From: EVAN-AT-KUHUB.CC.UKANS.EDU
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 1996 11:35:42 -0600 (CST)
Subject: punk spunk hunk bunk junk



Last night Jad Fair performed at the Replay Lounge in Lawrence, Kansas.
Jad is underground-famous for his career with the band Half-Japanese
("I Walk Through Walls"), and as a solo recording artist (_Everyone
Knew But Me_).  His voice is quite distinctive as a singer, talker,
and noisemaker.  He made Ween ("Push the Little Daisies and Make
'Em Come Up) possible.  Jad Fair's guitar playing is also inspired and
wild, in an authentically original sense which puts almost all rockers
to shame.  

Jad Fair has recently recorded an album with the rockabilly band
Phono Comb.  When he joined Phono Comb onstage last night, he played
guitar energetically, but it was unplugged.  Until he did his solo spot,
which was pretty amazing.  It got even better when he went a cappella,
and his performance offered lessons about the refrain.  His vocalizations
borrowed from jazz, and included some scatting, but were hardly comparable
to anything else.  Jad Fair.  At high speed, blurring.  Like a deranged,
happy, twisted, sentimental child inside a man.  Free-associating around
a short refrain of repetition fast.

He courageously deviates from musical expectations, even as an art punker.
One text of his especially relevent to us/all here is a recording from
Half Japanese, "Monster Island":  over an industrial type of band-noise,
the voice is saying "Going to Monster Island.  That's where Godzilla is.
What's he sound like.  Sounds like this--" and then the screams and
roars.  Literally wakes the near-dead.

--Evan

     ------------------