Many of the songs they recorded were lesser-known Velvet numbers, with Fair playing Lou Reed as Tucker thumped the drums. Maureen Tucker: 'Life in Exile After Abdication' With the "MoeJadKateBarry" EP and a subsequent tour, Fair and Velvet Underground Appreciation Society members Kate Barry and Hank Beckmeyer joined long-retired ex-Velvet drummer Maureen Tucker in a Walter Mitty remake of the seminal band. Such songs as "Put Some Sugar on It" develop a credible groove, but much of "King" is stiff. Though it may be the most technically accomplished group that Fair's been involved with, the band that would be king doesn't sound much like a band at all. The 27 tracks (30 on CD and cassette) provide settings that border on the slick, making the distinction between singer and band more prominent than ever before. Though Jad Fair has dominated the band since it was a duo, "King" seems more like a solo album than any other Half Japanese release. The album has its moments, but without such longtime Washington collaborators as guitarist Mark Jickling, "King" don't have that swing. boys Don Fleming and Rob Kennedy, New Yorkers who, respectively, are alumni of D.C. Fred Frith and John Zorn are among the slumming party on Half Japanese's new "The Band That Would Be King" (50 Skidillion Watts), and the current lineup is led by B.A.L.L. Half Japanese: 'The Band That Would Be King' The amateurs, inspired and otherwise, who have been members of Half Japanese over the years have not always played very well, but their sloppiness has never been as big a threat to the concept as the slumming of "real" musicians out to show their tolerance for instrumental savagery by playing with the band. Jad, however, is an anti-star superstar, recording regularly with the ever-shifting Half Japanese lineup and just about everyone one might expect to find on Shimmy-Disc, a small New York post-punk label that records the likes of Bongwater and B.A.L.L., and on 50 Skidillion Watts, a Florida label funded by "punk magician" Penn Jillette and dedicated principally to Half Japanese and its various offshoots. The Fairs gave new meaning to the good professional rockers' put-down of punk, "they can't play their instruments." Though he appears occasionally, David is essentially retired from the band. The record's love-starved consciousness clearly owed quite a bit to Jonathan Richman, but the performances and format - nine songs in about 12 minutes - were unprecedented. That changed in 1977 with the release of "Calling All Girls," an out-of-left-field (well, actually Uniontown, Md.) homemade record by two brothers, Jad and David Fair, who called themselves Half Japanese. Washington's early punk-rock scene wasn't exactly a meeting of the Young Republicans, but neither did it boast any self-possessed, self-invented eccentrics to rival the most renowned oddballs from other punk scenes.
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