FraKctured - live performances - audient reports

12/11/00 - The Supper Club, show #1 / New York, NY

From Trey Gunn's diary at www.treygunn.com

November 12, 2000 The Supper Club, show #1 / New York, NY

A very good show. Very, very good. Although I should qualify that. The audience was awesome and the band was hot. However, Robert and Adrian were dealing with some technical problems, and had a bit of a hard night. They still played really well, but Pat and I could feel them struggling. I could feel this early enough in the show that I knew that Pat and I would have to split the difference. And let me just modestly add here: Pat and I were awesome tonight. Very, very hot!

We opened with Red which was a better spot for it, in my opinion. There is no context for this piece if it is our opener. It just hits you with its power. This was followed by The ConstruKction of Light, which seems to always work really well in the second slot. This piece was very solid tonight. We eventually landed into Larks'(which smoked) and was quickly followed by FraKctured. Our cross-picking guitarist was a hero tonight. Having FraKctured follow Lark's is braver than anything I have witnessed in this very brave band, to date. And it worked.

The Projekct improv section was a real groove monster. Pat sailed into a crazy beat-box groove right off the tail end of Dinosaur and I came in soloing immediately. We pulled out all the stops on this one and cut to an abrupt halt. Then what followed was a funny bit of miscommunication. The improv was going to be followed by One Time which I wanted to play on the rubber bass. So, my plan was to switch to the rubber bass in the middle of the improv section. And in fact where I was going to switch was immediately after my solo. At that point Pat was going to kick in with Rhino Blastic groove and Adrian would kick off soloing. But, what happened was that EVERYONE stopped playing at the end of my solo, and Pat was looking over at me ready to cue the entrance of the next groove. I kept motioning to both Pat and Robert to give us some vector shifting sounds while I switched to the other bass. But no one did, and everyone was looking at me. So, I just said "Fuck it" and put down the Warr Guitar in silence and picked up the rubber bass while everyone waited for me. Then "1,2,3,4" and Bam we were back into ProjeKct land.

All in good fun, it was both a casual and intense show. The funny thing about this band is that the technical level is so high, and everyone knows it. That is 'technical' level of both our equipment and our playing abilities. So, what happens when we do make mistakes? Even terrible ones? Well, the exact opposite of what you would think. What actually happens is that it draws the audience into the performance and makes it so personable. This is something that I feel that is really needed with this band. A deeper engagement with the audience. And here we have found a way. A very painful way, actually. Because the guy who contributed the errors really feels like shit. But, hey! it DOES work.