Tokyo Police Club [rank: 154] based on users subscribed

"Tokyo Police Club started by accident one day in the ordinary suburb of Newmarket when Greg, Josh, Dave, and Graham decided that they missed playing music together, their previous band having broken up several months before. The four gathered in Josh's basement, plugging in instruments and making up songs almost at random, with no goal but to recapture the magic that they felt making music together. By the time summer came, TPC had began quietly to play shows in the Toronto area, shows at which the very few people in attendance seemed impressed by what they saw. The band seemed likely to end here, with the various members preparing to go their separate ways in the fall, when fate intervened in the form of an invitation to play the Pop Montreal festival.

Packing their instruments and girlfriends into a tiny university residence room, TPC spent a week immersed in music, spending days lazily wandering the streets of Montreal and nights rehearsing loudly in the tiniest of spaces, and topping it off in style with a sold out show that saw the band play for the first time to an audience that was actually interested. A few weeks later, all four had agreed that it was time to break their mother's hearts and pursue that most elusive of pipe dreams: a career in the music business. The boys got straight to business, playing a series of Toronto shows, and earning a reputation for live shows that were exuberant, lively, and unrestrained. In January, the very day that Dave returned for good from university, Tokyo Police Club signed up with esteemed Toronto label Paperbag Records to release their debut EP in Canada. In April, A Lesson in Crime was released, and the band has spent the months since on the road, bringing their optimistic brand of wide-eyed post-pop to audiences across Canada and the U.S., and making many new friends along the way.

So what exactly is Tokyo Police Club? Perhaps EYE Weekly summed it up best when they wrote '[Tokyo Police Club] are undeniably catchy and raw, marrying danceable hooks with talk of robot masters and global emergencies, providing an upbeat soundtrack to our troubled times.' Personally, however, I prefer Exclaim's proclamation that 'somehow, the deeply innocuous subdivisions of Newmarket, Ontario have hatched a four-headed beast of tunefulness.'"

[reproduced or excerpted from band website linked above]

Bandega Interview with Graham Wright of Tokyo Police Club (June 2008)

Laser shows and live animals. Small cooked animals. Delicious.

Q: How have your shows changed over the years? Has your perspective on performing live changed?
A: I think we've calmed down in some ways. When we started off we liked to do bizarre things during the show to make it memorable, but we've learned how to put on an exciting and hopefully memorable show on our own merits. Also we bring lights now which is awesome.

Q: Describe the most memorable live show you've played.
A: Its really impossible to pick any one moment. One really nice thing was this January, we played in a big square outside in our hometown of Toronto. It was dark, and it started snowing very gently. We were too frozen to really appreciate it at the time, but it was a really cool moment, of the sort that doesn't happen often when playing in small clubs.

Q: What venue do you consider to be your "home", where you feel most comfortable, with the crowd and the place itself?
A: There's really no particular place - it all comes down to the crowd. Sometimes the people that come out will just be so awesome and welcoming that it makes being on stage a real pleasure. That's a really cool thing about touring is that you can feel at home anywhere, if you're lucky enough to get a really great crowd.

Q: Describe the most enjoyable show you've ever experienced as a fan.
A: The first concert I ever went to, back when I was 13 or 14, was Radiohead playing outside in a big park. I was even more obsessed with them then than I am now (which is really saying something) and it was such an incredible experience for me. It really left a mark on me and I still think of how that show made me feel when I'm playing shows these days. If we could give anyone that feeling, I'd be more than happy.

Q: There's a lot of excitement from fans surrounding your new LP, Elephant Shell. Do you have any plans or ideas around how you'll be playing the new songs live? Basically, we want to know if the rumors are true: will there be laser shows and live animals involved?
A: We had a laser show and live animals, but soon after that we just had a small cooked animal. Delicious.

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