David Fair

Musician, instrumentalist, and artist David Fair is best known as the co-founder of Half Japanese, the long-running experimental rock band fronted by his brother, Jad Fair. The Fair brothers, born in Michigan, are believed to have been living in Maryland when they launched Half Japanese as a bedroom project in 1975. The band's music was founded on the notion that anyone could make music if they pleased, and their early recordings made clear that neither David or Jad had much use for traditional rules of music-making. David penned a widely circulated short essay, <I>How to Play Guitar, in which he summed up his style and philosophy about music and his chosen instrument. "It's incredibly easy when you understand the science of it," Fair wrote. "The skinny strings play the high sounds, and the fat strings play the low sounds. If you put your finger on the string father out by the tuning end it makes a lower sound. If you want to play fast move your hand fast and if you want to play slower move your hand slower. That's all there is to it." Putting their ideas into action, David and Jad released their first recording, an EP titled Calling All Girls, in 1977, and with it Half Japanese began their long career as one of the most original and influential bands in the American underground. While the significant majority of David Fair's recorded work has been with Half Japanese, he's also recorded a handful of albums in collaboration with his brother, beginning with 1996's Best Friends. David and Jad's collaboration continued on 1998's 26 Monster Songs for Children, 2006's Six Dozen Cookies, 2008's Halloween Songs, and 2016's Shake, Cackle and Squall. In 2009, David Fair released his first solo album, I'll Be Moe, a meditation on childhood memories similar to Six Dozen Cookies, with Fair reciting stories over musical beds constructed from sound effects, samples, and loops. In 2010 a second album from David was released, the soundtrack to the independent film The Middle Man. When not busy with his other pursuits, David also creates visual art, working primarily in sketches and paper cuttings. In 2009, David collaborated with Jad and Charles Brohawn on a book, <I>Moods of Elvis, which featured a variety of stylized renderings of Elvis Presley. In 2015, he was the subject of a short documentary, <I>David Fair Is the King, directed by Skizz Cyzyk. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi