Questions and Contemplations

A DUNESDAY SCENARIO FOR JOHN EASDALE

Whoa, flashback: John Easdale of Dramarama headlines the bill at the annual Dunesday event this Saturday at Donovan’s Reef.

By TOM CHESEK

Less than a year ago, the mood around Donovan’s Reef had a touch of doomsday about it.

The landmark Sea Bright oceanside bar one of the last remaining sources for old-school Shore kicks in a region increasingly defined by champagne wishes and caviar dreams had announced that the summer of 2007 was to be its last stand on the sand. Two of the three owners expressed a desire to put the property’s no-nonsense building, generous parking lot and private beach up for sale, and the club even hosted a “farewell forever” bash for its generations of loyal patrons.

As reported here on redbankgreen over the past several months, the rip-currents of the real estate market apparently provided a stay of execution for the place where summer never seems to go out of style. The upshot? Co-owner Bob Philips and his partners Chris Bowler and Robert Carducci declared that Donovan’s would live again for summer 2008 with “the only piece of [oceanfront] property open 365 days a year between Sandy Hook and Cape May” resuming a full seven-days-a-week schedule that climaxes this Saturday with the annual day-long celebration that is Dunesday.

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Waiting for Dunesday: the “last beach bar in Monmouth County” is the setting for an all cialis.de-day charity bash on July 19.

Coordinated by and featuring the band that’s surely most identified with Donovan’s over the past decade toastmaster general Brian Kirk and his illustrious Jirks Dunesday brings together nine acts for an indoor/outdoor, noon-til-closing, come-as-you-are crash-course in everything that’s made the Reef something like a regional treasure. More than just a display of Jersey Shore hedonism well, okay, there is that to it the event is also a fundraiser for the United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation, with all proceeds from the $15 door charge dedicated to the Pittsburgh-based UMDF and its ongoing research and education efforts.

In addition to Kirk and the Jirks who are slated to play both under the sun as well as inside up to closing time the lineup for the day includes party presidentes Soul Project, barband faves The Mike Dalton Band, blues axe-ace Matt O’Ree, and the return of one of the most fervently followed of New Jersey’s prodigal popstars “alternative” auteur John Easdale of Dramarama fame. (The full schedule appears here).

Born on the mean streets of Wayne in the early 80s, Dramarama is a band with a backstory that could only be scratched out by the dying, demented millennial music industry. A band that’s popular on the Jersey Shore, fondly regarded in France, godlike in Los Angeles, and somewhere south of Von LMO on everyone else’s radar screen. A band that found itself catapulted into hugeness by the legendary LA disc jockey Rodney Bingenheimer, whose advocacy of singles like “Last Cigarette” and the frantic anthem of obsession “Anything, Anything” (a record that sounded like everyone in the band was racing each other to the runout groove) dictated a permanent relocation to Southern California for Easdale and company.

Other milestones would follow, including TV appearances, movie connections, major label distribution, and a one-album residency by ex-Blondie drummer Clem Burke.

Meanwhile, the old

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