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A short review of mini’s ELECTRO HAKO BANBAN PICASSO.

I think it’s great that Marty Friedman is so enthusiastic about Japanese pop music. However, for someone who has apparently been living or traveling to Japan for so long and speaks fluent Japanese, it is astonishing how little he understands the full scope of it. And as a musician (former member of Megadeth, current guitar virtuoso), writer, and speaker, it’s even more astonishing how his lecture “What is J-POP? ~Exposing the Myth of Japanese Music Phenomenon” is partly a failure of articulation. Friedman has ideas, they just get tangled and sprout half-formed. His tone borders on less-then-conversational, barely scratching the surface of popular Japanese music, while exposing his biases and the kind of thinking that makes one believe everything off one’s radar doesn’t exist at all. So basically, it might sound like I’m tearing this to pieces, and I guess I am, but since Friedman takes the time to apologize for his tastes several times during the lecture, I guess I can take the time to do it at least once: this lecture just wasn’t my thing. Sorry.

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occupiedterritories:

Here’s an interesting section where he talks about singing styles in Japan:

One thing that I really like to point out, particularly about her song and many female singers in Japan, is that they just sing the melody. There’s no bullshit, there’s no like ad-libbing, there’s no gospel singing, there’s no screaming. If a girl sings high, she’s just singing high, she‟s just singing the melody. It’s almost like playing the melody one note at a time, on a keyboard; which is unlike American pop singing. Especially the female ballads, the American girls have to constantly show all of their vocal ad-libbing, how great they can riff and stuff like that. […] To me that’s all American Idol stuff and American Idol, in my opinion, is everybody is just searching for the next Celine Dion and the next Mariah Carey, and it’s all about the vocal skill and range.

This is one of those things that annoys me the most when watching Ayumi’s concerts. When she tries to pull off this stuff, like in the “forgiveness” intro during “POWER of MUSIC,” it fails horribly and actually exposes her limits rather than make any kind of impact. Vocal gymnastics aren’t always the ideal technique and J-pop flourishes without it.

On the other hand, this lecture is problematic in many ways.

Sexy Zone, one of Johnny & Associates newest groups: is it just bad Engrish or another symptom of Japan’s large focus on adolescence?

I missed most of 2011: here is a ridiculously brief summary of three or four of my favorite, least favorite, and most interesting musical moments of the year.