised several times to do so, he never did. One of the reasons he didn’t, Raabe said, was that for the past two years, he has been operating the Inn with no lease, and he didn’t want “to make a major investment in the property without one.”

One step Raabe made to mediate the matter was to cut off his room’s music at midnight, rather than 1:45 a.m. But that wasn’t enough, said Tagawa, who became increasingly disturbed by the inn’s music after the birth of his son, Calen, two years ago. Circumstances escalated between November, 1989, and February, 1990, when Tagawa said he made 50 calls to the LAPD to complain about loud music.

Frustrated at his inability to resolve the situation, Tagawa at least twice turned up his home stereo so that it drowned out performers in the Comeback. “I played rap music,” Tagawa said, laughing. On three other occasions, he parked his car close to Raabe’s bedroom window near dawn and turned up his car stereo full blast. “I wanted (Raabe) to know what it felt like to be kept awake by loud music,” Tagawa said.

According to Raabe, Tagawa’s complaining calls to the Comeback became more frequent and more aggressive. “He threatened to jump over the wall and tear out our equipment,” Raabe said. “I was concerned for my customers, and my musicians. I didn’t want violence.”

Raabe felt he had no other alternative than to seek an injunction against Tagawa’s harassment, and on March 9, the two appeared before Judge Leslie Light in Santa Monica Superior Court. But Light’s ruling didn’t help Raabe: The judge did order Tagawa to cease playing music into the Comeback or into Raabe’s bedroom windows, but also ordered that Raabe hold the music in his club to 5db over ambient sound level.

“That’s totally unrealistic,” Raabe said. “I couldn’t even have an acoustic piano playing at that level.”

But he did continue to have music after the restraining order was handed down, and when a negotiation session between Raabe and Tagawa on March 23, with a mediator present, failed again to resolve the issue, Tagawa felt compelled to call the police to enforce the order when the music once again disturbed him.

Tagawa said he has no wish to close down the Comeback. “(My actions) have been a simple request for responsibility for the kind of business it is,” he said.

Raabe says he’s sympathetic to the Tagawas’ plight, “but they can’t expect a businessman to invest in a property in which he does not have a lease,” he said.

Raabe says he will decide in the next few days what to do. He said he could sign a new lease and attempt to find financing to remodel the inn, beginning with new insulation on the wall that abuts Tagawas’ apartment. Or he could appeal the restraining order, or close the Comeback.

“If it becomes too overwhelming, I may just have to close my doors,” said Raabe.

The club has been open since 1973 and has featured such name jazz artists as Charlie Haden, Milcho Leviev, Buddy Collette and has helped expose such groups as Arco Iris, Strunz and Farah and Huaycaltia.