FraKctured

A good show. However, with a very hard beginning. We knew from the soundcheck that it was going to be a hard hall to play in. For one thing the monitor system was completely new to us. It is far brighter than the system we got used to in Japan. This always takes some adjusting. For myself, the sound was very loud on-stage. And there was something terribly wrong in my sound. I don't know if something has gone wrong in my rig or if it is just this hall, but I couldn't stand my sound tonight. Really tubby, with not very much definition. The end result being that when we went on-stage I was struggling so hard to have any definition. This meant that my hands began flailing like crazy to have some kind effect on the sound. The result of this was that I completely overplayed for the first 20 minutes or so. Not overplayed, like I played too many notes. That is virtually impossible in this band! But I physically overplayed the instrument -- just hammering on the strings way too hard. This is a physically depressing experience. Fingers hit harder and harder to no effect.... trying to hold them back, but with no luck.

Fortunately we had a fantastic ally for this show: the audience! They were awesome. They pulled us out of this pit and brought everything together. By the fifth piece we began to relax and really enter into the performance. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

The ProjeKCts were quite cool, tonight. I played the rubber bass for the duration of it. And for the second half of this improv segment, I put this really cheesy fuzz sound on it -- very sixties! And for a change I played the rubber bass on One Time, as well. There is something about this piece that hasn't settled in for me, and I think that this might be the secret.