Tokyo Police Club Suffer Mistaken Identity

Labor Day is four days and change away, bringing with it a few summer farewells: 1) the Police, 2) Crocs (R.I.P.), 3) the color white and 4) overpopulated music festivals with redundant headliners. (Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails and Kanye West, among them.) For indie rockers Tokyo Police Club, these last few summer days allow for a time of reflection, recalling their banner season on the festival circuit, which included a case of mistaken identity.

"Playing both Coachella and Lollapalooza was really awesome," singer/bassist Dave Monks tells Spinner. "I remember driving through the desert [to Coachella]. We had rented two SUV's. We showed up and of course all the bands are in their buses -- they've got two 18-wheelers, and a crew bus and band bus. And we come up in these two little SUV's and there's like six people in each one with all of our friends. We asked someone, 'Excuse me sir, where's artist parking?' And he's trying to tell us, 'Festival parking's over there. I don't know what you're looking for.' We're like, 'No, we swear, we're in a band. We're supposed to ...' 'Tokyo who?' he said. 'No, we're playing a stage, for real, I promise.'

The band played it ever cool and ever modest, however. "I always feel like those [fesitvals] are like a spike in the graph for us," Monks says. "I never feel like we are righteously claiming our deserved place on the stage of Coachella. It's more like, 'Whoa, who mixed this up because we're playing Coachella and this is crazy.'"