Half Japanese
The Band That Would Be King

"I read the writing on the wall/ In fact I’m the guy that wrote it".

“I read the writing on the wall/ In fact I’m the guy that wrote it”.

Jad Fair is a true genius. A true amateur. A true alternative.

Jad Fair is a lion under the donkey's skin.

Jad Fair is the wild wandering of a free spirit, as insane in his innocence as in his manifold voluptuousness.

Jad Fair brings back the ritual value of listening. He resacralizes the artwork which is no longer mere merchandise. He makes music as total and purely expressive art. Art, yes. The popular kind, not aristocratic. The "alternative," wonderful and atypical, in its simplicity and amateurism.

And with what? With his post-punk alternative beyond any alternative. The alternative non plus ultra. No more alternative. The unparalleled frankness, raw and, if it had a color, scarlet.

With Jad, we feel the abyss that digs beneath the feet of civilization. What remains of contemporary man? Spontaneity. Expressive spontaneity which will save the world.

An innocence so radical that it becomes subversive. His weakness is his strength.

The eponymous film of the album in question, "The Band That Would Be King," by director Jeff Feuerzeig (distributed only in art house theaters) in the second sequence, before the vinyl attack of “Calling All Girls,” shows us the Fair brothers in 1992 in Uniontown, Maryland, where they had moved about a dozen years earlier with their parents. The hefty David, a portrait of meekness, narrates their home beginnings in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1975 and their love for the MC5. Jad, much shorter, thick glasses a meter thick, like the bottom of a glass bottle, an obvious consequence of sexual frustration, stands silently by his side. A wonderful image that synthesizes the genius and the fool present in both. And I say this with great affection. Iconic! A true emblem of alternative rock. Two nerds of opposite builds, in two overcoats more expressive than their faces.

David is the non-musician. His eccentricity is euphemistically anti-academic and concretely haphazard. His goal is to forbid band members from learning to play their own instruments, to avoid limits and conventions, in favor of pure gestural abstraction. Jad, the poet, is irrational vitality, eccentric, but not exuberant. His goal is to free hearts from troublesome thoughts. Over time, he would be the one to carry on the "Half-Japanese," revealing and hiding under a coarse crust a great songwriting talent.

After the release on 50 Skidillion Watts of the singles “Calling All Girls” (1977) and “Mono/No No” (1978), they debuted on the unknown Anglo-Saxon Armageddon in 1980. It was very simply the first and only triple debut album in rock history. A must. A milestone. Or rather, three. “1/2 Gentlemen Not Beasts” is naturally a genius and unclassifiable work. That is, 50 chaotic and disorganic home recordings, which invent lo-fi, noise, indie, alternative, perhaps before those terms had meaning. Fragmentation, atonality, clear hallucinations, thick and guitar spasms, deaf and tribal drumming, cascading winds, absence of riffs and choruses, stubborn repetition, an appearance of greatness in praise of chaos.

Lester Bangs decreed “Half Japanese: a completely new musical genre.” Robert Christgau of Village Voice wrote that “1/2 Gentlemen Not Beasts practically redefines rock'n'roll.”

Music as absurd as it is honest and true. All other songs, after listening to “1/2 Gentlemen Not Beasts,” will appear as illusions or blandishments. At least a little. Haphazardness itself becomes the fundamental driving force of the compositional act and performance. Marking the future paths of rock.

The idiosyncratic greatness of Jad Fair shines through his uncoordinated, frail, and violent sound at the same time, in his naivety-approach free music (and punk attitude, if I may use the term) that combines Jonathan Richman/Modern Lovers with the classic pop of the '60s, the Velvet Underground in a regressus to utero with the dada-jazz of “Trout Mask Replica,” the absolutely free experimental rock of Frank Zappa with the instrumental illiteracy of “Philosophy Of The World” by the Shaggs, the boisterous spirit of the Fugs with the psychic automatism of Albert Ayler's free-jazz, the violent impetus of “Raw Power” and the MC5 with the atonality and frenzy of the Teenage Jesus and the Jerks. Yet these are terms of comparison because it is advisable to definitely take on the listening of this incommensurable masterpiece.

Primitivism returns in the streams of consciousness of “Loud” (Armageddon, 1981), another alternative masterpiece, and in “The Horrible EP,” a dark homage to horror cinema, while Jad also begins his solo career.

At the end of the '80s, brother David's presence becomes intermittent, and here with “Music to Strip By” (50 Skidillion Watts, 1987), where Dave is absent to attend to their parents' care, the more musical phase of Half Japanese begins. Mark Kramer (owner of Shimmy Disc, about to produce “Today” by Galaxie 500) is beside Jad. The sound becomes more professional, and this is not necessarily a defect, approaching the garage-rock of 13th Floor Elevator and Amboy Dukes. Jad's accessibility remains awkward, ungainly, yet somehow malleable, though starry-eyed. Indeed, the three LPs produced at the time by Half Japanese, “Music to Strip By,” “Charmed Life,” and “The Band That Would Be King,” were collected together by Fire in 2015 in “Volume 2: 1987-1989” and form a fairly compact triptych, without excesses of noise or abstraction. Most songs, in fact, feature verses, choruses, even bridges, and somehow Jad's melodic vocation is also enchanting. However, the stylistic hallmark of the "Half Japanese" remains clear, an extroverted and elusive music, strong with an irregular, lost, and twisted voice. Jad then reveals his narrative talent, channeling his obsessions and discomforts into songs of distorted charm, yet candid, comic, and abstruse, yet poignant. The merit is due to his totally naive sensitivity.

