The Promised Land

When the band started back out on the gig trail a few months ago, I remember approaching the prospect with some trepidation; not that I was concerned about our ability to perform live. No, it wasn't that at all. I knew that the large well of studio experience would always stand us in good stead, despite major changes in line-up and playlist.

It was always going to be more of how we would manage the tensions between that of recording and that of performing live. Such is there a demand for a solid salsa band that I knew we would be inundated with requests, which would in turn put pressure on our opportunities to record. But at the same time, our songs (the original ones) needed to be played in order to mature and realise their full potential. And fully matured songs are the ones that I think should be recorded. A classic Catch-22.

So it has come to pass we're pretty much booked up through to our December break.

We're due to play at a mini-congress in a couple of weeks, and we're more than ready. The process was accelerated somewhat when we were invited to play at a sold-out event for fifteen-hundred a few weeks back. Preparing for that unexpected gig placed us under no small amount of pressure and I, as music director, behaved like a bear with a sore head to get us ready in time. Contrary to popular belief, that's not my preferred method of conducting operations.

That was followed shortly after by our monthly gig at the Interval Cafe to a more intimate crowd. It was nonetheless, just as well received.

As a result of all this, 4 de Diciembre has entered the "Promised Land" ahead of time: we have at a high performance standard, two full length sets plus a variety of encore numbers; and more importantly, the fresh stage experience to cope with inevitable unexpecteds (like imperfect monitoring) with good humour.

Band practices have returned to the joyous, even mirthful, occassions they once were - now that we've passed from the fraught song acquisition phase to the more creative optimisation stage.

Paradise.

Yeo Loo Yen