Janice Headley chats with frontman and co-founder Jad Fair for this in-depth look at the Half Japanese album We Are They Who Ache with Amorous Love.
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Janice Headley chats with frontman and co-founder Jad Fair for this in-depth look at the Half Japanese album We Are They Who Ache with Amorous Love. Plus, KEXP presents the world premiere of “Lemonade Sunset,” the first single off the next Half Japanese album coming out this July via Fire Records.
Hosts: Dusty Henry and Martin Douglas
Written & Produced: Janice Headley
Mixed & Mastered: Matt Martin and Roddy Nikpour
Special thanks to Isabel Khalili and Larry Mizell Jr.
Support the podcast: kexp.org/cobain
Half Japanese have been a band for over 50 years. And founding member Jad Fair has released over 180 albums, either as part of Half Japanese, as a solo artist, or collaborating with other bands like Teenage Fanclub, Yo La Tengo, and The Pastels, just to name a very, very, VERY few. Honestly, the guy should have his own podcast digging into his vast discography. But on today’s episode of The Cobain 50, we’re going to focus on the album on Kurt’s list, the 1990 LP We Are They Who Ache with Amorous Love.
And keep it tuned ‘til the end of the episode when The Cobain 50 will present the world premiere of a brand new single from Half Japanese.
It’s easy to see why Kurt loved a band like Half Japanese. Formed in 1974 by brothers Jad and David Fair, Half Japanese was part punk band and part art project. They were pioneers in the DIY music scene, and like many of Kurt’s favorite bands, Half Japanese didn’t believe that technical proficiency should keep you from making music. Here’s David from the 1993 documentary film, Half Japanese: The Band That Would Be King.
DAVID: It seems like it's pretty easy to play guitar, because once you know the science of it — the high notes, the little skinny ones, make high sounds; the big fat ones make low sounds. And then if you go in the part of the guitar near where you pluck it, that makes high sounds, and down at the other end, like, then you've got it mastered. That's all you've gotta know. Oh, and if you want it to be fast, play fast. And if you wanna go slow, go slow. That's all there is to it. It's that easy to play guitar.
It’s a philosophy we’ve heard echo over these past 50 episodes of The Cobain 50 from bands like Beat Happening, The Raincoats, and more. Even a technically celebrated guitarist like Peter Buck from R.E.M. cites them as an influence, as he talks about in this interview with Joyful Noise Recordings:
PETER: Nothing is forbidden. And I'm not really particularly worried about hitting the right chord change, or if someone said this before, or if I sound like an idiot saying this, and I know that part of that is an influence from those guys.
R.E.M. are another band who landed on Kurt’s list of 50 favorite albums – be sure to check out Dusty Henry’s episode on them in The Cobain 50 archives.
Born and raised in Michigan, the siblings were inspired by what was going on in the local music scene. Here’s David, sharing these early influences in the film, Half Japanese: The Band That Would Be King.
DAVID: We grew up and went to high school in Michigan and that was like the best time to be in Michigan and the best place to be because we had like the MC5 and the Stooges , and other parts of the country, you know, I don't know what they had but you know you couldn't beat The '5 and The Stooges. Plus, we had Motown on the radio, you know, the Detroit radio would be playing Motown, and then there was a Fort Wayne radio station in Indiana that played like Beach Boys. So, we had what the rest of the country has, but we had the advantage of having The '5 and The Stooges, like, at our high school dances and stuff, so, you know, not bad.
Now imagine all those influences distorted through the artistic lens of these midwestern gentlemen, and you’ve got just a glimpse of the genius of Half Japanese. As Peter Buck of R.E.M. told Joyful Noise Recordings, the band simply defy description:
PETER: If I were going to describe them to someone who hadn't heard them, I'd just go, "well, it's kind of not describable." They invented their own genre, and I'm not even sure what that is. You know, they're originals, in the way kind of maybe Captain Beefheart was. You could see where some of the lineage comes from, but it just was kind of themselves. And really, all you can do — in art or whatever it is you call this stuff that we do — is be yourself to the best of your ability.
