March 12 2003

FURNISHED WITH PLUSH lounge chairs and lit with a sultry saffron glow, Tongue and Groove is one of those places where you can feel glam without actually being glam. Still, on Feb. 22, when the East Bay's Crown City Rockers were scheduled to perform with the Berkeley cumbia group O-Maya on an otherwise-bleak Saturday night, the dusky ambience seemed overly swank for the underground likes of the bands and more apropos of a crowd that on any other night would be sipping mojitos in a Jack London Square salsa club.

Amid the leather jackets and camisoles, I was a veritable Eliza Doolittle, wearing my favorite tattersall shirt and lugging my skateboard. But I sighed with relief on spotting what looked like a fellow ne'er-do-well in a sideways corduroy cap. It was Woodstock, Crown City Rockers' track master and backup MC. Crown City – like freelance writers – aren't particularly high profile, nor do they have a promotional axe to grind. They're the kind of musicians you might spot at the Mission District's Skylark bar on a Wednesday night, playing chess or vying for contact time with the turntables. Since releasing their last album, One, under their former name, Mission:, they've attracted a local following of college-radio jocks and neohippies.

It's always tempting to compare an instrumental hip-hop group to the Roots, who recently secured their "highbrow" status when drummer ?uestlove was interviewed by Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air. And granted, the plucky bass solos and chill electro piano on Crown City's "Contagious" could be dubbed Phrenology-esque. But other songs – such as the new "Rock It," which features guest MCs Brown and Think 00-19 – have a decidedly just-folksy vibe. The Rockers' effortless charm makes them seem a lot younger than they actually are (at least two are already raising families). They wear hoodies and baggy jeans, and at shows, front person Raashan tosses CDs to the crowd, and this evening Kat grabbed a beer with one hand while playing piano glissades with the other.

However, on that particular night, the crowd seemed generally lethargic. Maybe we were all fighting the same cold or brooding over that sordid and ungainly tempest called U.S. foreign policy. Crown City's most infectious tunes – "It's The," which opens with a leisurely version of Bach's Invention No. 8 in F Major, and the a cappella '80s throwback "I Love Bein' a B-Boy" – failed to really work the audience. During a protracted pause, Raashan struck his most impeccable b-boy pose and audibly hissed to a cameraperson, "Take my picture ... now."

But hey, what's a little gaffe now and then? Crown City's drummer Max livened the mood with a spastic drum solo – kind of a kick versus high-hat flurry that knocked us back into consciousness. Bassist Headnodic followed suit, thumping a whimsical eighth-note shuffle. Though half a cigarette too long, the band's instrumental solos elicited more head bobbing and finger snapping than their rap-driven numbers – a fact I might attribute to Tongue and Groove's jazz-fashionista audience.

In the end, Crown City Rockers projected a whimsical air that reflects their peripatetic background. Woodstock and Raashan started out in southern California, met classically trained pianist Kat, Headnodic, and Max at Boston's Berkelee School of Music, and hightailed it, Kerouac-style, back to the West Coast.