Philip Brasor - The Japan Times

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Sep 2, 2001

They say breaking up in public is hard to do

Pop culture has given us many marriage archetypes. At one extreme, there was "Thin Man" Nick Charles and his wife Nora, who epitomized a partnership based on privileged cynicism: witty, alcoholic, rich and inseparable. At the opposite end are "The Honeymooners," Ralph and Alice Kramden: the short-tempered,...

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Aug 29, 2001

Marshall Crenshaw

With its encyclopedic array of early rock 'n' roll hooks and a spare guitar sound that anyone could duplicate, Marshall Crenshaw's eponymous 1982 debut was the perfect primer, the kind of record mainstream acts could plunder for material to plug into the already ebbing New Wave. The fact that the record...

CULTURE / Music

Aug 29, 2001

Boy Bands II Men Bands

On July 9, the day after the Backstreet Boys announced on MTV that their tattooed bad-boy member A.J. McLean was entering a rehabilitation facility for "alcohol and depression," advertisements appeared in the Japanese dailies announcing the Boys' Japan dome tour in November. Tickets, however, would not...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Aug 26, 2001

Intimidation, deception -- and that's just the cops

Earlier this summer, when an American serviceman was accused of raping a Japanese woman on Okinawa, the U.S. military authorities were put in a difficult position.

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Aug 22, 2001

Nina Persson: 'A Camp'

Not too many musical groups preface their name with the indefinite article, but A Camp doesn't describe a band so much as the state of mind that led to this album's recording. Promoted as a Nina Persson solo effort in fact, if not in name, the record of the same name is loose and uncluttered, dabbling...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Aug 19, 2001

Family drama of Koizumi's forgotten son

To: Fuji TV Attn: Programming Department, production division From: Izawa Office Talent Agency Re: Proposal for drama series

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Aug 12, 2001

'Model' family vs. maternal love: a nation judges

Last week, the Japan Office of the Nevada Center for Reproductive Medicine announced that a 60-year-old Japanese woman gave birth to a healthy baby at Jikei University Hospital in Tokyo. Though the woman's identity and the child's gender were not revealed, the mother released a statement through the...

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Aug 8, 2001

David Mead: 'Mine and Yours'

David Mead's songs are invariably described as "lush and sophisticated," adjectives that are normally a good indication something is boring. As a performer and songwriter, he's often compared to Paul Simon, probably because he's from New York and exercises a tendency toward complex phrasing. Further...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Aug 5, 2001

'It's a complicated story,' pleads a battered press

The press has taken quite a beating over its coverage of the murders at Ikeda Elementary School. Even before the funerals, letters to the editor columns were filled with missives from enraged readers lam basting the media's lack of either common decency or common sense. Most complaints concerned interviews...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Jul 29, 2001

Talking about the weather is no longer so boring

We tend to take weather forecasts with a grain of salt. Some people leave their umbrellas at home unless the probability of precipitation is over, say, 40 percent, while others keep a collapsible in their bag at all times because they don't know what to believe. We know it's raining because we are getting...

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Jul 25, 2001

The Avalanches: 'Since I Left You'

According to the credits on their debut album, "Since I Left You," The Avalanches are six young men, only two of whom play instruments (guitar and piano/percussion). The rest are listed as "mixers," which makes sense when you consider that the record contains no less than 900 samples. Surprisingly, no...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Jul 22, 2001

It's not always easy to see yourself as others do

On the face of it, the current controversy over Japanese history textbooks is just one more example of Japan not facing up to its militaristic past. On a deeper level, however, Korea's decision to forgo further liberalization of Japanese cultural imports until the offending texts are revised underscores...

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Jul 18, 2001

Edith Frost: 'Wonder Wonder'

As an artistic reference point, the music of Will Oldham -- he of the deathly pale complexion, tubercular Appalachian croak and sex-unto-death lyrics -- might teach you something valuable about mood and atmosphere, but you'd have to be crazy to copy his execution. Even Oldham himself has managed a few...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Jul 15, 2001

A spoonful of Koizumi helps the medicine go down

The continuance of Junichiro Koizumi's administration beyond the summer seems like a sure bet: Support for his Cabinet is over 80 percent, his e-mail magazine is being read by hundreds of thousands of subscribers, and every time the opposition questions one of his pronouncements, they are deluged with...

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Jul 11, 2001

'Discosis': Bran Van 3000

Bran Van 3000's 1998 debut, "Glee," was a clever and confusing patchwork of hip-hop, disco and pop-rock signifiers. The album produced one underground hit, "Drinking in L.A.," whose sardonic take on the snarky side of the music biz endeared the mysterious Montreal consortium of artists and musicians...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Jul 8, 2001

Money for nothing, but only if you spend it first

Television is often blamed for conditioning its audience in undesirable ways: We want things faster, easier, in bite-size pieces that don't require a lot of chewing. And everything must have a kicker, a dramatic endpoint that will justify our time in front of the box.

CULTURE / Film

Jul 4, 2001

Love: The final frontier

In science fiction, technological progress is often portrayed as bringing humankind ever closer to God in terms of understanding and exploiting the universe. At the beginning of Steven Spielberg's "A.I.," a scientist with the interesting name of Dr. Hobby (William Hurt) expounds before a group of underlings...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Jul 1, 2001

Innovative strategies that get the message across

The pointlessness of election campaigns in Japan is dramatically exemplified by the sound trucks screaming the names of their respective candidates over and over. The stupidity of election campaigns in Japan is audaciously exemplified by something that happened in my own neighborhood last week prior...

CULTURE / Music

Jul 1, 2001

The gospel according to Beyonce

A little-discussed truism of R&B is that female vocalists benefited more from Michael Jackson than male vocalists did, and none more than Karyn White. Only gays and black teenage girls seemed to appreciate White's potential as a revolutionary force in black dance music, someone whose natural gift for...

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Jun 27, 2001

Maria Muldaur

Maria Muldaur's 1973 debut album remains, for better or worse, the template for all those eclectic SoCal songbird collections by people like Linda Ronstadt and Valerie Carter; albums that included a little jazz, a little blues, one or two country songs (written by Dolly Parton, usually) and a familiar...

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