Ira Kaplan Quotes

I think the record-buying public know what they like, and when people are trying to pander to them, I think they know it. They want the genuine article, so if we try to sort of "dumb down" for the mass public, I think they're too smart for that, and would recognize us as fakes. It seems like the bands that do crossover do so really on their own terms, and they just find that their terms just kind of make a big dove-tail with the masses.

I think all of us enjoy the feeling of something that goes on and on, as listeners as much as players. Just to get into a moment that feels like it could go on forever, and that you kind of want to go on forever. I don't know. There's so many things we do that I could describe by saying they just feel right when we're doing them.

There's an actual physiological thing that happens to me on tour. There's that moment where I sit in my seat and click the seatbelt, and five seconds later I fall asleep.

Sometimes things that are comfortable are comfortable because it's what you're good at. When you start doing the things you're not as comfortable with, there needs to be a reason for it.

I don't think simple is an insult. Something that's really simple and great is probably harder to do than something more complex.

It's one of the things that makes it enjoyable to keep playing; you have to approach each set differently and make some balance between what you want to do and what seems right.

Some sports teams hate each other in the locker room and that's what makes them great.

We try to be open to letting anything change in the moment.

When people ask you to do stuff, it's not your idea anymore, so it's tough to get behind it.

As the fans' voting reflected, people want to hear your best-known songs.

I think that's a big part of how to stay together as long as possible: learning what to do when things go wrong. And it's particularly hard when you're recording, because the importance of everything you're doing is so magnified.

In terms of performance, something unexpected is always good, it's preferable if it's unexpectedly good. But unexpectedly bad has a lot to say for it as well. It's always nice to be able to look back on a show and say, "Oh, that's the night that this happened," and a lot of the worst memories are better than the shows with no memories. A good rehearsal is a lot harder to describe. A lot of rehearsals that end up feeling best are the ones where something really bad was happening, and you just kind of got past it and fought through it. Just dealing with things that are inevitable.

In the open air you don't play as many quiet songs as you would normally.

I have grown more forgiving. I accept that not everything is for me. I'm not as in love with my own opinions as I used to be. And anger is not something that comes to me as quickly as it once did.

I remember being in college and taking a class on classical music and getting a big laugh when I said very sincerely that I was not really into trained voices. Some of the greatest singers can transcend their technical perfection and still sound great.

There's a lot of music that we've never heard before. It's not like we're just pulling out December's Children by The Rolling Stones and listening to that again and again. We are listening to things we've never heard, but they do tend to be from the past.