Cats Are Grey

(click image to enlarge)

From September 9th, 2003 through April 30th, 2004 I was keeping a sporadic sketchbook diary in the manner of James Kochalka. The entry from the 18th of September depicts the above fabulous moment from a Quasi show at North Six (which has been gut renovated into Music Hall Of Williamsburg).

For those who don’t know, Quasi is a criminally under-appreciated indie rock band from Portland, Oregon. Sam Coomes (depicted as a duck) plays roxichord, guitar and sings. Janet Weiss (depicted as a dog) plays drums and also sings. They write incredible songs, a great deal of which are about ghosts, selling your soul or, more recently, the Iraq war. During their live shows they break into crazy instrumental freak outs, as depicted in the above drawing.

You may be asking yourself why I’m posting a drawing from 2003. Well, it’s a collision of reasons. First, last December Quasi curated a three floor extravaganza at the Knitting Factory. Marnie Stern, Crystal Stilts, Sic Alps, Jeff Lewis, and Soft Circle played and avant-garde films screened in the basement. This was one of the last shows at the Knitting Factory before they shut down the Leonard Street location and relocated to Williamsburg. The evening was amazing and Quasi played brilliantly. I really like their new material and hope they come out with a new record soon. While there were no moments to rival the scene depicted in the drawing the show did close with Sam walking to the edge of the stage and then dropping into the audience (directly on top of me, actually) and then crowd surfing through the room. Fantastic!

This month I’ve been trying to post a new drawing every Tuesday and Thursday. I was going to post a drawing inspired by the Comet Gain show at Music Hall Of Williamsburg but the drawing is still unfinished. This morning, in a state of half sleep, I realized that the easiest thing to do would be to scan the Quasi drawing, color it and post it. Sure, it would be nice to have a drawing more specific to the Knitting Factory show but it would be nicer to keep this arbitrary deadline I’ve set. However, once I scanned the drawing I found myself completely redrawing it in the computer. Not only that, it took forever to find any pictures of the show. After many fruitless attempts I finally found three pictures on North Six’s website! Which is strange because that place has been closed forever. But thank god I found them or I wouldn’t have been able to get the colors right for Sam’s shirt and pants. I mean, grey and blue. You can’t make this stuff up.

If you’re into such things, here’s the original sketchbook drawing. I don’t think Janet was actually wearing a bow in her hair.

I think there’s something fitting about using this drawing for the Knitting Factory show instead of a new drawing. Quasi was the last band I saw at The Knitting Factory and at North Six. Both places are gone now. You can go back to the physical space, but, you know, there’s no there there. And, in looking for this sketchbook page I flipped through pages and pages of drawings about friends I no longer see, places I don’t go to anymore, cats I’ve lost contact with, etc. It’s amazing how much just slips away. And that is why it’s important to make art. It’s a way of documenting or holding on to things in life that would otherwise be lost.

Beautiful Things

I Give Up

When I’m Dead