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Watch the new Half Japanese video ‘Undisputed Champions’ animated by Jad Fair himself
11.09.2020
02:18 pm
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The legendary Jad Fair blesses us with a new album in 2020. Here’s “Undisputed Champions,” a preview of the upcoming Half Japanese album Crazy Hearts, due out on December 4th.

The video was animated by Jad himself who says:

“Undefeated, undisputed, undeniable, unstoppable,
Untoppable, unflappable and unquestionably great.
Take a pen and underline the word great. To quote
The Beatles ‘All you need is love.’ To quote me
‘Damn straight.’ Celebrate the celebration. Bravo
The undisputed champions.”

The album will be available on see-through turquoise vinyl and CD. Preorder Crazy Hearts here.
 

 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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11.09.2020
02:18 pm
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Nirvana, Yo La Tengo, and Half Japanese meet in the Super Stinky Puffs, 1994
10.27.2017
09:16 am
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The Stinky Puffs’ Simon Fair Timony was “underground rock’s coolest adolescent,” according to Trouser Press, which also said the boy had been “raised among the Residents.” At the age of seven, Timony could have been the subject of his own rock band “family tree” poster. His parents, Tom and Sheena(h), had both worked at Ralph Records, and his stepfather was Jad Fair of Half Japanese. Cody Linn Ranaldo, son of Sonic Youth’s Lee, played guitar and maracas in the Stinky Puffs. Kurt Cobain loved them.

Enriched, perhaps, by his line of Stinky Clothes (available in “men’s blazer,” “ladies’ jacket,” turtleneck, pants, and “dress skirt” styles), Simon Timony hired one hell of a band for his set at the first Yoyo A Go Go festival in July 1994. Ira Kaplan of Yo La Tengo, Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl of Nirvana, and stepdad Jad backed Simon on “Buddies Aren’t Butts,” “Menendez’ Killed Their Parents,” “I’ll Love You Anyway” and “I Am Gross/ No You’re Not.” Newspapers and rock media reported that Novoselic and Grohl had reunited to play with a ten-year-old in their first show together since Cobain’s suicide. The New York Times mentioned it that August, when you could see Von LMO at CBGB for $8 or Jad Fair and the Stinky Puffs on the Coney Island Boardwalk for $6.
 

Kurt Cobain, Simon Timony and Snakefinger on the cover of ‘Songs and Advice’
 
After the San Francisco Giants won the 2012 World Series, Timony was badly hurt trying to stop a mob from destroying a Muni bus and its passengers; SF Weekly says the city rewarded him with free Muni rides for life. His current band is Gaviotas.

In the audio clip below, the Stinky Puffs’ “Pizza Break” is followed by the Super Stinky Puffs’ “Menendez’ Killed Their Parents,” live at Yoyo A Go Go. The Super Stinky Puffs’ full six-minute live set appears on A little tiny smelly bit of…... The Stinky Puffs, and Timony’s full musical response to Cobain’s death is Songs and Advice for kids who have been left behind.
 

Posted by Oliver Hall
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10.27.2017
09:16 am
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Half Japanese ‘Overjoyed’ mini-doc features members of Sonic Youth, REM, and Velvet Underground
08.06.2014
04:35 pm
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It’d be tempting to dismiss this “mini-documentary” as a mere advertisement for a record release if the subject weren’t the incandescent and seminal lo-fi band Half Japanese.

Since their debut triple-album‘s 1980 release, the band, helmed by Mr. Jad Fair, have advanced an influential primitivist approach to rock music, which has made them one of those bands that see little marketplace success but are utterly beloved by other musicians. So beloved, in fact, that Fair’s bandmates have over the years included, among many others, noted producer and Velvet Monkeys/Gumball honcho Don Fleming, Shimmy-Disc boss and Bongwater multi-instrumentalist Kramer, and Velvet Underground drummer Mo Tucker.
 

 
So when it was announced that Half Japanese would be returning with a new album after a thirteen year layoff, it was surely an easy matter to find plenty of glowing testimonials from folks you can trust. (It’s worth noting that Fair has spent that downtime pursuing the visual arts, and if you can catch an exhibit, I recommend it, his work is great fun.) Overjoyed will be released by Joyful Noise on September 2, 2014, and members of REM, Sonic Youth, the Velvet Underground, NRBQ, Teenage Fanclub and many, many others are eager to tell you all about why you should care. If what you see here whets your appetite for more, you really need to see the 1993 documentary The Band That Would Be King. I’ve said this before, many times, but as far as I’m concerned it bears infinite repeats: if that doc doesn’t make you want to start a band, you might have no soul.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds
Virtuosity in minutes: Half Japanese’s only guitar lesson you’ll ever need
‘Indie, punk, Motown, Brill Building and Velvets’: meet the street karaoke maestro of Los Angeles

