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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.