This Week in the Mercury
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Live Review Quasi and Bugskull at TBA's The Works, Saturday, September 12
Posted by Ned Lannamann on Sun, Sep 13, 2009 at 7:47 PM
For the final night of the Works, a pair of Portland rock bands played, one well known, the other nearly lost to memory. Quasi opened the evening with a thundering set of old songs and new, proving once and for all that they are an infinitely better band once Sam Coomes gets off the synthesized piano and straps on a guitar. Fortunately, he brandished the axe for the last two-thirds of the set, even briefly throwing himself into the crowd at one point. Bassist Joanna Bolme appeared to be suffering a foot injury—sprained ankle or something—so she sat on a stool for the duration of the set. Prior to cracking jokes about heroin (ha! Heroin is hilarious!), Sam said they were unused to playing under such bright lights, but that he hoped it looked good from the audience. And it really did.
Bugskull followed, playing meandering, stoner rock that breezily sailed without causing too many ripples. Their music was at all times pleasantly hypnotic, even causing a few brief moments of transcendence. A new song and a Pink Floyd cover aside ("Fearless"), much of their old material was unfamiliar to the audience, a symptom of their being overlooked and on ice for so long. Indeed, Bugskull's inactivity seemed obvious at a couple points, but if they become an ongoing concern again—and I hope they do—there is no reason why, with a bit more practice and tightness, they won't quickly become one of the best bands in town. They played in front of a charming collection of stock footage, which ranged from instructional filmstrips to surf flicks to arty dance film to stop-motion animation. It was tough to look away.
A word about the performance space at Washington High School: It's fantastic. Once PICA's lease runs up, it would be a shame to have it fall back into years of disuse and neglect. For the past 10 days, it has been the best place in town to see a show. So here's hoping, that by some avenue, it will host more shows, please—music, theater, otherwise. Hopefully Buckman neighbors will realize what a gem it is and allow plans for a community center—centered around a prolifically used performance space—to gain traction.
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Is the performance space the gym? The theater? Some other space?
The gym is usually the big space in a high school that could host performances, and they are, without fail, the worst acoustic environments in the world. High school theaters, on the other hand, can have decent acoustics, but are handicapped by stage and seating configurations hospitable basically only to plays.
And then, yes, there's the issue of Washington being in a residential neighborhood, which one would think would make hosting events there year-round - or even regularly if they went past 10pm, or possibly midnight on weekends - a problem.
I'm interested to hear more about which spaces were used and how they were augmented in terms of staging and acoustic treatments.
As far as I can tell, it was by design an auditorium from the time the school was built--definitely not a converted gymnasium or anything. The entire school is centered around the space; it's literally a cavity in the middle of the building, surrounded on all sides by classrooms. Acoustics were very good, even been a bit raw and rumbling, perfect for a rock show. There was seating on both the floor and the balcony, with a substantially sized, open pit in front of the stage. I'd say it's a cross between the Aladdin and a smaller version of the Roseland, but more hospitable than either. The stage was enormous, and very deep. A highly complicated theatrical production wouldn't be compromised or confined.
Visiting the Works on the heels of last week's well-meaning but hopelessly muddled-sounding show by Akron/Family at the Bagdad (such a beautiful theater, but sight lines and acoustics were fucking dismal) made me wish I could see more shows there.
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