POP MUSIC : Unknowns Get on Track at Cozy Hillcrest Cafe

The San Diego pop-music community could use more people like Georgia Bankston. Last October, the 42-year-old former Alaska pipeline worker pooled her resources and opened Uptown Sound in Hillcrest, a combination record store and coffeehouse that provides local pop fans with a badly needed alternative to the Top 40 bar scene.

Every Friday, Saturday and Sunday night, there’s live music in the Soundtrax Cafe, which occupies the back half of the store. The spotlight is on up-and-coming home-grown talent outside of the nightclub mainstream. Regular performers include piano man Bill Harris, jazz piano-vocal duo Turiya and Joe Garrison, and singer-guitarist Jill Warren, a thin, peroxide-blonde in torn jeans who last Saturday night delivered a compelling two-hour set of folk and country standards.

Every other Wednesday is “Open Mike Night,” with a dozen or so amateurs commanding the stage between 8 and 10 p.m., for a song or two apiece.

“I have jazz, blues, rock, folk and country musicians,” Bankston said. “A lot of people who come to me are interested in playing here because they can’t get exposure anywhere else, and because it’s a totally different environment from the bars.

“They’re not into the Top 40, and many of them are unknown, but if you come here on a number of weekends, you’ll find there’s a lot of talent out there, just waiting to be discovered.”

In the four months that Uptown Sound has been open, Bankston said, concert attendance has steadily increased--to the point where two weeks ago, the Soundtrax Cafe’s seating capacity was more than doubled, to 90.

Delaney Bramlett will be back at the Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach on Saturday night, a little more than a month after his first appearance there in several years.

Like John Mayall, Bramlett is best remembered for the company he keeps--or, rather, the company he kept. In 1969, he and his wife, Bonnie Lynn, toured as Delaney and Bonnie and Friends. The “friends” included several L.A. studio players and occasionally had such celebrated sidemen as Eric Clapton, George Harrison, Dave Mason, Leon Russell, Rita Coolidge and Duane Allman.

A year later, Clapton left, and most of the non-celebrity “friends” were hired away by Russell to tour with Joe Cocker’s Mad Dogs and Englishmen. Delaney and Bonnie made four more albums together--fusing gospel, country, funk and rock--and scored two hits in 1971, “Never Ending Song of Love” and the Mason-penned “Only You Know and I Know.”

The husband-and-wife duo broke up in 1973, the same year their marriage dissolved; Delaney Bramlett subsequently released several albums but never quite found his way back into the spotlight.

Several half-hearted comeback attempts later, Mississippi native Bramlett finally seems serious: he’s recently formed a 10-piece band, Warhorse, and there’s a possibility he’ll be opening for Fleetwood Mac on their upcoming world tour.

LINER NOTES: Eric Clapton will be making his first San Diego appearance in nearly a decade May 3, at the Sports Arena. Tickets will go on sale in late March. . . .

Tickets go on sale today at 10 a.m. for the L.A. Guns’ March 10 concert at Iguanas in Tijuana, and for Sam Kinison’s Feb. 24 double-header at the Bacchanal in Kearny Mesa. . . .

Phil Quinn, executive vice president and general manager of the San Diego Sports Arena, is in Palm Springs this week, attending the 1990 Performance magazine summit. The annual parley brings together booking agents, managers, concert promoters, record-company representatives and facility operators from around the country. This year, the arena is sponsoring the closing night “Readers Poll Awards Dinner.” . . .

Best concert bets for the coming week: Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show with the Premieres, tonight at Mr. D’s in El Cajon; the Dynatones, tonight at the Belly Up Tavern; Laurie Anderson, Thursday at Symphony Hall downtown; the Sugarcubes with the Primitives, Thursday at the California Theater downtown; the Desert Rose Band with Travis Tritt, Thursday at the Bacchanal; the Kentucky Headhunters with the Savery Brothers, Thursday at the Belly Up Tavern; Melissa Etheridge with Webb Wilder, Friday at the California Theater; Soundgarden with Voi Vod, Friday at Iguanas; Tower of Power, Saturday at the Bacchanal; El Vez, Saturday at the Spirit in Bay Park; the Fuzztones, Saturday at Rio’s in Loma Portal; and Deborah Harry, Feb. 20 at Symphony Hall.