20071115 “Half Japanese” from Uniontown named Number 94 on “Blender’s” best 100 indie albums

Half Japanese from Uniontown named Number 94 on Blender’s best 100 indie albums

Half Japanese, Jad and David Fair, are from Uniontown Carroll County Maryland is Number 94 – “Half Japanese - Greatest Hits” on “Blender picks the best 100 indie rock albums ever” posted November 14th, 2007 1:56 am by Jeff Skruck

Hat Tip: “Nov. 15: Top TV icons” By Jordan Bartel, Times Staff Writer Thursday, November 15, 2007 [And please report dead links…]

Although, for the uninitiated, “Half Japanese – Greatest Hits” is a great album, for really enjoying “Half Japanese,” the “Greatest Hits” 1995 album is like kissing your sister.

My two favorite “Half Japanese” albums are “Charmed Life” from 1988 and “the Band That Would Be King,” (with tracks like, “Daytona Beach,” “Africans Built the Pyramids,” and “Horseshoes,” from 1989.

More “About Half Japanese” – (Content by Craig Randall | Designed and Hosted by WebGrafix) from Article taken from MP3.com:

Few of punk rock's founding fathers could have anticipated the extreme to which Half Japanese took the music's do-it-yourself ethos.

Founded by brothers Jad and David Fair, Half Japanese was quite probably the most amateurish rock band to make a record since the Shaggs, all but ignoring musical basics like chords, rhythms, and melody.

However, the brothers made that approach into a guiding aesthetic, steadfastly refusing to progress in their primitive musicianship over a career that lasted decades.

David Fair's article "How to Play Guitar" outlined the Half Japanese philosophy: if you rejected conventional ideas about fingering, tuning, and even stringing a guitar, there were no limits on how you could express yourself on what was, after all, your instrument.

The band's proponents (who included Kurt Cobain) saw them as the epitome of a pure, unbridled enthusiasm for rock & roll, the ultimate expression of punk's dictum that rock should be accessible to anyone who wanted to pick up an instrument and play.

Detractors found them gratingly noisy, borderline unlistenable, and too self-conscious and willful about their naïveté. That naïveté extended to their lyrical outlook too, not just their technical abilities; when they weren't singing about horror movies or tabloid headlines, most of their songs were about girls…

Early on, with less outside influence, their work was more chaotic and cathartic; as time passed, David Fair became a sporadic contributor, and the prolific Jad built a core of semi-regular backing musicians who brought a rudimentary sense of songcraft to the proceedings.

Jad and David Fair formed Half Japanese in their bedroom in the mid-'70s. Accounts differ as to exactly when (somewhere around 1975-77) and where (either Michigan or their eventual base of Maryland; the family apparently moved around a lot). It is known that the brothers made their first home recordings in 1977, issuing their debut EP that year, Calling All Girls, on their own 50 Skidillion Watts label.

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Read the entire piece here: About Half Japanese

For a great interview please go to: http://youtube.com/watch?v=kcu2ONECf_8

About This Video: Some say Half Japanese were the world's greates... (more) Added: July 20, 2006 Some say Half Japanese were the world's greatest underground band. Jad and David Fair started the band HALF JAPANESE in their bedroom in Uniontown, Maryland in 1975. Though neither could play a single note on any instrument, they went on to record one of the greatest albums of all time.

HALF JAPANESE - The Band That Would Be King

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