Mac DeMarco Quotes

It's strange to play outdoors, especially in the daytime. But we're figuring it out. The rules are different for festival shows - how you talk to the crowd, how you can try to get them involved. Things are just a little different, and I think we've learned to adapt our show.

I think doing more live stuff's made us feel a certain way about that particular point. I quite like small clubs. I don't really like playing in big clubs, and I think I'm really into the idea of a few people being together.

I love doing the in-ring promos more than doing the backstage promos because I love being able to interact with the crowd.

When you play a smaller, more intimate venue, you can have real conversations with your audience, take risks, and stay current. You can also change the set list, on how the day feels or how the audience reacts. When you do arena shows, every arena looks and feels the same. You can't see who is in the room.

There's no doubt arena shows are exciting, but you don't get that up close and personal kind of vibe, and that's what rock n' roll is all about for me.

Anything you can do to get more people to come to your live shows is good, because that's where you can really do what you do. Everyone's on the same page, and you don't have to win strangers over as much.

Wrestling was like stand-up comedy for me. Every night I had a live audience of 25,000 people to win over. My goal was never to be the loudest or the craziest. It was to be the most entertaining.

In those days a concert was a personal experience. I wanted to be as close as possible to the audience, and of course big stadiums didn't enable you to do that. It wasn't my style.

I like to get within handshaking distance of the crowd. If it happens, they know it, we know it, and that's all we came here for.

We would play songs live on stage, and then we'd watch their reaction we were receiving immediately, if people were dancing and singing along. If they weren't, then we'd go into the dressing rooms of the different NBA teams that we were playing in their arenas, and we'd change the songs right there.

A small venue is so much more intimate and loose. You can actually be more spontaneous, I feel.

When I played in a band, people just stand there and look at you and criticize what they didn't like. But if you watch a D.J. show, people go crazy from beginning to end. Say what you want against D.J.'s, but you can't deny that the energy level in the audience is for the most part far above what rock bands have.

I love being in a small club where everybody has a good seat, and we don't look like ants. And you can feel the audience, which makes it kind of magical, and I miss that. I guess I have the best of both worlds.

Being in a smaller environment - sometimes I like that. As a comic, we start off in comedy clubs, and there are people right at your feet, right on top of you. And I realize, as I get older, I miss that sometimes.

It's just really cool to go to countries and play festivals for people who don't really know your band or don't ever get to see it. It's really nice.

Any time we have the opportunity to play in a more intimate room, there's such a huge aspect of our set just built for that. And beyond that, we just love being that close to our fans.

I'm learning what I gotta do to get people hyped up. It doesn't matter even if they're not dancing, as long as they're bobbing their head and as long as it looks like a mosh pit down there.

The cool thing about the smaller gigs - it's the intimacy. You really feel connected to the crowd.

It doesn't matter if you're the best wrestler in the world and can do every move perfectly; if you don't connect with the crowd or sell well or have good promos, nobody cares.

We just want to be a band and play good music.

You can't manufacture the feeling of being in a small crowd and connecting on every single level to the very last person in the very last row in the back. I think when you evolve into a headlining act and things get bigger, the intimacy and some of that energy gets lost a little bit.

My dream is to stand in front of 60,000 people in an arena and know that everyone came because they wanted to make memories with me.

When it's my show, I know that everybody is there to see me - but I like a challenge, and I like the fact that at festivals, not everybody is there to see me, but I have the chance to convert people.

Of course, I love the arenas; there's a great deal of energy and excitement playing those kind of shows. But there's something that's very intimate and very special about a small venue, where you really feel like you're almost getting to know everyone in the audience.

I really like to do small venues. They're more intimate.