Smooth Sailing at Java Island : Charles Crews has played with scores of top artists. Now he enjoys performing where people come to listen.

Imagine a music venue with no walking zombies exhaling smoke, no bouncers who hate your mug, no slobbering drunks screaming for “Stairway To Heaven,” no bartenders who resent not being tipped for selling $4 draft beer, and no long lines at the head, where one could waste those few remaining good years. Imagine coffee so intense you’ll be leaving vapor trails like the Enterprise in fourth gear.

Well, imagine Java Island in the mall in Simi Valley, where you can drink coffee made from Arabica beans (the good stuff) from Colombia, Sumatra, Zimbabwe, Guatemala and other locales far more exotic than somewhere between the cleaners and the bank. Imagine watching Charles Crews play guitar in the corner tonight and Friday night.

“The thing I like about this place is that, you’ll notice, there’s no darts, no pool, no televisions strategically located, no booze and no smoke,” Crews said. “There’s not a bunch of dusty furniture, no poetry nights and the coffee is really gourmet. People come here to get away from all that and go to the place where that guy’s playing. I just want to play the guitar--and they let me do it here.”

A Simi resident since 1979, Crews has been on the road for 19 years, playing in over 20 countries with scores of artists such as Burton Cummings, Lacy J. Dalton, Lee Greenwood, Richie Furay, Ann-Margaret, and about every AM-radio artist that today’s kids use to gauge just how lame grandpa is. Crews still hits the road a few times a month on one of those endless glad-to-be-working oldies tours on which his band provides the music for those pop stars of yesteryear, including all 3 million versions of the Coasters.

“My band is the Crews Coalition, which has from 7 to 13 members,” he said. “I do most of the arrangements because I know the songs. I played with a lot of these groups back when they were happening. Most of the groups still have the original lead singers. My favorites are Kathy Young, Chris Montez, Gary Troxel of the Fleetwoods and Tommy Roe.”

*

And according to Crews, their audience is not just a bunch of geezers nodding off to songs from the days when they thought they were cool.

“It’s not just the parents who go to these shows,” he said, “but a lot of kids who are listening to the same stuff their parents did. It’s always been there, but the last few years, the Latin market has really taken off. For example, we did a show at the Olympic Auditorium last month and sold 7,000 tickets and turned away about 3,000 people. The line was down the street.”

Before there was MTV, it was radio that ruined the lives of America’s youth by rotting their impressionable minds with rock ‘n’ roll. Crews suffered the painless conversion quite happily.

“I was a musician before I could play,” he said. “I grew up listening to my mom’s records. ‘Rock Around The Clock’ from ‘Blackboard Jungle’ blew me away. Then I saw the Diamonds sing ‘Little Darlin” on ‘The Ed Sullivan Show,’ which got me into the Everly Brothers. When I first heard the Ventures do ‘Walk Don’t Run’ on the radio in my uncle’s car, I figured if I could do that on a guitar, I’d never want to do anything again.”

After a tour in Vietnam, where “no one cheated at cards,” Crews was in a succession of bands going nowhere fast when his sister hooked him up with Mexican recording artist Esquivel, who had recorded a bunch of albums for RCA. Making more contacts, Crews ended up touring the Caribbean and scuba diving with Ann-Margaret.

Crews has appeared on “Happy Days” with the band that played at Arnold’s, and once survived an eight-day New Year’s Eve celebration in Saudi Arabia. The Middle East and the Fonz were, perhaps, tame compared to a riot at a Tony Orlando & Dawn show in New York.

“Right before the first show aired in 1974, we played at a racetrack in Yonkers, New York, to about 30,000 people,” Crews said. “There was a lot of pushing and shoving, and the police couldn’t keep the people behind the barricades. We left in the middle of a drum solo and hopped into a limousine, leaving the drummer. They stormed the stage, and he got away just in time.”

Crews, whose repertoire approaches endless, keeps it down to a cool 300 or so songs to choose from, and he even takes requests. His surf instrumental set is as cool as Java Heaven’s blended ice and mocha.

“I do all kinds of different stuff, but I’m just a guitar player,” he said. “I don’t sing much. I only sing at gunpoint. I don’t want to sing ‘Margaritaville.’ I don’t want to sing Creedence, Bob Segar or Lynyrd Skynyrd. I’ve done all that stuff.”

Crews uses taped music to back him up. “Maybe that’s kind of a cop-out,” he said, “but with what the places are paying, you can’t afford a band.” Without a band, not many customers show up. “When people don’t support the places, the places don’t pay--it’s a vicious circle,” Crews said. “There’s something like 120,000 people in Simi Valley, and all most of them want to do is sleep.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Details

* WHO: Charles Crews.

* WHEN: Tonight and Friday, 8 p.m.

* WHERE: Java Island, 2931 Cochran St., Simi Valley.

* HOW MUCH: Free.

* CALL: 527-1635.