It was most exciting when people first came up on the stage and then when they came back for the encore. We wanted to make a show that kept on developing, that was interesting, so we tried to do that with our live shows.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I was always more interested in the ultimate live performance rather than the recording for its own sake. And, for the audience too, that thrill of - just being there.
What is exciting is taking back the excitement of being able to debut something to an audience in exactly the way you want to.
I've seen nearly every Encores! show. I love the second acts so much because you just see desperation and inspiration in equal measure.
What was important to me was entertaining the audience, and whether that meant winning, losing, singing, or whatever it was on the live show we were doing every week, which was awesome, I was game for it.
At some of the venues, the audience was so loud we could hardly hear what was happening on stage, which kind of threw us back to 1983, when we had very similar reactions on a much bigger scale.
Anybody who's done standup will tell you that there's nothing like it. The show starts at 8:00, the curtain goes up and there's nobody else except you and the audience, and you just perform for them for two hours. Nobody yells, 'Cut!' There are no retakes. That is still the most exciting medium for me, and I love it.
It was great fun. We had gone on tour in between the sessions and reconnected with the audience and got a lot of energy back from them, a lot of positive energy.
There's a special joy you get having a show on the air that people are interested in and wanting to know what happens next. You really want to enjoy that while you have it.
We've always wanted to do it, something you could dance to, and deep down we always thought we could bring something to the table if we could do it, but the live shows always made us pull back and be a rock band.
When we started, we knew the show was going to be hit or miss, and we needed to find a core audience to really make us survive. And I think we've been able to do that.