Posted by Ron Kretsch
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08.06.2014
04:35 pm
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Virtuosity in Minutes: Half Japanese’s Only Guitar Lesson You’ll Ever Need
09.08.2013
11:17 am
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halfgentlemen
 
Maryland brothers Jad and David Fair formed Half Japanese in 1975, affecting a strange but undeniably charming musique brut posture that won them a nearly instant cult following on the release of their debut triple-LP (!!!) 1/2 Gentlemen/Not Beasts. Themes ranged from love to horror film kitsch, and anything resembling recognizable tonality was out of the question, as neither brother was able to tune his guitar in any conventionally understood sense.
 

 

 
halfjapphoto
 
Of course in the ‘70s and ‘80s, punk’s anyone-can-play ethos was on the road to becoming a mundane part of the underground rockscape, but a brilliant little mini-manifesto from David Fair revealed that to Half Japanese, this wasn’t mere us-too naivete, but method. I first encountered the writing in the liner for the 1995 2-CD set Half Japanese Greatest Hits.

How to play Guitar
by David Fair [of Half Japanese]

I taught myself to play guitar. It’s incredibly easy when you understand the science of it. The skinny strings play the high sounds, and the fat strings play the low sounds. If you put your finger on the string farther out by the tuning end it makes a lower sound. If you want to play fast, move your hand fast and if you want to play slower move your hand slower. That’s all there is to it. You can learn the names of notes and how to make chords that other people use, but that’s pretty limiting. Even if you took a few years and learned all the chords you’d still have a limited number of options. If you ignore the chords your options are infinite and you can master guitar playing in one day.

Traditionally, guitars have a fat string on the top and they get skinnier and skinnier as they go down. But the thing to remember is it’s your guitar and you can put whatever you want on it. I like to put six different sized strings on it because that gives the most variety, but my brother used to put all of the same thickness on so he wouldn’t have so much to worry about. What ever string he hit had to be the right one because they were all the same.

Tuning the guitar is kind of a ridiculous notion. If you have to wind the tuning pegs to just a certain place, that implies that every other place would be wrong. But that’s absurd. How could it be wrong? It’s your guitar and you’re the one playing it. It’s completely up to you to decide how it should sound. In fact I don’t tune by the sound at all. I wind the strings until they’re all about the same tightness. I highly recommend electric guitars for a couple of reasons. First of all they don’t depend on body resonating for the sound so it doesn’t matter if you paint them. As also, if you put all the knobs on your amplifier on 10 you can get a much higher reaction to effort ratio with an electric guitar than you can with an acoustic. Just a tiny tap on the strings can rattle your windows, and when you slam the strings, with your amp on 10, you can strip the paint off the walls.

The first guitar I bought was a Silvertone. Later I bought a Fender Telecaster, but it really doesn’t matter what kind you buy as long as the tuning pegs are on the end of the neck where they belong. A few years back someone came out with a guitar that tunes at the other end. I’ve never tried one. I guess they sound alright but they look ridiculous and I imagine you’d feel pretty foolish holding one. That would affect your playing. The idea isn’t to feel foolish. The idea is to put a pick in one hand and a guitar in the other and with a tiny movement rule the world.

As a guitar player myself, I was floored by how perfectly sensible every damn word of that is. Here’s a condensed version, from Jeff Feuerzeig’s absolutely marvelous documentary Half Japanese - The Band That Would Be King, which I unconditionally recommend to anyone interested in playing music for the sheer love of music, all other considerations be damned. Honestly, if you can watch this film and not even just fleetingly want to form a band, I’m not sure I understand you.
 

 
UPDATE: per the band’s Wikipedia page:

In October 2013 longtime band members, John Sluggett, Gilles Rieder, Mick Hobbs, Jason Willett, and Jad Fair will be touring with Neutral Milk Hotel, and in November will record a new Half Japanese album.

But you were going to Neutral Milk Hotel anyway though, right?

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Who’s Afraid of Jonathan Richman? Super fun 1984 performance from Spain
Rarest, weirdest Beatles collectible, ever?
Guitar Hero: Preview a ferocious new track from Jonathan Wilson’s upcoming ‘Fanfare’ album
Captain Beefheart’s Ten Commandments of Guitar Playing: ‘Your guitar is not really a guitar’

Posted by Ron Kretsch
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09.08.2013
11:17 am
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