Good Time Rock ‘N’ Roll

October 23, 2003

Ever since I snagged a copy of “Hot Shit” earlier this year, I’ve been eager to see Quasi bring it live. Unlike their previous efforts, there’s a lot more going on than just Roxichord and drums, and yet there are still only two members of Quasi: super songwriter Sam Coomes and drummer Janet Weiss (Sleater-Kinney). How would our heroes fare? Beats me. That’s why I go to the shows.

The night started with a quartet from Memphis called the Porch Ghouls. Signed by Aerosmith’s Joe Perry, the Porch Ghouls play what they call “Ruckus Music,” which I gather is a strain of garage blues with an emphasis on suitcase drums and maracas. Ryan Valentine is officially the harmonica player, but on most of the songs he was playing maracas like the guy in Ghost World uses nunchucks. Just to make the visual even weirder, he looked sort of like Bacardi from those Bacardi and Cola ads (white man’s afro, big sunglass and a thin, thin moustache). They weren’t that bad, but they weren’t great either. Their set was mostly blues covers (RL Burnside and the like), but when they started playing Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart” my face started twitching uncontrollably. I think it was shortly after that I took a powder.

Next up was Sacramento’s very own Hella. Hella’s one of them math-rock outfits, just guitar and drums, with no vocals. Spencer Seim is a pretty credible guitarist, but I’ll guarantee you not one person is watching him play. If you’ve never seen Zack Hill from Hella play drums, it’s honest to God jawdropping to watch. Hunched over his his drumkit, he hits harder and faster I’ve anyone I’ve ever seen, bashing with the dull ends of his sticks (the tips break and fly off at an alarming rate). His limbs can barely keep out of each other’s way as he pounds away like a rock n roll Animal. While Hella is remarkably proficient, they’re also relentlessly oppressive. Standing for an hour before a wall of guitar noise and hyperspeed drums just wears you down. Hella is phenomenal for a few minutes, but I found myself running to the bar before the set finished.

Sam and Janet came on the stage with little fanfare, taking their time to connect everything. Coomes doesn’t even unbox his keyboard, leaving it in an unfinished wood traveling coffin and setting it up on a precarious stand that rocks as he plays. Weiss naturally sets up her kit to face Coomes, which allows the audience to see all the wry smiles and dirty looks that go back and forth when they’re improvising their breaks.

I was a bit disappointed to see Janet startup a looped music sample and don the clicktrack headphones to play the first song, “Hot Shit,” but things got better once the headphones fell off and the pair freelanced the bridge and the finish. The bizarrely structured “Seal the Deal” followed, with its long instrumental intro going for three minutes before the sweetly sung verse and chorus end before they barely have a chance to begin. It’s backwards and inside out, but somehow the song works perfectly and I can remember every part. They played another of my older favorites, “Under a Cloud,” which started with Janet’s booming drum work and settled into this great summery song about how much Sam hates summer.

The basic dichotomy of happy, poppy melodies and Sam’s smirky, cynical lyrics is Quasi’s bread and butter, but it’s something they’ve been getting away from on their newest material. Coomes has been bringing in more of a bluesy guitar sound and he’s been strapping on the Stratocaster with great regularity. I was surprised at Coomes’s guitar playing, as he effortlessly combined fits of noise with some wonderful blues work. He ripped through “Good Time Rock N Roll” and the politically charged “White Devil’s Dream” with this weird passive-aggressive anger. When Sam plays guitar he’s got this great evil eye look that he’ll occassionally flash. Watch for it.

One of the really great songs on Hot Shit is “Drunken Tears,” where Sam’s playing gets wildly off-kilter, almost jazzy, and it’ll often include some playing with his head or his feet. On the other side, Weiss continues to convince me that she’s probably the best drummer working today (Weiss humbly thinks Hella’s Zach Hill holds that title). She has a knack for coming up for just the right parts for her songs and she plays with a Keith Moonish freedom that I don’t see often enough. In general, her work in Quasi has a lighter feel than her pounding Sleater-Kinney stuff, but she can get down and rock with Quasi just as well. I think the only real disappointment was not hearing “Sunshine Sounds,” arguably the best thing on the new record, a Flaming Lipsy number that simply has too much going on to replicate with just two people. Weiss already plays keyboard, drums and sings simultaneously; maybe she’ll grown an extra limb or two to play “Sunshine Sounds” on the next tour.

For the encore, Quasi brought out opening act Hella to close out the show with a bang. Setting up both drumkits on stage, Quasi and Hella ripped through Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs” for lasted almost twenty minutes. The song proper ended at about 10 minutes but then descended into a mess of screaming and instrument abuse, culminating in Coomes dry humping his keyboard and then crawling off stage on all fours with Hella guitarist Spencer Seim riding Coomes like a pony. After the leads left the stage, Hill let up like he was ready to go home, but Weiss just shook her head and challenged him to keep going. The drummers went on after that for another set, mimicking each other’s riffs and playing follow the leader until they finally finished. It was noisy, messy and incredibly self indulgent at times, but it was also one of the biggest, loudest, craziest finishes I’ve seen in a long time and I had a blast watching Hill and Weiss put on a drum clinic of epic proportions.

Go see Quasi to see Sam violate his instruments. Go see Quasi to see Sam tell Ashcroft to fuck off. Go see Quasi because they drag Hella along and you get to see two of the baddest drummers in all the land go to work. Go see Quasi because I said so.

Merch Notes: If you end up at the Quasi show, buy a copy of “Hot Shit” that includes the “Live Shit” CD. The package itself costs $11 or $12 and the live CD is really phenomenal.

Posted in From Blown Speakers