Wednesday 2 December 2009

J-MELO: Music Show Review

Title: J-MELO
Presenters: May J & Shanti
Director: Harada Nobuyuki
Year: 2005 –


We’re going off the beaten track this week as I have decided to go through with an old idea of mine and review J-MELO, a music program that airs on the NHK World channel. It features a mix of interviews, live sessions and music videos, and aims to promote Japanese music to the rest of the world.

The show’s unusual opening is an underwhelming CG affair, where a boat floats past a skyscraper-cityscape, where a golden star bounces into the ship’s pool, which retracts Thunderbirds style to unleash a pair of disembodied fluorescent pink lips, which themselves unleash a rotating love heart which shoots onto the mountain and makes a crotchet sprout out of the mountaintop. The ‘J-MELO’ logo then appears on-screen. The best kind of openings always have absolutely no relation to the show itself.

The show is currently presented by May J and Shanti, who I originally assumed were poppelganger clones, but I have since discovered that cannot be the case, as I dislike them unequally. Every week they appear in new outfits which seem to have been decided by committee, the difference being that the committee in charge of May J’s outfit seem to be slightly insane. This crazy-chic look is complimented perfectly by the fixed ‘forever and ever and ever’ smiles of the two, whose generic, forced enthusiasm for everything that comes up is about as sincere as a trout in the face

Luckily this inane faux-enthusiasm can be counter-balanced with the correct features or guests. I’ll draw examples from the most recent 2 shows to be aired. The first was a show completely focused on the jazz quintet Soil & ‘Pimp’ Sessions. It featured a number of live sessions performed in front a live audience in the studio, and was interspersed with interviews with the band, conducted by the cheer-duo May J & Shanti, as well as clips from various performances of theirs from around the world.

A 30-minute explosion of exposure is a surprisingly powerful thing, especially if the viewer has the ability to pause and has a notebook at hand. Thus I now not only know that I enjoy the energetic jazz of Soil & ‘Pimp’ Sessions, but I also know that my favourite member is the smiley drummer, who goes by the name Midorin. When I woke up this morning I was unaware of the existence of Soil & ‘Pimp’ Sessions, and I had no idea that at the end of the day I would have an opinion of their drummer. The rest of the group are made up of Shacho; a shouty/bouncy vocalist who does little singing but plenty of shouting into a megaphone, and also some miscellaneous percussion, Motoharu; a saxophonist who looks as though he should be in a 90s-punk outfit rather than a jazz ensemble, Akita Goldman; quiet and funky on the double-bass, Tabu zombie; decked out in a strange hat and a jumpsuit, he cuts an odd figure on the trumpet, and Josei; the only band member to actually look the jazz part, on the piano.

Having an entire episode dedicated to your performance is quite the exposé, and in hindsight anything else wouldn’t really do the band justice. Soil & ‘Pimp’ Sessions are quite eclectic, playing a mix of energetic and upbeat tracks, as well as more traditional piano-driven numbers. I felt that, having been given an episode to fill, they definitely shone and I will certainly be keeping my eye out for their releases in the future.

The second episode I caught was a less focused effort, and rather than showcasing one band in particular, it instead looked at ‘Autumn Releases’. It began with a montage featuring clips from a number of artists, and the diverse nature of the beast was a disorientatingly free offering. It began with some j-rock/visual kei from Sid, moving quickly on to some mellow rock from Nico Touches the Walls, then onto a piano track from Sambomaster, and then a pop love ballad from Nana Nishino. The unrelated goodness continued with quick bursts of grizzly hard rock from Rize, a piano and strings pop number from Ai Taketawa, onto a very old-school style melodramatic croon from Kenichi Mikawa, back onto mellow rock from Bump of Chicken, then to mawkish J-pop from Yui Makino, middle-of-the-road pop from Naotaro Moriyama, lovey hip-hop from Home Made Kazoku, straight to techno/dance-pop from Morning Musume, a classical number from Norimasa Fujisawa, finishing on some cheese-pop from Unicorn.

There was an odd duality to this mixed montage, it was refreshing to see such incongruous songs lined up together, as though the producers trusted the viewers to be open minded, but at the same time there was a feeling that the show was attempting to be as inoffensive as possible, and appeal to absolutely everyone. The latter idea was confirmed as they came out of the montage with Shanti addressing May J with: “Wow, so much variety there” before turning to-camera and declaring, in an un-expressably sinister way: “Something for everyone”. It must be a nightmare editing a show which is presented by pod-people, being drawn into a hypnotic trance at every turn.

It is hard to boil down my feelings for the show concisely, for as much as I take pop-shots at missuses May J & Shanti, I am actually in the thrall of their soothing mesmerism. The interviews they conduct can seem stilted and awkward, due to the fact that both the interviewers and the interviewees are often don’t have native-speaker fluency in English, but I feel this is more endearing, as they are willing to make the effort, and while I am a big fan of subtitles, I know that other, less subtitle-enthusiastic, individuals would appreciate this effort. Even the nasty habits of May J and Shanti, such as replying, as one, like satanic twins; ‘Mmmm’ to any information from the guests or shouting the name of the act in a mawkish fashion after they are done, can really detract from the enjoyment of the groups. The problem with this system is that it relies heavily upon your enjoyment of the act, and if you don’t enjoy their music then you’ll probably not enjoy the episode. The safety-net for this, then, is to often have a scattergun approach to billing acts, usually showcasing many various types of music in one half hour.

An enjoyable show for those interested in music, though I imagine it would be more enjoyable if the interest is specifically in Japanese music. Remember, though, an open mind is usually a good thing. I’ll allow Shanti (my favourite of the mesmeric/satanic twins) to sum up the program herself:

Shanti: (turning to camera) Something for everyone!

1 comment:

  1. Clips of the Shanti era or old openings seem quite hard to find nowadays.

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