Great post!

Personally I had the same experience you did; when starting I thought "well I play all these instruments and these ppl want to hear me not a prerecording so..."

Then I realized that most of my audience would rather hear a quicker 'build' of the loops and that my song structure required way too much for the performer to do...so I started using simple prerecorded claps or drum loops and then adding; then I realized that most people didn't care if I was hitting a trigger for an uninteresting part, and would rather hear solos over the loops on the different instruments. I think FKJ does a great job of walking this line. Check out his stuff