Are you sick of top 10 lists yet? My favourite concert, blah, blah, blah. My favourite album, blah, blah, blah. I always feel like I am on the outside looking in after reading about awesome concerts that I missed, or new albums that I have not picked up yet from the last year. For me, reading year end lists means a time of catch up and research, which all points to work. I don’t like work. If you don’t like work either, here is a top 10 list that requires no thinking, working or research on the part of the reader. Sit back and enjoy my favourite moments by the king of the top 10 list, David Letterman.

(more…)

I saw a girl the other day with a “TEAM COCO” T-shirt. It reminded me of how much I love late night TV. Conan O’Brien, Craig Kilborn, David Letterman and yes, even Arsenio Hall. The 11:30pm – 2:30am time slot is geared toward the insomniacs, alcoholics, jobless, and university kids. Funny, these adjectives are also used to describe many of the musicians that I know.

After catching Tokyo Police Club on Letterman a few weeks back performing their latest release, Wait Up (Boots Of Danger) I wondered what it’s like to perform in this prestigious time slot. I caught up with Graham Wright of Tokyo Police Club and asked him about his latest performance on Letterman.

Letterman films in the afternoon, right? As the musical guest, how long are you at the studio for rehearsal and filming?
The crew shows up early – around 7am – to load in and set up all the instruments. Then nothing much happens until around 1:45 when the band has to soundcheck and camera check. After that, taping starts at about 5:30. So this time we were there for maybe 4 hours. But the first time we played we had no crew or anything, so we were in the studio from 6 in the morning until about 6 at night. I was very cold and tired that day.

While you are waiting to perform, what do you do backstage? Do you get to see and chat with the other guests?
Thats the trick. The first couple of times we played, we weren’t sure of how to prepare and we ended up getting all nervous and freaked out. This time, we just treated it like we would any other show. We had a bunch of friends, had some beers, and when show time came we just went and did our thing, and it felt normal and easy. Theres a TV in the green room that plays a feed of the taping, so we always have that on in the background to watch the rest of the show. We’ve never met any of our fellow guests, unfortunately.

How much face time to you have with David? Do you get a chance to hang out and chat with him at all before the show?
Very little. Our only interaction with Dave was after we performed when he came over and shook our hands, and then headed off. I’d love to spend time with him, of course, but the man meets tons of new people every day and probably just wants to go home to his family.

I get a kick out of Biff Henderson, Paul Shaffer, Alan Kalter and Tony Mendez. Have you had a chance to meet any of Daves’ supporting cast members?
Only Paul. He’s a fellow Canadian, so we bonded over stories of Thunder Bay. He also admired my broken old Casiotone, which I got a kick out of.

Of all the late night talk shows that you have performed on, is there one experience that stands out as unique or is there one show where you had an interesting experience that you could tell us about?
When we did the Craig Ferguson show, we were walking to the stage and we passed the costume room. On one wall of the room was an assortment of false moustaches. With about two minutes until stage time, we asked the make up artist how quickly he could apply one to our drummers face. It turns out the answer was about 20 seconds, and we ended up playing a nationally broadcast television show with Greg wearing a huge amazing moustache.

And here is that performance, moustache and all…

Fuck I love Tokyo Police Club. Fuck I love this song. Fuck I love this video. This song, Wait Up (Boots of Danger), taken from TPCs new album is really sticking with me. I heard it a few times on the CBC, then I saw them perform it live on Letterman. This is one of my top songs of the year so far. I think that it is the Ohhs on the track provided by Graham Wright. In the video we don’t see much of Graham, but if you watch the Letterman performance, you can see his laying down the sweetness.

The video is pretty standard. Some performance footage mixed in with a loose narrative of dogs. It’s very visually appealing since you can’t go wrong with animals in a video. Video via Stereogum. If you watch both videos, you can see lead singer, Dave Monks, wearing the same shirt. Don’t these guys have stylist yet to catch these things?

Toronto – Here is Stars performing Fixed last week on Jimmy Fallon. You can catch them at the Mod Club if you had a time machine and went back two weeks.

Monday, May 31st, Tuesday June 1st, Wednesday June 2nd

All re-runs! WTF.

Thursday, June 3rd

Miike Snow is on Jimmy Kimmel. This might be a re-run, everything else is. Way to take a week off.

Friday, June 4th

All reruns again! wtf.

Shortest post ever!