when an anti-establishment hippie is established...

 a happy day on mouse control

Disclaimer: I must have all who belong to the Japanese cult know that my exposure to Japan’s music has been but three days, and that any trespasses/ referential errors contained herewith be excused.

From a half-hearted viewpoint it would seem not too different from Eat Bulaga.

Here is a comedian host of over a decade with unchanging appeal—Music Station’s Tamori has been wearing what seems to be the same pair of shades since 1996; the oldest clip I could find at You Tube—and a deadpan wit that has the audience in stitches nearly half the time, with a pretty young lass for a co-host, and a featured music artist/ group. A preliminary interview here, an album plug there—you don’t understand anything except the “Hais” and “Arigatos”—and then, often to the shrieking of fans, the live  performance.

It just so happens that the first clip I saw was a comedic take on popular pop artists—comedians with wigs and exaggerated moves were impersonating groups like Kat-Tun and Han-Kun. Near the end, a man in a curly blond afro and a protruding belly was joined onstage by the mishmash of performers for a dance number. The finale is a shot of the curly blonde with his pants around his ankles—exposing a pair of shiny retro jockeys. The audience is rendered immobile with laughter.

The original artists, though, as subsequent clips would show, step out to real adoration. These celebrities triumphantly work the hanamichi and execute choreographed moves as back-up dancers in matching suits tumble out of nowhere. These are Japan’s brightest musical stars, and to their legion upon legion of fans, the world is this stage.

So at first glance it would seem like your regular Pinoy noontime show.

Except that no Pinoy noontime show had ever, ever consumed me with the almost rabid desire to see more.

Music Station, under the guise of a harmless musical program, is actually a cultural time-space vortex.

In a span of ten short minutes, the initial annoyance you will feel at being unable to decipher neither dialogue nor lyric will become immaterial. It will be all about the artist, the music, the fans and the unexplainable potency of this combination.

Faced with Tokyo’s J-pop celebrities, adjectives you’ve known all your life will suddenly become incompetent. There are electrically spacey, wild-haired, girl-fronted groups like Judy and Mary; wilder-haired bands like ghoulish rockers BZ, the fur-coated Gackt;  identically dressed and barefoot pixie girls Biyuuden; Atari girls Halcali; Yakuza-inspired gangsters L‘arc en Ciel; and many, many other strange guitarists, drummers, keyboardists, acrobats, vocalists and other national heroes in leather. As this one hour weekly program works as a syndicated teleport to our Asian neighbor’s id, it means you will also find, among others, the guaranteed powerhouse combo of five good-looking men who can sing, dance, and most important of all, point to the sky while bending. This is carried out most ably by who I assume to be the current kings of this genre, Kat-Tun.  (Just so you know what you’re up against, comments following each Kat-Tun video is more or less a variation of the following:

‘ they're soooo cute ^-^

sigh they all so cute

uhm, i think kame should have a haircut. haha. but he's hot that way, too. ^^
anyway, i really really really love ueda!

omigod!! i luv akanishi!!!! he's soooooo HOT.’

—Guys whose girlfriends fainted at F4’s Manila “concert,” take necessary precautions. These Kat-Tun guys are lethal. Their latest single “Signal”, for instance, is almost Justin Timber-like in execution).

But then you have the ladies. Soulful soloists like Ayumi Hamasaki who just bowled my non-Japanese trained ears over with a haunting piece called Hanabi. And gothic punk Mika Nakashima with a beautiful live version of Hitoiro. I later find out that Hitoiro is a soundtrack from a movie that Mika Nakashima actually appeared in, and that Hanabi, meaning fireworks, was used in an anime series. Only much later on, upon finding myself pleasantly surprised to see a clip of Mika with Hyde of L‘arc en Cie playing the guitar, did I realize that I ‘d been hooked.  Badly.

I acquainted myself further with another Hide, who, a decade ago already had pink hair, was making faces at the camera, and was already singing of beauty and stupidity, with lyrics that went: I just wanna make love, I don’t wanna fall in love. And this little kid Nishikido Ryo—who in a stylish hat and Michael Jackson threads danced and sang and allowed himself to be carried on the head of a much older duet partner —all while performing a very fun version of Secret Agent Man in Japanese.

And this group called Sambo Masters, whose members didn’t look at all different from a corner store grocer, but ironically could incite the greatest rock riot in the audience.

I could now recognize several of the Japan’s pop icons, having gone beyond the show’s casual novelty. It is only either very easy or very difficult to appreciate Music Station’s allure. And once you do, you go beyond. And once beyond, you discover a culture that’s really amazing, artists that are really good, and a nation that is really strange.

So why should you watch Music Station?

Because long after I’d gotten enough material for this review did my fingers continue clicking on their clips.

Because prior to this bout of YouTubism all the knowledge I possessed on

Japanese music could be spelled out in a non-word and a Roman numerical figure—Voltes V to you Power Ranger tots—and now I’ve got artists like Rie Fu and Mosume Morning swimming in my head.

And because no matter how close we feel we are to understanding this nation, through something as primal and visceral as imbibing their music—we find out rather that it’s because of it, that we never really will.

Posted by: Hoon at 07:59 | link | comments (1)

Comments:

#1  03 February 2007 - 03:39

 

J-pop!

I point you to the following artists:

Shiina Ringo, Asian Kung Fu Generation, Bonnie Pink, Puffy Amiyumi, Kahimi Karie and Cornelius (a personal favorite but a bit too experimental for some people).

BanzaiDescent

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