Shakemore Music Festival, Pa.: Good thing no one actually reads this blog, because otherwise I'd be revealing the secret what an amazing time
Shakemore is each year.
Sharemore is annual festival in celebration of
The Fair kids were not super proficient at their instruments, but for whatever reason, they saw this as a benefit, not a distraction. As David wrote many years later:
I taught myself to play guitar. It's incredibly easy when you understand the science of it. The skinny strings play the high sounds, and the fat strings play the low sounds. If you put your finger on the string farther 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. You can learn the names of notes and how to make chords that other people use, but that's pretty limiting.This approach has turned out to be incredibly liberating for many around the world. You did not need talent of a specialized sort just to play the music in your heart, and the songs in your head. It was pop music in its purest sense, and you can hear the echos of David and Jad even this summer in the likes of the most effervescent tracks of Chari XCX and Chapell Roan.
One could argue that Half Japanese was a precursor to punk rock. Until then, only the Velvet Undergound played with such deliberate simplicity.
