Waiting to Surface in Their Rock World : Music: In a North County garage, two young British musicians with ties to well-known performers are doing what they love best--and waiting for their break.

The setting could be an establishing shot in a rock ‘n’ roll documentary. On a residential alley just off a fast-food boulevard in North County stands a weathered, white-washed shack. Inside, two young musicians are paying sweaty dues in pursuit of the elusive grail of a recording contract. Blasts of amplified guitar and drums provide a rude, intermittent counterpoint to the passive hiss of nearby traffic. When they stop playing, everything is quiet.

That quintessentially American scene has its counterparts in a thousand neighborhoods. But this isn’t just another garage band working off youthful energy while imagining themselves before a sea of Bic lighters in a sold-out arena.

Guitarist-vocalist Rue Phillips, 27, is a transplanted Briton whose rock resume includes work with Ozzy Osbourne, Jack Bruce, a former bassist for Cream, and Black Sabbath’s Bill Ward.

London-born drummer Kofi Baker is the 21-year-old son of Ginger Baker, drummer for the legendary ‘60s band, Cream.

From first impressions, the two would seem unlikely collaborators. Phillips, who commutes to rehearsal from his home in Seal Beach, is upbeat, friendly, optimistic. He favors the “classic” ’70s rock of Led Zeppelin, Billy Joel and Elton John, and, accordingly, he tries to write songs that will appeal to the rock mainstream.

By comparison, Baker is serious and withdrawn. The fact that he left a fiancee, family and friends, and steady work in London drumming for Steve Marriott, to toil in this musty, cramped garage with Phillips stirs his natural pessimism; Baker can always find the dark cloud surrounding the silver lining.

As contentious as the team is, it was more so in a former incarnation. A year ago, Phillips and Baker were rehearsing in England as two-thirds of a trio that included Malcolm Bruce, the son of Cream bassist Jack Bruce. Mac Falk, of the Solana Beach-based Falk and Morrow Talent, was their manager, and he had Atlantic Records poised to sign them to a recording contract. But, at the eleventh hour, the teen-age Bruce backed out, citing, among other things, unpreparedness for the big-time spotlight.

“It was just as well that he left,” says Phillips. “We were afraid people would only be interested in us because of the Son-of-Cream angle. And anyway, Malcolm and Ko didn’t get along very well.”

In a re-creation of the hostilities that characterized their fathers’ relationship during Cream’s heyday, the younger Bruce and Baker quarreled constantly. During a particularly rancorous exchange, Kofi Baker took a swing at Malcolm Bruce and missed, instead hitting the wall and shattering a bone in his hand. He balked at inactivity, however, and played several gigs with his hand wrapped in a soft cast. “Still got a scar from that,” says Baker in a barely penetrable Cockney accent as he proffers a fist for inspection.

Months later, Falk salvaged the project and began recording Baker and Phillips as a duo. These days, Falk is concentrating on producing the musicians’ studio demos, leaving the business dealings to the potentially powerful management team of former Atlantic Records vice president John Carter and Chase Williams, who also manages Jack Mack and the Heart Attack. Reportedly, several record companies have expressed interest in the twosome, which calls itself Commonwealth.

Baker likes jazz and African music, and his contributions to the team effort are complex rhythms that would seem to counter Phillips’ striving for accessibility. But one soon learns that the Baker-Phillips polarity is an essential component in the dynamic of their creative relationship.

“I think a certain amount of madness goes with genius, you know?” chirps Phillips in defense of his partner’s contrary tendencies. Phillips is the portrait of the rock ‘n’ roll pirate as he sips coffee in a fast-food emporium around the corner from the garage. With his open waistcoat, American Indian chest ornaments, skin-tight pants and boots, Phillips contrasts not only with the goose-necking locals in their T-shirts and shorts, but also with the shirtless, sweat-pants clad Baker.

“Ko is an amazing player,” he continues, “and we’re always battling because all he cares about is creating intricate rhythms, while I try to keep things fairly straightforward so people will like our songs. I like to think of me and Ko as the positive and negative on a battery. When you put them together they create real sparks. The combination can move mountains.” He smiles conspiratorially. “It’s very powerful.”

The songs on Commonwealth’s demo validate that interest. Phillips is a versatile vocalist and a keen song architect capable of combining melodic line and rock-solid structure into a harmonious whole. The material exhibits those characteristics of invention and idiosyncratic subtlety that appeal to the discriminating musician, but without sacrificing the visceral directness of hard rock. The balance struck between Baker’s complex drumming and Phillips’s pop sense is effective and invigorating.

In its pairing of floating vocal harmonies over a rumbling rhythm track, “Rhymes and Reasons” recalls such early Cream tunes as “I Feel Free.” The suggestion causes Baker to start.

“That’s very strange,” he says. “Me dad never played three over four on any Cream song.” As is his penchant, Kofi Baker has reduced the song’s varied elements to an equation of multiple-meter rhythms. A minute later, he excuses himself and returns to the garage and his beloved drums.

Baker has spent his six weeks in Southern California practicing on his kit and precious little else. He sleeps on the sofa in Falk’s home and plays drums every day from mid-morning until late at night, breaking only for food. He takes most of his meals at Kentucky Fried Chicken because it’s handy and expeditious. That he insists on spending most of his waking hours in this sweatbox is testimony to the single-mindedness of the aspiring virtuoso. There are no windows in the garage, and, with the door closed on a sweltering summer day, the temperature inside can soar above 100 stifling degrees.

One approaches the subject of Baker’s lineage with caution. Ginger Baker walked out on his wife and family when Kofi was 9. The kid thereafter took up the drums on his own initiative and became so good that, as a teen-ager, he was playing the jazz clubs in London with such British stalwarts as saxophonist Dick Heckstall-Smith.

“In the last 15 years, I’ve seen me dad maybe two or three times,” says Baker. “He might have made a general suggestion or two, but otherwise he’s never taught me a thing about drums.” For both personal and professional reasons, then, Kofi is understandably sensitive to misconceptions about the roles that his famous father and Cream have played in his career.

Associations, however, are just as understandably unavoidable. As Cream’s rhythmic helmsman, the elder Baker forever altered the lot of the rock drummer, who traditionally was little more than an anonymous timekeeper. Baker popularized a playing style in which his feet were as active as his hands in creating sophisticated rhythms. His extended solos inspired generations of rock drummers to pursue virtuosity on the instrument.

Kofi’s practice kit resembles his father’s in its incorporation of twin kick drums, but mention of the similarity elicits a mild reproach. “I don’t know what use the second kick drum is,” he says. “It’s a waste, actually; I can do everything with one foot that can be done with two.” With that, Baker launches into a jaw-slackening demonstration of manual and pedal dexterity--during which, at one point, each hand and each foot is playing in a different time-signature. At 21, the boy appears to have surpassed the father’s technical mastery.

“Ko played at a party in L.A. not long ago,” laughs Phillips. “Ginger was there, and, after Ko played I asked him what he thought. He said, “If he wasn’t me own son, I’d step on his goddamn hands!”

Phillips plays a tape of some songs the two had recently recorded during rehearsal. The newer material sounds even more ambitious than the original demo, and in discussing its strengths the duo is soon at odds over various aspects of the arrangement. To an observer, it appears that their quest for a record deal is the duo’s only consistent common ground. But even in that regard, they are motivated by entirely different muses.

“My life’s goal is to write a ‘classic’ song, something that people will listen to for years,” states Phillips.

For someone of his prodigious skills, Baker’s demands are less lofty. “All I need,” he says, “is a soundproof room and me drum kit, and I’d be happy for the rest of me life.”