(the) Road to the Deep East

Shukan Bunshun is reporting an interesting happening occurred during the recording of SMAP's TV show.

According to it, SMAP invited a world-famous musician to their TV show, SMAPxSMAP last month. And in this show, they collaborated and performed their representative songs together. Then, the guitarist of the group got angry about the quality of SMAP's singing, and he suddenly stopped playing the guitar and left the stage. Then, other member from TO... no, the world-famous progressive rock group calmed his anger, and he came back, and the recording was taken place. However, before members of SMAP sang again, they had to take a one-hour vocal lesson from him. I can imagine faces of SMAP members were like 'ToT' then.

Why did Steve Lukather get angry about SMAP? Well, maybe he was simply disappointed at the vocal ability of SMAP. Maybe he was introduced SMAP by their agent or the producer of the show like this; 'You are going to perform with one of Japanese representative singers!!' 'How does their music like?' 'Well... well, Japanese Backstreet Boys!!' However, next time he had to listen to was Nakai-kun's voice... If I were him, I would have burnt up my guitar then.

The agent or producer should explain a little more: 'They are Japanese Backstreet Boys, but in Japan, you know, people need songs for karaoke. Hence, they are not so good as singers. So, please wink at their singing. ' Or, he or she should explain, SMAP stands for 'Sports Music Assembly People', sports come first, and Music arrives later.

--
Meanwhile, some other old rock stars who are coincidentally visiting Japan now are leaving posttive impression on Japanese music scene.

Huey Lewis & the News and Chicago started their Japan tour from April 15th , and in some interviews from Japanese press, Huey said that Japanese audience is listening the music more seriously than American audience, and had a certain sense of music. According to him, American audience recently is depending too much on downloads, hence they don't listen to music as seriously as when he was a boy.

Cheap Trick is also now visiting Japan, and they are now searching for 4 Japanese who wrote concert reviews when they came to Japan first in 1978. They became popular after Japanese audience found them, and they want to say thank you to these 4 reviewers who supported them in Japan and approved their music in early time.

In fact, not only Cheap Trick, in early 70s to 90s, there were several rock bands who became popular in Japan before they become popular in their own countries. Some may not believe, but Queen, and even TOTO were ones of them. Huey Lewis's impression may come from these ancient facts.

Recently, I didn't hear about this case: 'Internationally famous musician discovered by Japanese'. But just like these rock stars' testimony and actual evidences show, it is sure Japanese used to have a sense to detect the next big thing in world music industry. Maybe they don't understand language, so they were very sensible to the quality of the music itself.

So, ToTo's preaching sounds to me like preaching to all Japanese: 'Are you listening such music from such singers? Didn't you understand our music 30 years ago?' 30 years ago, when TOTO visited Japan first, there had already been idol groups and karaoke, but they are not influential as today. 30 years later, karaoke and idol music, especially the ones from Johny's, became popular, and some Japanese might have forgot a very important tenet of music: ' professional singers have to sing well.'

But wait. I wish Steve won't judge everything of current JPOP from SMAP. SMAP is just the tip of the iceberg. Not every Japanese audience is enjoying SMAP. Now I'm very interested in how these old rock stars react to 'GAME' from perfume. Will they scold them for Kashiyuka's vocal then?

[EDIT]
I watched the episode somehow, somewhere. ( youtube's one had already been deleted.)

First, every members of TOTO looked fine, not so unhappy in the interview. But durring the interview, Greg Phillinganes said, "You know you can not have a lot of time, I appreciate it." So, I think this interview was taken place after the preaching and live. This comment also infers that the accident mentioned in this acticle actually happened. Next Katori said, 'I wanna drink beer with Steve someday', so I guess these words are thrown to ammend their relationship.

...And the live performance aired next was terrible, and people in TOTO looked bored, or angry a bit. So, now I can believe that this article from Bunshun includes the part of truth.