TOKYO: Pretending to be obnoxious rock stars in the belief their band would never get noticed only became a problem for Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser when they suddenly became famous. For the two core members of the psychedelic New York-based band MGMT, sharp and fast fame brought by the success of their 2007 debut album Oracular Spectacular also tested a friendship formed at university. “It was a running joke for us when we would perform in college that we'd adopt these fake rock star personas when we played live, thinking that we were never going to get noticed,” said Goldwasser on the phone from New York. “But then we got noticed. And then we kind of freaked out.” MGMT (pronounced M.G.M.T.) are set to embark on an Asian tour that begins in Japan on Tuesday. That will be followed by appearances in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Hong Kong and South Korea, having navigated the tricky follow-up to a successful debut album. Fame, fortune and recognition as indie heartthrobs has drawn a complicated response from the band formed at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, a liberal arts and sciences school where the pair met as freshmen in September 2001. An early song, Time to Pretend, was both a fantasy and satire of rock stardom written at a time when neither took seriously the idea of being in a band, Goldwasser says.
