This Is One Musician Who Won’t Miss Drowsy Maggie’s

Not everyone is shedding tears over the demise of Drowsy Maggie’s. Well-established local performer-songwriter Deborah Liv Johnson claims she is only one of several musicians whose misgivings about owner Marcus Robbins’ stage-side manner have left them with mixed feelings about the closing of the San Diego eatery and acoustic-music venue.

“The club definitely provided a service to the community by giving musicians a place to play,” Johnson said last week, “but I had some real problems with the way (Robbins) treated musicians. In the beginning, we all were happy to contribute and to support his efforts by playing for tip money and a free meal, and Marcus himself would toss a $20 bill in the tip jar to help out. But eventually he stopped feeding the musicians and stopped putting money in the jar.”

Robbins, perhaps surprisingly, understands and even concurs with Johnson on some of her complaints but rejects the others.

Johnson says Robbins took unfair advantage of the fact that, since the closure of the Old Time Cafe in Leucadia, Drowsy Maggie’s was about the only place in town where an acoustic musician could get a gig. Eventually, she refused to play there.

“Some of the larger groups did very well on just tip money,” she said, “because they would attract a large crowd and create a lot of excitement and people would be generous. But it wasn’t a good place for a solo performer.”

Johnson found it especially irksome that little effort was made to create an atmosphere more conducive to the presentation of acoustic music. “The Old Time Cafe was my idea of a listening room,” she said. The owners “encouraged the kind of attentiveness that enabled someone singing softer acoustic stuff to be heard. Plus, you got a percentage of the door, so that if you drew well, you were fairly compensated.”

By comparison, Johnson said, Drowsy Maggie’s placed a higher priority on its cappuccino machine than on performers. “They had it close enough to the stage area so that right in the middle of a quiet tune you’d be interrupted by all this racket,” she said. “I never understood why he didn’t move that thing to the back of the club. It was just a very noisy place for this kind of music.”

In a separate conversation, Robbins addressed the allegations. “Those complaints are not necessarily invalid,” he said, “but they must be taken in the context of everything else that was going on. It wouldn’t be possible to run a business like this without some inconveniences. I suppose I could have isolated the cappuccino machine in another part of the club, but in the 10-year history of Drowsy Maggie’s, that problem is like a grain of sand on a dune a thousand feet high.”

One thing Robbins wouldn’t sit still for was the assertion that he wasn’t supportive of musicians.

“I refute that 100%. If I took advantage of musicians, then why was my roster (of performers) always full, and why were there always more wanting to play there?

“As for Deborah Liv, I think she’s a fantastic performer, but on the few occasions when she played here, it was her own following that was difficult to control. I’d ask them to be quiet because Deborah is the type of singer who needs a listening environment, but they wouldn’t keep the noise down. I was very disappointed with San Diego audiences in general,” Robbins added. “That’s one reason why I wanted out of the business.”

YOUNG AGAIN: I didn’t mention politics in last week’s piece about Neil Young, but after seeing his April 23 concert at the San Diego Sports Arena, an addendum is in order.

Young’s segment of the show opened when a stage hand laboriously dragged an oversized prop microphone onstage. Aftercoaxing it upright to the strains of Jimi Hendrix’s famous mondo-guitaro, anti-war version of the “Star Spangled Banner,” the “actor” tied a large yellow ribbon on it. A half-roar of approval from those in the audience who apparently didn’t register the incompatibility of this support-the-troops gesture and the huge peace symbol that served as a stage backdrop.

Then, early in his set, Young and his band, Crazy Horse, did a metal-ish version of Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind,” which elicited an uncertain chorus of cheers and befuddled silence consistent with the mixed signals coming from the stage. At the end of a protracted, dirge-like rendition of this “social protest” anthem-prayer, a spotlight focused on the yellow ribbon, while a strategically positioned fan made it flutter dramatically.

Wha?

Out in the lobby, there were Young-endorsed Greenpeace tables at which patrons could buy bumper stickers and pins and sign up to receive materials from the environmental organization. I asked the guy manning one of the tables how he reconciled Young’s pro-environment stance with his having twice voted for Ronald Reagan. “In 1980, Reagan talked about taking the government out of the hands of politicians and giving it back to the people, which is something Neil strongly believes in,” he said. “Why he voted for him again in 1984 is anybody’s guess.”

My guess: Politically speaking, Neil Young (whose 1970 song “Ohio” is one of the most potent anti-oppression, anti-militarist statements) is these days a very, very confused man.

GRACE NOTES: New additions to the Del Mar Fair lineup include these 7:30 p.m. shows on the Grandstand Stage: Tower of Power, June 22; the Whispers, June 26; Vince Gill, July 1, and John Denver, July 2. Al Hirt will perform at 2 p.m. June 27. Restless Heart’s appearance has been moved from July 5 to July 3. Meanwhile, these new acts have been confirmed for the Infield Stage series, in which artists perform shows at 2 and 5 p.m. on their respective days: Gary Puckett, June 18 (opening day); the Nomads, June 19, and Joe Stampley, July 5-7. . . .

Tickets are on sale at all TicketMaster locations for AC/DC’s June 7 show at the San Diego Sports Arena.

Three of MC Hammer’s proteges (B Angie B, Special Generation and One Cause One Effect) will be at Bogey’s tonight.

CRITIC’S CHOICE: DEMYSTIFYING THE BLUE OYSTER CULT

Blue Oyster Cult is the kind of mondo-bizarro band that accrues a certain venerableness the longer it plods along. In the early ‘70s, it was easy either to embrace or to dismiss BOC’s semi-satirical, pre-Spinal Tap twist on heavy metal skulduggery, which incorporated dark themes and netherworldly symbolism. White-clad guitarist Don (Buck Dharma) Roeser, meanwhile, gave the band instrumental credibility that prevented it from sinking into its own miasma of loopy occultism.

Everything changed for Blue Oyster Cult when the Roeser-penned 1976 single “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” scaled the Top 40 charts, especially because its angelic harmonies and arpeggiated chords were more reminiscent of The Byrds than of Black Sabbath or Deep Purple. While that song remains BOC’s most serious--and most anomalous--flirt with immortality, the ‘80s re-emergence of metal as a viable commodity has kept the band’s stock respectable if not exactly blue-chip.

With only minor personnel changes in the ensuing years, BOC trudges onward as a standard-bearer of competent, ambiguous hard rock. The group plays at Park Place on Thursday night, with Copperhead opening the 9 p.m. show.