Half Japanese: The Band That Would Be King

King for a moment

It must have been a sign from below (this being the Devil's music and all). My 13th birthday, snow all a-bluster, documentary screening nearby—its praises heard weeks ago through the blackness of a car radio night. Half Japanese: The Band That Would Be King (TBTWBK). It was, and would they ever! Half Japanese themselves opened up, to the sight of eight occupied folding chairs, Jad Fair flailing wildly at his guitar strings (all the same size, I learned later, so he'd always get the right one), John Sluggett scuzz-brushing eardrums out. I held on tight, dazed, for three songs. Then the film, a blur, crammed with praise all around, "two brothers from Maryland," "greatest band on the planet," "never learned to play their instruments," quotes from Jad and David's parents, and all the rest. Wow!

SHAWN CHENG/YH

Trying to reclaim the moment, I bought the eponymous album. Thiry-minute-long bleats of horrid skronk, pre-adolescent emoting, aliens, lots of aliens (and Frankensteins and crocodiles and doll people), and a thorny flowerbed of painfully sweet pop. But, too much, too fast, too damn weird, and it took a couple years of dust collection before I could stomach the album.

But then! There it was again, that moment, Jad convulsing on stage, drummer swinging harder than a wino on rollerskates. Except this time, the rest of the band was there too, tiptoeing and gallumphing through every rock idiom that matters: twisted-twang country; brain grinder sludge; spoken word confessional; pre-song "1-2-3-4"s; rusted-out song fragments, scattered across the expressway; "Yaargh!"s and "Reouuchhh!"s; door-creaking dirge; blister-pummel-headsmack-until-it-stops-10-seconds-later hardcore meets free jazz; billion-hanky laments for love both lost and awaited. And of course, rawk underneath it all, nobody caring who gets upset in the process. And Jad, nasal Jad, nervously bursting at his Yoo Hoo-laced seams with a 13-year old's bedazzlement, gleefully telling his stories because he has the microphone and, uh, he might as well talk about his dog who won't do the dishes.

It left me wanting more, left me listening to music that has tasteful, upstanding folk gapin' at me as if I'm a lobotomy case, music that makes a play for TBTWBK's utter possibility."The idea isn't to feel foolish," David Fair wrote on the ease and beauty of teaching yourself to play guitar, ignoring niggling details like, say, chords, tuning, note names. "The idea is to put a pick in one hand and a guitar in another and with a tiny movement rule the world." Half Japanese ruled my entire world that night in 1993, and I've been in search of rock monarchy since. The Band That Would Be King is the closest I've gotten. (50 Skidillion Watts)

—Sam Frank

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