Of all the 20+ albums in the Half Japanese discography, you might think We Are They Who Ache with Amorous Love is a surprising pick for Kurt. It’s the eighth album in the band’s discography. By the time of its release, David had stepped away to focus on his family. And of the 20 songs on the track list, only 12 of them are originals – eight of the songs are covers.
But if you look at Half Japanese’s 1980 debut album – titled 1/2 Gentlemen/Not Beasts – it’s also packed with a mix of originals and covers, it’s also genre-defying, AND, it’s a three-LP set. Only a band as wildly creative and ambitious as Half Japanese would debut with a three-LP box set.
In an exclusive interview with KEXP, Jad told us how We Are They Who Ache with Amorous Love came together:
JAD: Well, it's kind of like a compilation album, because usually with Half Japanese, we go into a recording studio and record the album. And this was actually made up of songs from several different sessions in several different years. Two of the songs on the album were recorded in 1974, so, the very first recordings of the band. Would have been "Going Home" and what was the other one? "Gloria," I think was on there.
Patti Smith famously covered “Gloria” in 1975, and lived in Michigan herself throughout the ‘80s with her husband Fred "Sonic" Smith of the MC5.
JAD: I had a little reel-to-reel tape recorder, a very cheap one, and it was just recorded with one microphone.
Covers span all sorts of genres, from reggae artist Desmond Dekker to pioneering pianist Little Richard.
JAD: I've been a fan of Little Richard for years and years and years. He was one of my favorites at a very young age. I really enjoyed his music. It just felt natural to me to do that. Little Richard songs were in my brain for so many years that it just felt a natural thing to get it out.
Half Japanese even tackle the great Irving Berlin with their rendition of “All of Me”...
JAD: Sometimes the guitar player will break a string or something will happen that they need to have time to restring. And at that time, then the drummer and myself would do a song which would give the guitar player enough time to do what needs to be done.
Jad paid tribute to friends of his, covering songs from the experimental free-jazz group Orthotonics...
JAD: Orthotonics is a band based in Richmond. Half Japanese was playing a lot of shows. And pretty much every time we had shows in Baltimore, we would have those shows with the Tinklers. In DC, we would have shows either with The Chumps or the Velvet Nonkeys. And then in Richmond, it was always with Orthotonics. At that time, very few bands had horns. And Orthotonics had a horn section, which was appealing to me.
And covering another friend’s band the Velvet Monkeys – a project of Don Fleming who also played with Half Japanese, and who was also a highly sought-after producer who worked with bands like Sonic Youth, Screaming Trees, and Hole
JAD: He had been on a couple Half Japanese albums. And we had quite a few live shows with Don. Velvet Monkeys were one of my favorite DC bands. And later Velvet Monkees moved to the New York area. But boy, what a super fine band they were.
Two of the songs featured on We Are They Who Ache with Amorous Love were co-written by the great Daniel Johnston. You can learn way more about Daniel next week when my friend and Cobain 50 co-host Martin Douglas presents Daniel’s 1983 album Yip/Jump Music. We asked Jad how the two met and came to write songs together:
JAD: It would have been, I think, 1984. Half Japanese had a show in Austin, Texas. And Daniel's manager, Jeff Tartakov, gave me a cassette tape of Daniel. And we started to play it in the van, and we just played it over and over and again. And I was just so taken by Daniel. Daniel is such a fine lyricist, and that's really what struck me was because I know so many musicians that are excellent musicians, but I know very few excellent lyricists. It really is a special thing.
And I started writing to Daniel and after a couple years of writing, I was in New York to do some recording with Moe Tucker, and Daniel was also in New York. He was staying at Steve Shelley's home and Steve is a friend of mine. Actually, I was in a band with Steve for for quite a while a band called Mosquito.
