I caught the end of the music show Hey! Hey! Hey! last night, and one of the episode’s featured guests was the pop-rock group Orange Range. These guys have made a career out of ripping off chord progressions from countless other musicians who possess actual talent, slapping them together to loosely form what might be considered a song and then trying to pass it off as their own original work “with influences.” Their target audience — airheaded junior high school kids with an apparent proclivity for sniffing glue — is completely clueless about the source material and sadly couldn’t possibly even care, and thus, the barely pubescent boys of Orange Range continue to find success, rake in the dough and inspire the creaming of their underage fans’ panties.

Just to set the record straight before I incur the wrath of any Orange Range fans (as I did with that Otsuka Ai post last year) — I have absolutely nothing against Japanese musicians or the practice of sampling in general. The entire hip-hop genre wouldn’t even exist if it weren’t for the sampling of beats and breaks from earlier songs and incorporating them to create something new and fresh (I’m referring to old school hip hop here; the state of the current scene is pitiable). Whether or not Orange Range properly licenses the riffs they “borrow,” I don’t know, nor is that all that important to my point. I’m also not claiming superiority over naiveté and ignorance of the average Orange Range fan. I myself was young(er) and stupid(er) once; in fact, I clearly remember the first time I played the MC Hammer CD that I won for my performance of Young MC’s Bust a Move in a lip-synching contest. When my favorite tune at the time, U Can’t Touch This, came on, my music buff father commented, “Oh, that’s Rick James [bitch],” to which I rolled my eyes and idiotically replied, “No it isn’t, Dad, it’s MC Hammer” (feel free to laugh at me to your heart’s content, I certainly do).

However, as I see it, the sampling of riffs and breaks for the composition of a underlying beat used to complement something hip and innovative is completely different from the ganking of a variety of melodies or chords with only the last couple of notes in the progressions changed or the rhythms slightly altered, and then sticking them together with some moronic lyrics and calling it original. It’s a thin line, I’ll admit that, but one has to look at the significance of the new, original material that ideally should compose the majority of the work.

Now, before I make myself sound even more moronic and pretentious than I already do, I hereby enter into evidence a flash animation detailing several examples of Orange Range’s complete lack of creativity here. The text is in Japanese, but one will no doubt recognize several of the original riffs lifted from Western artists such as Queen, Bon Jovi and Kiss, Japanese artists such as Mr. Children and Spitz, and even Dr. Mario (!). In addition, here’s an article with further information about the band and their “mix of influences.”

Just so I don’t come off as a complete crotchety bastard, unlike the generic Boy Bands whose fifteen minutes I wish would hurry up and end already, the guys in Orange Range actually do play their own instruments, so despite their inherent wankertude, I have to at least give them some props for that. They also seem to be quite adept at plucking their eyebrows, too.