Dare to stare

>> Tokyo Police Club face Japanese fans
and honour superior facial hair

Cop appeal: Tokyo Police Club

By LORRAINE CARPENTER

“I had a great time,” says Tokyo Police Club drummer Greg Alsop, “but that’s my response to everything. We don’t have too many bad experiences.”

Alsop could be talking about playing and partying at SXSW last month, or touring the world last year in support of the band’s debut EP, A Lesson in Crime, or playing Letterman, or relocating from his folks’ place in Newmarket, Ontario, to Toronto, a move all TPC band members made earlier this year.

But the boys aren’t strangers to hard work. Six songs into recording their debut album, Elephant Shell (out next week on their own label, Mean Beard, distributed by Universal), they scrapped everything and started over, simply because it wasn’t rocking hard enough. After working overtime and over-budget, TPC delivered a record rife with the kind of sharp hooks that powered their EP and subsequent singles, with some velvet-gloved swings that won’t fail to knock you out.

The Mirror woke Alsop from his late-morning slumber at a Midwest Holiday Inn to discuss the origins of Mean Beard, and his adventures in his band’s spiritual home.

Mirror: Tell me about Japan.

Greg Alsop: Tokyo was the biggest culture shock I’ve ever experienced. The crowd was very attentive, which is unnerving at first because they’re completely silent. It’s so different from a rock show over here, where people are hooting or hollering or dancing or clapping. There, they just focus on what you’re doing on stage and then they’ll clap very politely. But they have these big smiles on their faces, so I guess they really do enjoy it.

M: How long were you there?

GA: We only played one show, but Dave and I decided to stay there for another few days and make a holiday out of it. We were lucky—it was Golden Week, which is a national holiday, so we went to a few shrines and temples and were able to see some of that culture.

But on the last night, we came across this place called the Punk Rock Bar—it’s basically this hole in the wall up some stairs in Shibuya and it was the only place there that played this kind of music. It was maybe five by 10 feet, and there were only half a dozen other people there, and none of them were Japanese, which was weird. It seemed like every band that ever played Shibuya had found this place ’cause they had all tagged the wall. The Buzzcocks had been there, the Replacements, My Chemical Romance. After that, we wound up in this tiny karaoke booth singing Bruce Springsteen, the Libertines and the Ghostbusters theme song until 6:30 in the morning.

M: I notice that you guys are pretty much clean-shaven. Why did you name your label Mean Beard?

GA: It’s actually the nickname of our friend Paul in L.A. He was involved in starting the company, so we just kinda stole it from him. He’s the greatest guy in the world. He offers up his apartment to us every time we’re in L.A., for days at a time.

M: Why is he called Mean Beard?

GA: Uh, he has a mean beard. He grows it out every year for Whiskerino, which is a summit for people who have great facial hair [www.whiskerino.org]. He doesn’t disappoint.

With Winter Gloves and Ruby Coast at
Cabaret Juste pour rire on Saturday,
April 19, 9 p.m., $15.50