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at a glance...
Hometown: Maryland
Formed: 1976
Members:
Gilles V. Rieder -drums, percussion, keyboard
John Sluggett -guitar
Jad Fair -vocals, noise
special guests :
Dallas Good -bass
Steve Petter -guitar
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. In 1995 Half Japanese was the subject of the documentary film
"The Band Who Would Be King."
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Half Japanese
Heaven Sent
Trance Syndicate, Released 1997
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Keith Richards once opined that any band could be the greatest one
in rock and roll on any given night, and Half Japanese has held that honor
more often than most. But I'd begun to believe that band leader Jad Fair
had lost the touch; their last couple of albums sounded rote, and on recent
tours the band was staffed by underfed skate-metal dudes whose
contributions sounded irredeemably pedestrian compared to the sterling work
of ex-members Maureen Tucker, Mark Jickling, and the Dreyfuss brothers.
Ididn't expect much from this record, but it's nice to be proved wrong now
and again.
"Heaven Sent," an hour-long song recorded during a Dutch radio
broadcast, doesn't just fly, it soars. Fair chants a stream-of
consciousness river of promises, pleas, cliches, and non-sequiturs over a
backdrop of Velvety churning that's punctuated by blasts of megaphone
static. It's hard to articulate how it works,
but it does; when the singer proclaims, after 58 minutes, that "Our time
has come!" I want to tell him to keep going. The disc ends with nine
minute-long remixes that lack the cumulative power of the real thing but
will make life easier for radio programmers.
If you like this album check out:
Half Japanese Sing No Evil
Half Japanese Our Solar System
Jad Fair and Yo La Tengo Strange But True
The Velvet Underground White light, White Heat
Beat Happening Dreamy
-- Bill Meyer
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