Well, you know, I mean, I first did my live shows in the late 70's and in those days I had a boatload of equipment that always seemed to be going wrong. ↗
With Sleater-Kinney, we did a lot of improvisation in our live shows, and even our process of songwriting involved bringing in disparate parts and putting them together to form something cohesive. ↗
We figured you could download live shows for days, so we decided to go for a cream-of-the-crop approach, but not just take the best vocal or the best performances. ↗
For the live shows, I'm just getting my song together. I go back to my hotel room and I just listen to my song over and over again, figure out how to make it different and put my little Pia spin on it. ↗
As far as the live shows go, we're not leapfrogging all the smaller venues. We would have bypassed these kind of shows and gone straight to the Arena shows, but we didn't want to. ↗
I think people need to have fun with whatever they're doing - makeup, their clothes, music, live shows - anything you don't need to take too seriously, don't take too seriously. ↗
I didn't think of myself as a lead player, especially when we did live shows, because me and Keith used to switch around all the time. He'd take a lead, I'd play rhythm. Sometimes even within one song. It wasn't strict and regimented. ↗
Well, for the reasons I mention above, although I am not sure the live shows were really so brilliant - but nobody could hear much so perhaps it did not matter! It was certainly a very exciting time for us all. ↗