09-1989 / Melody Maker / Half Japanese - The Band That Would Be King

Half Japanese
The Band That Would Be King
50 Skidillion Watts
When I was 14 I was almost good enough to play for my school football team. Faithfully each Saturday I'd pack my stuff and head off for some godforsaken housing scheme on the south-side of Glasgow; a somewhat puny substitute you see, I'd be left hoping that a team mate might break a leg. Half Japanese must feel the same. Even with enthusiastic support from the sidelines (see Steve Shelley on "The Southbank Show") and a line-up on this, their newest and greatest lp that includes Kramer, John Zorn, Don Fleming and Fred Frith, the great starmaker in the sky is still taking a no-game line.
How come? Must be a case of too much music (eight years of it) and not enough other stuff. Where's the image, the familiarity, the mirror we lovingly gaze into, so that each time we buy a record it feels we're taking a little part of ourselves home? Half Japanese should save on the studio bills and get themselves a publicity officer. Maybe not, you see every time Jad Fair (the group's leader, a spectacled humanities lecturer type) plugs his guitar in, it must be with a tremendous sense of freedom. No worries over getting that Marc Bolan pout just right, or whether it's the Iggy or Velvets riff that's going to wow the critics. No wonder they let rip with an almost unnatural zest and vitality. This is pure music and it sounds great.
"The Band That Would Be King" spills out all over the place; it's Butthole ugly on "Another World", it rocks killer ("Lucky Star"), it's even got pretty bits. "I Live For Love" could almost be the BMX Bandits. It's practically unedited but each one of the 27(!) tracks demonstrates that with this cast anyway, whatever Half Japanese take on they can make it come out great. More than that though, this record is a document of a type of music and an attitude that is dying out. Half Japanese must be almost unique in that they genuinely don't care… about their career.
While most groups waste times groping round for genres, Half Japanese just stun. Stephen McRobbie