Not So Minor League

The days are getting noticeably longer. Frost is less frequently found on my windshield in the morning. The trees are starting to bloom. Spring is just around the corner, and this man's thoughts turn to, well, baseball.

Perhaps because it has so little history [1], Seattle is fascinated by its past. The Bush Hotel still announces to the world that it is "Safe, Modern"... and "Fireproof." A closed hotel still has the neon signage pronouncing that rooms are for rent for a quarter. One of the main tourist attractions is the "Seattle Underground Tour," a more or less accurate historical tour of the architecture of the early days of Seattle. Going to a baseball game, it is not unusual to see people wearing hats and jackets of the old Seattle Rainiers.

Minor league baseball now is a joke. Teams have no say in who will be playing for them. Players are playing, not to have their team win games, but to get enough attention to be promoted to the next level. The draw is "See tomorrow's stars," not "Come watch our pennant race." This was not always true. Minor league baseball used to be as real as major league baseball. Teams fought pennant races like they were fighting for the World Series. Sure players got promoted to higher level clubs, but when that happened, it was only because the lower team got something they wanted (either a player or cash) out of the deal. During the thirties and forties, more and more leagues stopped being independent. While many leagues stopped being free, one fought to the end. The Pacific Coast League - where the Fightin' Seattle Rainiers (along with the San Francisco Seals, the Oakland Oaks, the Los Angeles Angels, the San Diego Padres and others) played - had other dreams. They wanted to be a third major league. Had the Giants and Dodgers not moved to California in 1957, it easily could have happened. However, it was not to be. The Seattle Rainiers, rather than having a history that the city could draw on for future seasons, soon became a footnote to history.

Until the Seattle Pilots[2] came to town, Seattle, like so many cities, was without real baseball. Sure there was a team playing there, but without the sense that they were playing for wins, no one really cared. It's too bad. Smaller cities would support real baseball. If you promote the games as players who haven't gotten big yet, if you play up the smaller scale environment, the ability to talk to the players, it could easily work. The Seattle Sounders, draw loyal fans to see their A-League soccer matches, even though they aren't in the higher level MLS. Despite not being in the NHL, the Seattle Thunderbirds have their diehard adherents. And in the same way that Seattle united behind the 1939-41 Rainiers, even though their pennants said "PCL Champions" instead of "American League Champions," many of us are getting excited over the local music scene.

In Seattle these days, there is a huge jazz scene going. From what I have been able to discover, there are four main food groups, the Zony Mash food group, the Crack Sabbath food group, the Living Daylights food group, and the Rockin' Teenage Combo food group. I don't know enough about the first two to comment on them (other to say that my friend Toby is Zony Mash's manager), and I've gone on way too much about the Living Daylights in the past. Rockin' Teenage Combo is my new obsession though.

I discovered RTC through the event known as "The Mad Tea Party." Perhaps starting with the Slipping Daylights success, the trend in Seattle music is the pick up game. I first started noticing this when I saw the Living Daylights play during the WTO meetings. The third set was the Daylights with members of the opening band and random musicians who happened to be in the building. People came and left the stage pretty much at random and even did some instrument switching. The next time I saw the Daylights, the same thing happened. The third set of pure improvisation with guests was happening at every show I went to. Finally, I heard about the logical conclusion of this idea- The Mad Tea Party. Happening every Thursday at a Seattle club, the show is completely improvised and features a rotating lineup, with the regulars Jessica (from the Living Daylights), Pauly Ethnic (a hip-hop singer/rapper who knew me from late 80's Dead tour), and - proving that I'm not babbling here - Dara Quinn, the keyboardist from the Rockin' Teenage Combo. With the rap styled singings, the occasional presence of a turntable player, and Dara's top "techno" keyboard, the music can frequently sound rave-esque. During the jam though, Dara might switch to her lower keyboard, Jessica would take a sax solo, and all of a sudden the jam would sound like traditional jazz. I've been calling it "Techno-jazz," a term that would also work well for RTC themselves.

I first saw Rockin' Teenage Combo for real at a show that they played with the Billy Tipton Memorial Saxophone Quartet. [3]. Due to the need to have an emergency replacement for the BTMSQ's drummer, RTC played first. For $8 I wasn't expecting much, but they were actually hosing me at times, notably during "Blues for Ballard" (named after a region of Seattle). Unfortunately, the BTMSQ suffered a bit from following the Combo. My fears of having that many saxophones on stage proved to be unfounded; they sounded nothing like a marching band. The energy was a tad tame though after the amazing show that RTC had just put on. This being Seattle, we had to have a combined set for set three. The Rockin' Billy Tipton Teenage Memorial Saxophone Combo completely blew me away. I'm a sucker for anything that will give me Dara and Jessica on stage, but this was truly amazing. I couldn't sleep that night out of the energy that the show gave me; I quickly vowed that Rockin' Teenage Combo would be seen more frequently.

The point of this column though, as much as I love them, is not to praise RTC or the Mad Tea Party. Rather it's to promote the idea of local scenes in general. One of the things that was bothering me about my life as recently as last year, was that it was too fragmented. Rather than having a life that was keeping me happy most of the time, I alternated periods of boredom with periods of insane amounts of fun. During this year though, I've managed to get the advantages of tour - good music and fun people to hang out with - without having to leave town. The urge to tour hasn't gone away completely (I'm thinking of doing the entire Phish summer tour after all), but it has faded. I can't promise anyone else that they'd have a musical scene as rich as the current Seattle scene, but I'd suggest checking out your local bands. They may not be the major leagues, but even Mark McGwire played in the minors.

Listen to "Level 5" from the new RTC cd 6/4 Getaway

Author's Note: In last month's column I said that Emika was being more of a corruptee than a corrupter. She took serious issue with that statement, pointing out how much Phish she caused to be played in Eastlake. I stand corrected, if only to get her to stop pointing out every time she wears a Phish hat.

[1] My 1928 map of Seattle refers to the town as a "one generation city."

[2] The Seattle Pilots were Seattle's first American League baseball team. They joined the majors in 1969. During the 1970 Spring Training, at the last second the team bolted and moved to Milwaukee to become the Brewers. Seattle filed a lawsuit over that move, resulting in the creation of the Mariners.

[3] The BTMSQ is a 5 piece all female band - 4 saxophones and a drummer. Their namesake is an interesting person. Billy Tipton was a saxophonist in Spokane who started playing in the 1930's. His popularity peaked in the mid-50's with the release of two albums. He married a woman (in fact married many over the years) adopted some kids. It sounds normal enough except for one little fact. Billy's real name was Dorothy. Believing that she wouldn't be able to have a career as a female sax player, she passed as male for the last 50 years of "his" life, with few people the wiser. In case you're wondering the Billy Tipton Memorial Saxophone Quartet don't crossdress on stage. For more information, there is a biography of her.