Top Band -Season1

(# of pictures in this review/out of 10)

Top band is a name of a TV show. It's a band audition program where amateur bands compete against each other by tournament. And before the actual competition, they can choose their mentor among the famous experts of rock music and have lessons.  I really like this program, not only because I love rock music, but also the program helps the bands of Korea.

Korean indie bands aren't that famous among Korean people. So they suffer out of low income and interest. The program director was planning to make a documentary about the lives of Korean indie bands. However, the broadcasting station recommended the director to make a competition program, as it was a trend. So the program became in a shape of tournament among the bands, but it still carried the intention to advertise about bands.

The program showed the current situations and the hard times they had to overcome in order to present their music to the world. It was very impressive. The biggest problems they had were people's views toward them. When they declared that they would be musicians, their parents and friends opposed them. One father even threw a guitar out of the window to stop his son. And even after they became musicians, most were unpopular, so they had to suffer greatly. As the program contained such behind stories, people could learn about the backgrounds of the music. And as the program contained rock music itself, it advertised rock music to the public. The participants of the competition had a same goal, which is to notify Korean Indie rock music to the public, they helped and cheered each other.


Also, there are other types of bands than rock bands with electronic instruments. For example, there are Latin music bands, orchestra-like bands, brass bands, and many more. Also, people with musicians as jobs aren't the only ones who play in band. There are people who plays as a band member, but has a different job. Top band introduced these types of bands to the public, allowing publics to break the prejudice about bands, and giving courage to the minor bands and musicians.

Other competition programs had lot of operation behind the program to make the show more entertaining, like faking the statistics and directing people's every movement. However Top Band didn't had any. So the process was very clear, but it was less entertaining than the other programs. For example, Broken Valentine team, and Toxic team, who were considered to be in top4, had match in the round 16. So the Broken Valentine couldn't even go to the round 8, because the matching system wasn't controlled, and was out of drawing lots.

Also, as indie rock music is more about pursuing one's own music style than entertaining the public and adjusting to match the people, it certainly has limits as a TV program. As public's choice was included in the score, bands with unique and special styles had advantage. Also, visual was involuntarily included in the scorings as people preferred bands that were visually good.

Even though the program had few problems, it still had good effects on advertising the Korean indie bands to people, and it was very entertaining to me, as I really liked rock music. I am looking forward to seeing the participated bands in a bigger stage like the famous bands that came and performed for celebration. Also, I'm looking forward for the season 2 of Top Band.