JAD: So, while in New York, I was hanging out with Steve and with Daniel, and we really just hit it off. And I invited Daniel to my home to record an album.
JAD: Well, going into it, Daniel had several songs that he had written ahead of time. I think about four songs, four or five songs. And then I had just very skeletal lyrics that I handed to Daniel, and he would fill things in on it. And then we would record those songs. We also did several cover songs during that week. Daniel and I were only together for for about one week's time and we recorded I think close to 20 songs — more than 20, I think. We kept very busy.
So, while at first We Are They Who Ache with Amorous Love seems like an unusual pick for Kurt to include on his list of 50 Favorite Albums, when you look at the elements – songs co-written with Daniel, songs covering friends, songs recorded at home, and all done in the band’s spirited DIY style – it really makes perfect sense.
JAD: Well, there were a lot of songs that didn't make their way onto other albums, but the songs that I really thought were fine songs, but just it didn't seem to be quite the right fit for the other releases, but somehow with the songs being also different from each other, it makes sense that way, I think.
In 1992, Kurt told Melody Maker magazine:
KURT: I like to listen to Jad Fair and Half Japanese with headphones on walking around the shopping malls, in the heart of American culture. I just think that, if people could hear this music right now, they’d melt. They wouldn’t know what to do, they’d start bouncing off the walls and hyper-ventilating. So I turn up the speakers really loud and pretend it was blasting through the speaker on the malls.
In 1993, Kurt brought the genius of Jad Fair to the heart of America by inviting Half Japanese to open for Nirvana during the In Utero tour, along with The Breeders. Jad shared with us how it all came together:
JAD: Well, this is funny. I was in Toronto and at the airport, I picked up a copy of Spin Magazine. And when I got to my hotel room, I started reading the interview with Kurt. And in the interview, he says, well, Nirvana is gonna go out on tour and they're gonna have The Breeders and Half Japanese as their opening bands. And that's the first I heard of it, was reading it in an interview. So then I called my booking agent and she said, well, you know, she just heard about it. They just contacted her.
At the New York show at the Roseland Ballroom, Half Japanese joined Nirvana on stage for a tribute to Michigan’s own The Stooges, covering “I Wanna Be Your Dog” with Jad shouting his vocals through a megaphone. Krist Novoselic played a floor tom, Dave Grohl played bass, and Kurt was on drums.
JAD: Well, it was a much younger audience than I thought it would be ,because we were playing mostly colleges. So I thought, well, it's going to be college-age students that are going to be going to the shows. But for the most part, it seemed like high school. I mean, very young audiences. You know, not entirely, but overall, it was a very young audience.
Usually, Half Japanese would do fast songs and slow songs. And on the first night, anytime we did a fast song, it went over well. Anytime we did a slow song, it just bombed. So after the first tonight, we changed our set and only did fast ones. And then it was all right.
With every episode of the Cobain 50 podcast, we’ve seen what impeccable music taste Kurt had, and how important it was for him to leverage his celebrity to spotlight these underground artists he believed in so much. It’s no surprise to learn that Kurt was thinking of starting his own indie label.
JAD: Kurt had told me that he was gonna start a record label and wanted me to be on the label, which boy, that would have been a very nice thing.
Jad Fair has never stopped making music. As we mentioned at the top of the episode, he’s closing in on 200 releases. And this July, he’ll share the next Half Japanese full-length.
JAD: I think I'm playing with some pretty fine people as musicians and also as friends. I'm close friends with all the band members. and Half Japanese will have a new album released in July. It'll be on Fire Records. Well, Jason Willett playing bass, Gilles Reader on drums, John Sluggett on guitar, Mick Hobbs on guitar and I'm sorry to say that Mick had a heart attack this past year and he's longer with us. And, we have Ewan playing with us, too.
Here’s the album’s first single “Lemonade Sunset.”
What advice does Jad have, as an artist who’s been recording for half a century?
JAD: Just don't stop is the main thing.
