Las Vegas Weekly

Japanese Scream + Pleasure Droid = Japandroids?

Seven fun facts with Vancouver’s garage-rock duo

Japandroids’ Dave Prowse (left) and Brian King

Photo: Leigh Righton

Japandroids' MySpace status is right. The garage-rock duo from Vancouver never rests. And they wouldn't have it any other way.

Embarking on a full-scale tour that began at South by Southwest with eight shows in four days, guitarist Brian King and drummer Dave Prowse aren't planning on taking a time out amid all their scheduled stops — which include two more big name festivals, Bonnaroo and Sasquatch.

Japandroids not only welcome the rough and tumble lifestyle of a touring band, they love it. And garage-rock lovers everywhere can be thankful — non-stop touring helps ensure King and Prowse inevitably will be rolling into a town near you sooner rather than later. As for us Las Vegans, we get to welcome them to their first show in Sin City on Thursday at the Beauty Bar, alongside Long Beach, Calif. act Avi Buffalo and locals America Yeah.

The Weekly caught up with Prowse, as he and King cruised down the highway somewhere outside Chicago.

What's in a name: Brian and I had two different choices for what our band name should be, my choice was Japanese Scream, and Brian's was Pleasure Droid. We both kind of hated each other's name, so as a compromise we kind of just mashed the two together to come up with something else.

The kind of band they aren't: There're all these bands that you'll ask, "Oh you play in a band? Okay, what's your band kinda like?" And they'll say something as ridiculous as [Guns N Roses meets Iggy & The Stooges meets The Sonics meets The Rolling Stones] — you can't compare yourself to a band like The Stooges, or The Rolling Stones. You're just setting yourself up to look terrible if you're going to bring up those bands in the same sentence.

Perk to being a two-man band: Promoters seem to give the same amount of drinks to every band that comes through town, regardless of whether there are two people in the band or 10 people in the band. So we've really gotten to capitalize on that opportunity.

At a typical Japandroids show: Most people in the audience will leave being sweaty and having their ears ringing pretty badly. Basically just play loud and play as hard as you can.

Plans for Las Vegas: Brian's been there a bunch of times, but I've never partaken in what Las Vegas has to offer. [He] has some ideas of places to go — he keeps talking about this one casino where you can get dollar beers. He says there's always a plan to make that your home base, then you basically just grab some beers and walk around town — see all the ridiculousness that surrounds you. Our tour manager was telling us about this other thing called the Neon Graveyard that sounds pretty cool too.

The upcoming, five-singles series: It's a way of putting out more material until we actually take a really solid break to work on the next record. We're touring so much that we never really have that much time to work on new material. At the same time, we want to be able to put out new stuff so people that have seen us tour on the Post-Nothing record can come see us again and have some new stuff to listen to. We've got single number one ["Art Czars"] on tour with us [now].

Why they love touring: It's fun rolling into a new town every night and getting to play shows every night and getting free drinks every night — that's a pretty killer combination right there.