Half Japanese
1/2 Gentlemen Not Beasts

Crazy. Absurd. Shocking. In one word: genius.

We are in 1980, in Atlanta. In no more than a dozen "indie" music stores, one of the most scandalously alternative albums of all time is released, on an unknown label like Armageddon, the triple "1/2 gentlemen not beasts," the debut album of a group of genuine jokers like Half Japanese.

This monument to madness, nonsense, absurdity, and the lack of any logic, already heralded on its monstrous cover, is terrifying. Listening to it is also terrifying: 50 tracks (in the CD version, extremely rare and almost completely disappeared, on two discs) in which the trio of Jad Fair, one of the most scrambled and genius minds of independent rock of the last twenty years, accomplishes the feat of massacring and disintegrating thirty years of rock, tearing apart even the few remnants that might survive. In pieces like "No direct line from my brain to my heart" or "Her parents came home", the scheme is mainly this: trying to attack the musical form of the composition right from the beginning, gradually eliminating any recognizable melody, occupying all "spaces" with voice, noises, dissonances, sudden and swift tempo changes, out-of-tune chords (imagine that our guys couldn't even play!) and raucous screams.

If we listen to tracks like "Bogue Millionaires" or "School Of Love", "I'm Sorry", "The Worst I'd Ever Do" or "Shy Around Girls", even the most bewildered Beefheart will seem like the best chamber composer! What characterizes these outbursts, these fragments of sick and distorted psyche, these "anything-but-songs" is the desire to oppose convention antithetically ("No More Beatle Mania"), rhythm ("I'm Going To The Zoo"), melody ("Ann Arbor"), catchiness ("Calling All Girls"), the verse-chorus-verse structure ("My Girlfriend Lives Like A Beatnik"), in short, everything that can ultimately be denoted as rock music! Alongside these flashes of non-lucidity, there are covers of Springsteen like "10th Avenue Freeze Out" and other new wave artists (but to call them "covers" is an insult to intelligence; these are true "acts of ruin"), explosions of noise and everything that cannot make music ("Shhhhhhhhhh" or "Grrrrrrrrrr", emblematic titles) and two live pieces, one in Baltimore and one in Washington.

The brave gesture of our guys was not, as was obvious and predictable, rewarded by success, but in the end, that's exactly what they wanted: to be provocative, polemical, aggressive to the inconceivable. With them, the contempt for a society alienated by consumerism and trends reached its peak, its zenith. Very few bands have been so extreme, so opposing, and antithetical.

An album that wanted to be more extreme than "1/2 Gentlemen Not Beasts" should be an empty album... "1/2 Gentlemen" in the end is one of those records you either love viscerally or hate with all your heart... personally, I'm for the former...

(I attach the track list because this album, as expected, is also untraceable on free.db!)

Disc 1: 1. No Direct Line from My Brain to My Heart 2. 10th Avenue Freeze Out 3. Ta Sheri Ta Ta 4. My Girlfriend Lives Like a Beatnik 5. Her Parents Came Home 6. Shhh/Shhh/Shhh 7. Girls Like That 8. RRRRRRRRRRRRRRR 9. No More Beatle Mania 10. Tangled Up in Blue 11. Patti Smith 12. School of Love 13. Jodie Foster 14. Shy Around Girls 15. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRR 16. Bogue Millionaires/Cool Millionaires 17. TN TN TN TN Ki 18. I Can't Stand It Anymore 19. I Love Oriental Girls 20. Dream Date 21. Du du Du/ Du du Du 22. Ain't Too Proud to Beg 23. Ann Arbor, Mi 24. I'm Going to the Zoo 25. Shi Yi Yi 26. Rave On 27. I Ta Na Si Na Mi Eee 28. Till Victory 29. Rip My Shirt to Shreds 30. I Don't Want to Have Monoo No More 31. She Cracked 32. BBBBBBBB/BBBBBBBBB

Disc 2: 1. Funky Broadway Melody 2. I'm Sorry 3. T/T/T/T/T/T 4. Worst I'd Ever Do 5. Live in Baltimore MD. 6. Live in Washington DC 7. Battle of the Bands 8. Worst I'd Ever Do 9. Ann Arbor, Mi 10. School of Love 11. Her Parents Came Home 12. Shy Around Girls 13. Dream Date 14. Bogue Millionaires/Cool Millionaires 15. Knock on Wood 16. Top Secret 17. Guitar Solo 18. Calling All Girls