While they never strictly followed the fast-and-loud musical template of punk rock, few of punk's founding fathers could have anticipated the extreme to which Half Japanese took the music's D.I.Y. ethos. Founded by brothers Jad and David Fair, Half Japanese were quite likely the most amateurish rock band to make a record since the Shaggs, especially in their early years, all but ignoring musical basics like chords, rhythms, and melody. However, the brothers made that approach into a guiding aesthetic. David Fair's article "How to Play Guitar" outlined the Half Japanese philosophy: if you rejected conventional ideas about fingering, tuning, and even stringing a guitar, there were no limits to how you could express yourself on what was, after all, your instrument.