Birth of a J-Pop Fan
By Benevolance
So it all starts with J-Caizer and…No. A little background first.
I was a musician for many years. I’m classically trained, my love is jazz, and Jenn has frequently (and rightly) accused me of musical snobbery. Well, that’s true. I have strong opinions about music after having invested so much time into it. But where I would tolerate some music – notably 70’s rock – I’ve always been pretty condescending about the Pop style.
You know the stuff: Brittany Spears, Shakira, Usher…I don’t ever really listen or care who the artists are. I hear it all the time, but I never listen. It’s trite, it’s forumlaic, there is little depth. And it’s always over-produced. It can be catchy, sure – I can’t deny that: but two or three spins later and the song isn’t catchy anymore, it becomes downright annoying.
Compare such music to, say…Ella Fitzgerald. Her rendition of Mack the Knife from the Berlin album is awesome. Or Betty Carter’s The Good Life…fucking intense. Or Bach writing a single melody line, then changing clefs and inverting bars to create a 4-part invention that doesn’t just work, but kicks ass and takes names. Holy fuck! Even Frank Sinatra, the blandest of the big band era, had some powerhouse instrumentals to back him up. It’s music that demands something of the listener; it requires participation.
So enter JC. He’s raving about this cartoon called One Piece. Jenn and I were learning japanese and I was looking for entertaining material that would involve us listening to native Japanese speakers. Anime seemed perfect, One Piece was recommended and the show is about pirates. Cool. I was really just looking for fun study material, but the opening theme was done by a japanese big band and I was all Fuck Yeah! and kept watching. As it happens, the show turns out to be awesome, too.
Then at about episode 50, the unimaginable happened: they change to opening theme…to “Believe.”
From big band to…dance? What were they thinking? And if I weren’t already so invested in the show, I may have stopped watching entirely. They would later change the opening theme again, and the ending themes. None of the new music ever quite sat well with me. I yearned for the raw wailing saxes, the feverent punctuation of trumpets, and some slick crooning.
Around this time my usual workout music wasn’t working for me: long runs can be rather dull if I’m not feeling inspired, so a distraction is nice. I had listened to all the rock music I could handle. In a fit of desperation, I threw some One Piece episodes onto the headphones and went for a run. I could practice Japanese while running. Hooray for multitasking!
Being that I was a captive audience, I listened more attentively than I otherwise might. I would go through three to five episodes in a long run, and I’d end up hearing the opening theme seveal times. And the unexpected occurred: one particular segment with a string of glottal stops (you know, when you say ‘ah-ah’ you need to do something with your throat to re-articulate the ‘ah’ sound) sounded really cool. I listened more closely the next time the theme came around, and darn if I didn’t pick out a few other interesting musical bits while I did.
Gradually I began to like the song. The song was emminently well suited for workouts: it was high energy, it was becoming infectious, it inpsired me to work harder. I sought other songs of similar intensity, beginning with the other One Piece openings and endings I’d previously snubbed. Before I realized it, I had two hours of music queued up for my workout and it was all J-pop.
I wanted to workout whenever the music came on. I began to listen to it outside of exercising. I began to involutarily sing snippets of the songs. To my dismay, I realized I was a god damned addict. I tried to get into rehab, but A-A said listening to pop music wasn’t really a disease. Fucking fascists! I needed help and they denied me!
In the end I reconcilled myself to fate. Though I yet pine for my days of sanguine musical elitism – those glory days when I could look down my nose at more plebian musical tastes and decry “She’s no Ella Fitzgerald! He’s no Sergei Rachmaninoff!” – I must confess that I am pleased with my newly broadened musical horizons.
Posted by wingmanexe
