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And someof them were actually pretty good, and some of them, for reasons knownonly to the Muses, just never made it to CD. There are a handful of oldfavorite records that I regularly hunt CD shops for, hoping that somesmall Lithuanian press will rerelease them on CD-- stupid things likeFlying Lizards "Top Ten", Nina Hagen's "Angstlos", and everything byGang of Four, which only came out a few years ago after lots ofsquabbling. But at the top of my Most-Missed-Records list has been apair of legendary albums I haven't seen in a long, long time. 17 yearsin fact. The year I graduated from high school the greatest albums inhuman history were released: "Our Solar System" and "Sing No Evil" byHalf Japanese.
You might've picked up some of their albums and wondered afterwards whythis crappy band has such a following, and so many albums, and why hiprecord stores continue to keep a 1/2 jap section. You might've evenseen the documentary ("The Band That Would Be King") chronicling theirrise to international fame, glory and rock immortality and concludedthey're nothing more than a joke. But odds are you never heard theirgreatest moments, which have been locked up and/or lost in the dustyvaults of the now-defunct 18,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 VoltsRecords until this happy, happy, day.
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Jad Fair never sounded better or more sincere than in these twobrilliant albums, which literally explode out of your speakers with analmost Rabelaisian frenzy of picked-on-nerd-anger and unrequitedhorniness. Music for sociopathic teens? Maybe. But these records areindescribably audacious and document a moment of unbounded, visceralcreativity that began with their mind-boggling first album, HalfGentlemen / Not Beasts, which was released, in consideraion of theiruniverse-conquering ambition, as a three album set. Lyrical andsincerely stupid, Half Japanese lay it all on the line in every song,recalling in their squealing half-assed obsessiveness The Shaggs, TheVelvet Underground and John Zorn... I can't say it's all worth buying,but I can unequivocally say that these two albums are musicalmilestones in their own geeky world. Come visit "Our Solar System" andrediscover your neglected inner retard.