By James Pew

I first met the guys from Tokyo Police Club when they were 17 years old. Back then their band was called Suburbia, and had all the same members as Tokyo Police Club, with the addition of another talented kid named Will. I met them at a club in Toronto called Stones Place, on an evening when I was doing live sound, something I rarely do.

A bunch of bands were playing that night, Suburbia being one of them. I remember Suburbia’s live show really well it had energy and a vibe. And the guys in the band were entertaining and humorous. I spoke with them after their set, telling them about the small project recording studio I had set-up in an apartment in the Danforth area of Toronto.

They didn’t have a recording yet and were very keen to get one. So the following weekend we did a three day recording blitz at my first make shift recording studio. We recorded 6 of their original songs, and the following weekend I brought in Freddy Gabrsek to do the mix. I have always loved that recording. Here is an example from those sessions. This is a song called Killer Bees that shows a very different side of the boys from TPC.

The Top 5 Reasons For The Success Of Tokyo Police Club

1. Talent with Developed Potential.

Developed potential being the needed addition to talent. Talent alone is not enough. Without the nurturing of it, development and growth cannot occur. Take it from me TPC has done a lot of growing and developing since their Suburbia days!

  • Their talent is in understanding the aesthetic of their art form. However you want to classify them, ‘post-Radio Head’ is how we referred to them in their Suburbia days. They understand and aim for their own nuance of the pop/rock, post-punk, indie rock, post whatever, post modernistic sound.
  • They experiment with guitars and amps, and effects, and toy organs, among other things, and each musician in the band is a good musician, who has his chops and sound together.
  • There is groove and tunefulness in their music.

Talent + Developed Potential = Interesting Artist

2. Attitude – in the studio…and in life!

Relaxed, Positive, Creative, Driven, and Proactive

  • They were very busy and focused in the studio.
  • They knew what they wanted going in.
  • They were well rehearsed.
  • They had tested their material in front of an audience.
  • They were prepared. Because of that they wasted little time with trivialities and made good use of the limited time they had.
  • They had fun and kept things light. This is what is needed in order to have a creative vibe in the studio. And that’s exactly what they had. It was a great experience working with them and lots of fun too.

3. Production Value

Both A lesson In Crime, and Elephant Shell, have great production values, reflected in the quality, mood, and aesthetic of the audio presentation. Nuff said.

4. Great Live Show

They are currently touring the world – check out their website http://tokyopoliceclub.com for complete show listings. And go check them out live and see for yourself.

5. Marketing Strategy and most importantly, the fact that they have one

Online promotion is something we emphasize on the Studio Manifesto Blog. Take the time to go through TPC’s website and see for yourself how engaging, interactive, frequently updated, and accessible it is. With quality presentation done web 2.0-style (RSS feeds and the like), contests, give a ways, a blog, a forum, – this website could be used as a model for almost any indie band.

Online identity must be developed and nurtured. No one can do this for you. Web 2.0 and Social Media have made the internet accessible. Where once an artist had little choice but to turn to a label for marketing and promotion, now even some labels understand that it is things like the bands blog, written by the band, which are important, not just stock ads and such. Tokyo Police Club is engaging with their fans, in meaingful ways through their web presence, and keeping those fans interested and involved.

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The Top 5 Reasons For The Success Of Tokyo Police Club by James Pew is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, August 7th, 2008 at 8:20 am and is filed under Music Culture, Music Promotion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.