There is a place in Los Angeles where a band plays swing like delusion. Their instruments squat on a wide half-foot pillar overlooking a linoleum stade where skirted women and high-waisted men wait for heaven. But so far no pearly gates, just a bass line that floats around like stink in the breeze. The players are on break and such a pause may tempt a wider view where suspicious downstairs club-goers lean in, gawking, cat eyes scanning the bar where clipped moustaches filter the irony out of old fashions. But this is a place decidedly against the wider view, and stilettos. This is a room on edge: kitten heels and striped suspenders have little to do when the air is quiet. A hair pin drops smack nothing on inchless carpet and no fewer than twelve aimless men take a knee in the search. Eyes darting around ankles and stomped fingers do no good; they picked the wrong signal. But not Ms. Lost Pin. She clocks the shift, that settling bass line, grabs a partner as the tallest pair of sunglasses you’ve ever seen teases at Yamaha keys. Sticks hit drum heads and Ms. L.P. clicks herself and her beau into beat just as our de facto bandleader, a Midge Williams revival with an errant hair of blue streak, steps up to a crackly mike, motions to those men still knees bent on the floor to please get up, and opens her mouth to sing from somewhere far off in time. Back when moods were sentimental not big. When a flirtation could start and end in eight notes…
