the fever returns

So the hunt for musicians to fill out the Cancer Killing Gemini live lineup has begun and already I feel the excitement of playing live again. 

For those of you not in the music business, know that if you play original music, the following is usually true:

-the pay sucks

-the hours suck

-the conditions suck

Playing dirty clubs at midnight for $100 (split 5 ways), then loading gear up a flight of stairs at 3am - not the glamorous life they show you on tv. So why do we do it?

Because we can't not do it. 

Playing live is like the last play of a football game - stretched out to a hour...like watching a child walk across an icy sidewalk in slow motion...like peering over the edge of a canyon without a railing. 

With a project like Cancer Killing Gemini, there are definitely some challenges to play live. The electronics force a different mentality that just guitar-bass-drums. Avoiding "trainwrecks" where the electronics lose sync with the acoustic instruments (drums, guitar, bass) is of supreme importance. I saw a White Zombie performance on an MTV music awards show where the drummer was playing 2 beats ahead of everyone else. It was hard to watch, like seeing a baby seal clubbed to death. They eventually got back in sync, but I'll bet you it was one of the worst night's of Rob Zombie's life. 

In kittymonkey (my last project), there were some backing tracks that augmented the live instruments. This is fairly standard practice these days - it's essentially like playing along to a cd. But this time, with CKG, I want to "go organic with the electrics"  - where all the tracks are played live by the musicians on stage. Doing this with pulsating electronic sounds requires that the instruments "speak to each other" so that the timing of the pulses stays rhythmic and musical. 

But once the logistics of the electronics are figured out, the fun begins.

Bring it on.