Sense Of The Sixties -- As Beatniks Launch New Sound, Retro Dance Bands Pop Up To Take Their Place

The beat goes on.

It's Friday night at the Bay Club on Pier 70, long a reliable spot for young people to meet and dance. The band, all in black, is trying to work up the crowd, which is still in a watch-and-see mode. The dance floor is empty but the tables are full, the bar is crowded and a steady stream is coming in the door. The chatter is almost loud enough to drown out the music.

The band shifts gear from a ballad to a rocker, the Beatles' "Eight Days a Week." One couple starts to dance, then another. In a minute, the place is jumpin'. The temperature rises, along with the decibel level.

The weekend has officially begun.

It's a ritual that's been playing out since rock began more than three decades ago. But something's different tonight. It's the music. The band isn't playing anything from the current Top 40, or the latest dance hits, or even what Seattle is now famous for, grunge.

A great era of rock has swung around again. The Sixties are back.

While a film of the Doors plays in the background, the band, called the Beatniks, blasts out classics including the Rolling Stones' "Get Off Of My Cloud," the Searchers' "Needles and Pins," Steppenwolf's "Magic Carpet Ride," even Peter, Paul & Mary's "Puff the Magic Dragon" and Janis Joplin's "Me and Bobby McGee."

I feel a tug on my arm. "C'mere," says Scott Daggatt, Bay Club owner, over the din. "I want to show you something."

He leads me through the maze of bodies filling up the place, past the bouncer at the door checking IDs, and out into the chilly night air on the pier. With a sweep of his arm, he says, "Look at that."

A line of people stretches from the Bay Club's door to halfway down the pier.

"WHAT ARE YOU PEOPLE WAITING FOR?" he yells.

"THE BEATNIKS!" they yell back, followed by whistles, cheers and laughter. Daggatt smiles. "It'll be like this all night," he says.

Club owners always smile when the Beatniks are around. For almost two years now, the group has been the top draw in dance clubs throughout the Puget Sound area. It is the highest-paid club band here, pulling down $3,000 to up to $7,000 a night. Whenever the Beatniks play, club owners know they're going to have a crowd.

Another major pick-up spot, the legendary Parker's on Aurora, recently had its biggest Saturday night in more than a decade when the Beatniks played there.

"It's phenomenal," says Skip Horn, who, along with family members who have owned it since the 1940s, recently sold the club. But Horn has stayed on as a consultant. "I guess it's just that great songs never die. Or maybe it's just the best music for dancing that ever was."

The Beatniks have been so successful, and have built such a large and loyal following, that the band is setting out to create an identity. Last week it released its first CD, a six-song EP called "Moo," on the small, local Swift Boy label. The tunes are tight, well-played and full of life, with a kind of power-pop intensity that marks many of the covers the band is famous for.

To establish its new image as a band playing original music, the group is laying low for a month, accepting no gigs from the usual mainstream clubs it can pack at will. From now on, it will concentrate on places that do not book cover bands at all, such cutting-edge spots as the Off Ramp and RKCNDY. The Beatniks are having a record-release party for "Moo" Feb. 6 at the top such club, the Crocodile Cafe, where the little stage is used to the likes of Nirvana, Mudhoney, Alice in Chains and Screaming Trees.

While the Beatniks set out on the next phase of their career, other bands are popping up to take their place. Magic Bus is taking up the slack, with a tight, colorful show that includes strobe lights, liquid projections and go-go dancers in cages.

Another band called Decade has a lead singer that does a credible Jim Morrison imitation, complete with leather outfit, as well as a wide repertoire of 1960s and '70s underground hits.

Lynn Sorensen, lead singer of Magic Bus, admits that the Beatniks' success led him to start his band last summer.

"I went out and looked at the market," he says, "and the Beatniks were really happening. I thought it would be fun. I've always wanted an excuse to play a lot of those songs."

Classically trained on violin, he does a show-stopping version of the Who's "Baba O'Reilly," which has a folk-influenced fiddle part, at nearly every Magic Bus show. Guitarist Joe Shikany, a veteran of such bands as Bighorn and the Allies - and the only one in the group old enough to remember the band's songs from when they were new - is one of the best players locally and puts on quite a show. Jeff Mills' talent at re-creating the various keyboard sounds of the '60s is remarkable.

