RAVE RAVE, TECHNO TECHNO!

Wow. This post got *way* longer than I wanted it to - I'll try to keep up with posting about this project, instead of having to make one huuuge post. :)

Well, seeing as I haven't gotten any new bookings in a while, I've grown bored and I need to work on some kind of major project. I can't seem to leave well enough alone, so I've decided to replace my laptop with something a little more robust...

I'm listening to Solvent's disc "Apples and Synthesizers", having seen him play a live-pa at Lotus on Monday night... excellent stuff, fantastic live vocoder work. The name of the album reminds me of a story from the Costa Rica days...

A friend of ours was dating a Tica (Tico/Tica is what CR folks call themselves, kind of like Canadians and 'Canucks'), and was at her house for the first time, meeting the parents and having dinner with them. Something came up in conversation, a comparison of two dissimilar things which I no longer remember, and his opinion was asked; he replied

"Oh, es como... manzana y naranja..." ("Oh, that's like.. apples and oranges")

The family looked a little confused, but then agreed, smiled and moved on. It wasn't until later, when the younger sister asked what he'd meant, that he realized that instead of "naranja", he'd said "merengue", a

style of music and dance popular in South America. Still, the family had processed his message, decided that apples and dancing *are* pretty different things, and understood.

Heh. When I started typing that anecdote, I figured I could bring it 'round to being something deep and meaningful about the techno, but I think it's a little too out there. I'm not going to bother deleting it tho. :)

So the set in Calgary went terribly - three major technical problems; the mix sounded awful on the big system even after trying to tune the rig for a good hour (I *really* need to spend more time tweaking the new rig on a big system). The microphone failed utterly for both songs, and then at the end of the set, halfway through the "big ender" track, the power went out on stage. Just to add insult to injury, the laptop stayed completely stable and all the rest of the gear rebooted! People told me they liked the show, but it really wasn't the show I wanted to put on. I was very disappointed.

Since then I've played another show, booked by the Kcuf Uoy guys for a Lotus Long Weekend show. That went a lot better, a lot of the bigger kinks were hammered out of the rig - it still has a ways to go before I consider it "perfect", but I doubt it'll ever actually get there. :)

Now, I'm back in the studio - well, sort of, I've been going out to a lot of shows and stuff lately, checking out what everyone else is up to, shopping demo CDs and such around trying to drum up some gigs. Last year at this time I had *five* upcoming gigs; this year I have zero. :/

FedEx apparently showed up yesterday while we were at lunch, leaving me a little brown and yellow sticky note on my door. Today, as promised, they returned - the two IDE to Compact Flash adapters arrived finally! They stuck me with a $22.60 CAD import fee, on top of the $16 USD shipping - total price, about $60 USD total...

One week until the show in Calgary, and the set is *finally* playable... well, almost.

Currently I have twelve finished tracks, with another four partially loaded up - the four will be worked on later on, when I have more free time. Basically, all that is left now is practice, practice, find and kill bugs, practice, practice, and more practice.

The only real hole in the set right now is the lack of transitions (ie. how to get from one song to the next, there's a million ways!), but the only thing I can do about that is practice until I know the material backwards and forwards. That's a *huge* part of building and maintaining dancefloor energy - I can partially rely on the fact that the new techno is damned good, but nothing can replace *really* knowing the set, and that can only come with time. With the set coming up next weekend, there's just enough time to spare.

Really though, I don't think I've ever played a set where I wasn't thinking that I could have used an extra two weeks of practice. If you don't get out there and actually *play*, you can spend years building the perfect set in your basement...