Half Japanese: Our Solar System --- Ink Blot Magazine

Half Japanese: Our Solar System

at a glance...

Hometown: Maryland
Formed: 1976

Members:
Jad and David Fair -vocals, drums and guitar
Mark Jickling -guitar, bass guitar, backing vocals
John Dreyfuss, Danny Finney, Lana Zabko -saxophone
Richie LaBrie, Jay Spiegel -drums
Don Fleming -guitar, bass guitar
Paul Watson, Rebby Sharp -guitar
Ricky Dreyfuss, Pippin Barnett -drums
Paul Watson -trumpet
Elaine Barnes -synthesizer, percussion
Andy Jickling -syndrum
Margie Moreman -guitar, backing vocals

Bands in the family :
Mosquito, Jad Fair, Daniel Johnston, DQE, Jason Willet, Gilles Rieder

Notes:
Half Japanese was founded by brothers Jad and David Fair in their parent's home in 1976. When they started neither could play an instrument; in the subsequent twenty-two years Jad has led countless line-ups of the band, which still generally prizes amateur enthusiasm over professionalism, and has sung hundreds of songs about monsters, women, and good luck. David left the band to be a family man sometime during the 1980s, but they still collaborate on the occasional song. In 1995 Half Japanese was the subject of the documentary film "The Band Who Would Be King."

Half Japanese
Our Solar System
Drag City, Released 1984; Reissued 2000

Jad Fair has ruled Half Japanese like a man who would be king for a decade, but originally he was an equal partner with his older brother David. This is David's record, and not just because he wrote most of the songs and sang a few of them in an urgent, indelicate bawl. This record makes flesh everything that the older Fair deemed great about rock and roll; it's spontaneous, noisy in a White Light/White Heat way, irreverent, and oozing with pimply, unrequited lust.

The disc is studded with covers by the Velvet Underground, the Thirteenth Floor Elevators, Buddy Holly, and the Kingsmen that declare Half Japanese's antecedents, but the originals hold their heads high. The reverb-bathed "Dance When I Say Dance" surely rings in Yo La Tengo's collective ears, and "Classical Music" articulates more about the differences between boys and girls in 38 one-syllable words than Sigmund Freud did in all his illustrious volumes.

If you like this album check out:
Half Japanese Sing No Evil
Half Japanese Heaven Sent
Jad Fair and Yo La Tengo Strange But True

-- Bill Meyer

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