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.
Ira KaplanI 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.
Ira KaplanI 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.
Ira KaplanI 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.
Ira Kaplan