Theatrics are emphasized in the fast-moving set, with plenty of action and humor to go along with the bright lights and go-go dancers. The girls, in short, fringed dresses, are Shikany's girlfriend, Vicki Mills, and drummer Steve Hanna's wife, Shauna.

At a recent gig at Waldo's on the Eastside, Magic Bus drew people to the dance floor - including a guy in a wheelchair - with songs ranging from Jefferson Airplane's "Somebody to Love" to Donovan's "Mellow Yellow," Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze" and the long, album version of the Chambers Brothers' "Time Has Come Today," complete with cowbell.

"We get people from their late 20s up to their late 40s," says Sorensen. "They go ecstatic over it. They haven't heard a band do `In A Gadda Da Vida' for years. It's like flashback time."

When the band played at the University of Washington in the fall, for a crowd made up mostly of dormies, he introduced the Iron Butterfly tune by saying, "You've probably never heard this song. . . . But your daddy has!"

When the band plays for such young crowds, he says, people often come up afterward and compliment the band on its material.

"The kids don't get it quite as much," he says. "We've done some frat gigs and the kids come up to us and say, `You got a lot of your own songs.' For them, a lot of these tunes don't quite register."

Magic Bus even dresses the part for its nostalgia act, scrounging second-hand stores for garish, wide-collared shirts, beaded vests, tie-dyed anything and wide bell-bottoms.

"I had to go digging and digging and I finally found some (bell-bottoms) in the U District," Sorensen says. "The guy had 'em marked down to like six bucks because he couldn't sell 'em. He said he didn't think he'd ever get rid of them. Now everybody wants bell-bottoms. I think we started a trend."

Starting a retro-Sixties trend was never an aim for the Beatniks. It happened by accident.

During an interview, three of the four members (the fourth was sick at home) come off as typical young rock musicians - enthusiastic, energetic, excited about the future, and fully aware of the spell rock stars can cast over members of the opposite sex.

The three - all good-looking enough to qualify for a Sassy magazine "Cute Band Alert" - admit the group has a large and loyal female following, but decline to label them "groupies." They recount tales of women lifting their tops to bare their breasts, a form of female flashing more common to arena metal shows than nightclub cover bands.

But mostly the guys are serious, and eager to emphasize the new direction the band is taking with writing songs.

"We never had any intent of being a '60s and '70s cover band," explains curly-haired lead singer Bobby Beaulieu. "We played music we liked. It just so happened that we all liked the same thing."

The four, all from Gig Harbor, met in high school. They played in various rock groups as students and after graduating.

They became the Beatniks and started playing vintage rock purely by chance. Drummer Mike Staehli's boss then needed a band to play at his daughter's wedding. Staehli rounded up his friends Beaulieu, guitarist Mark Nelson and bassist Rick Lovrovich. With no time to practice, they decided to play songs they already knew - the classics they heard on oldies radio stations or knew from their parents' record collections. The name the Beatniks seemed to fit, so that's what they called themselves.

"We all drank a lot that night," Nelson confesses, as the others break out laughing. "But we realized there was a chemistry there."

They were such a hit at the wedding, they immediately got other offers to play. Gig followed gig, until the next thing they knew, they were in demand. They moved to Seattle and got a manager.

"We just wanted to make a few bucks and not have to work at McDonald's or a shoe store or something," Beaulieu explains. "All we ever wanted was to be a real band."

Their repertoire evolved naturally. It grew from requests they got at shows. The Beatniks are known for being able to play - or at least attempt to play - nearly any song people ask for.

"We've never had to learn any of the songs we play," Beaulieu says. "We never practice. We just know the songs from hearing them. It was just fun and that's all it's supposed to be. We never had a master plan."

But their objective now is to be signed to a major record label. Their aim is to use "Moo" as an entree into the business. About 100 copies were sent to recording company executives Wednesday.

The band members know they're bypassing a sure thing - profitable bookings as a cover band - for the long shot of a recording career. And they welcome it.

"We could do Vegas and tour and make $70,000 a year each, easily," Staehli says. "But it's not money, it's integrity. It's feeling good about what you do."

And what would they like to be doing a year from now? They all are quiet for a moment.

"It doesn't matter," Beaulieu finally says. "We could all be in a one-room apartment somewhere, writing songs by ourselves. But at least we'd be doing what we've always wanted to do."