The process of listenability, which is also a trial against listenability, culminates precisely with “The Band That Would Be King” (50 Skidillion Watts, 1989).

Here Jad sings of love with words so innocent and immature as to move, with a crumbled, self-referential, anomalous, naive, and disjointed voice. His register shares something with Gordon Gano and Jonathan Richman. Singing, often spoken, that quivers with candor and expresses a sense of defeat without battles. Yet as sharp as his verses are, as versatile and elusive the singing appears. Irony, quips, sharp couplets, inversions of sense, absurd jokes, in an engaging back-and-forth. A loquacity related to the labyrinthine ravings of Mark E. Smith. The Fall of Maryland? Why not?

If “Music to Strip By” tackles edgy themes, through distorted blues and skeletal melodies, “Charmed Life” is more humorous and anecdotal, with David back in the line-up. “The Band That Would Be King” results in a synthesis of the two projects, with a further push for renewal.

The 1993 edition boasts the addition of no less than 11 unreleased tracks, with a fantastic and edgy altered version of “Sugarcane” and an entirely insane and delirious “Jump Up.” The ordinary album holds potential hit singles, quality rock’n’roll tracks, humorous pieces, without renouncing small experiments.

The band for this work lines up Jad Fair, Don Fleming (BALL /Gumball), Mark Jickling, credited as Mr. J. Rice, Kramer (Shockabilly, Bongwater), Scott Jarvis, Rob Kennedy, and special guest Georges Cartwright (jazz saxophonist), Fred Frith (formerly of Henry Cow), and avant-gardist John Zorn.

Compared to the enthusiasm of “Charmed Life,” the sound is generally harder. The songs are clear, but the execution is more raw and, at times, also angry. On the cover Jad challenges Elvis Presley in the ring. Elvis' smug grin is met with Jad's almost confident gaze, under thick glasses. Both boxers are portrayed in a plastic motion.

Fair's writing is characterized once again by its honest and straightforward feelings. “The Band That Would Be King” runs midway between torture and sweetness, Jad is in balance, precarious, but balance, between joy and heartbreak. How is it done? “Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris. Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior” (You may wonder how it is done! I don’t know, but it happens and it’s my torment). Catullus fits well with Fair. As much as that dichotomy blends with the record, as much it makes it vivid and current. Also, in these grooves, the path of indie rock is traced, not only in the emphasis on DIY that does not avoid melody but also through a direct emotional and affective exposure.

Everything, it must be acknowledged, lies in an absolute dependence on Jad's peculiar character. The crowd of eccentric personalities accompanying him is magnetized by his personality. And Jad, unlike the loneliness or intimacy expressed by other often self-destructive alternative anti-heroes, has the privileged ability to make his personal obsessions relatively explicit and ultimately universal. They present us with a collective and global landscape. Not for a triumph, of course, but at least to feel we are all in the same boat, a little less lonely.

Jad Fair, the isolated genius and amateur of Maryland, is the standard-bearer of alternative and independent rock. A champion with a permanent panic register. Jad sings in a disjointed way, dragging the syllables, swallowing them. It’s like a swelling torrent, but extraordinarily clear. Then he can sprinkle some sugar on top. Pieces like "Open Your Eyes/Close Your Eyes," all urgency, rhythmic emphasis, and excitement, shine in this album; "Daytona Beach" made of pseudo-romantic languors between sun in the eyes, sand in the shoes, cold women, and hot pizza, the funeral lament of "Some Things Last A Long Time" with the long sighs of the saxophones, the bizarre miniature of "Ride Ride Ride", reaching "Put Some Sugar On It", one of the most beautiful and tender melodies of his entire career, and even "Ashes On The Ground", with a dreamy and yet alienating melody using a double voice. There is no shortage, as always, of curious titles like "Ventriloquism Made Easy", "Deadly Alien Spawn" or "Curse Of The Doll People", meaning "Ventriloquism is easy", "Deadly alien eggs", "The curse of the dolls". Or emblematic titles like "Every Word Is True" and "I Live For Love".

At this point, it's pointless even to hypothesize pointing out the flourishing, plump, hypertrophic subsequent discography, both “Japanese” and solo by Jad. However, among collaborations, we should mention the names of Yo La Tengo, Moe Tucker, Daniel Johnston, J. Mascis, Teenage Fanclub, Thurston Moore, and Steve Shelley from Sonic Youth. Among the new crazy ventures, apart from the improbable collection of lullabies “Sing Your Little Babies To Sleep” with 26 tracks titled with as many letters of the alphabet and all dedicated to monsters, in collaboration with his brother, we should mention the 1/2 Japanese "Heaven Sent" (Emperor Jones, 1997), where 64 of the 73 total minutes are credited to the title track, simply the longest rock song of all time. The indomitable Jad continues nowadays to apply himself to the “Half Japanese”: in 2017 he releases "Hear the Lions Roar" and in January of this year, "Why Not?" came out. Works that slip out of hand as soon as you try to grasp and unravel them. Where Jad still shows his predilection for the childlike grace that has always distinguished them, until exacerbating it.

That’s why Half Japanese are gentlemen, not beasts.