Jay Reatard passes, (1980-2010)

Posted by admin on Feb 1, 2010 in Arts & Culture | 0 comments

On January 16th, a cloudy day in Memphis at the Memorial Park Funeral Home, friends, family and music lovers attended the funeral of the late Jimmy Lee Lindsey Jr., aka Jay Reatard. Lindsey was found dead in his Memphis apartment on the morning of January 13, 2010.

For some, the name Jay Reatard came and went unnoticed. This is considerable shame to the name of rock ‘n roll, of which many believe to be long deceased. Yet the life of Lindsey may shed some hopeful insight for the real presence of rock ‘n roll in the new millennia.

Jay and the Reatards boosted the Memphis garage band scene with high adrenaline. Goner Records caught wind of Lindsey when he was 15 years old. “I loved the racket,” notes Eric Friedl, Goner’s owner, “So we did the record, and I’ve been a fan of everything he’s done since. He’s a pretty amazing kid.”

Lindsey played passionately with Jay and the Reatards as they extensively toured the United States in the 1990s. By age 19, Lindsey and the band got their first tour of Europe.

Goner even seemed too small a label with Jay and the Reatard’s growing esteem. There, the band considered labeling with Shangri La Records, who boasted an edge for lo-fi recording. “It was noisy, he had to… go to parties…destroy things… get asked to leave. It was more about, ‘well what have I got to do to jar the crowd.’” said label owner Shermon Wilmot. They mutually parted ways.

Lindsey notes, “I read an article in Spin about ‘The Lo-Fi Revolution’ in the mid-90s, and I kept seeing ‘Four-Track’ ‘Four-Track’ ‘Four-Track’…and I didn’t know what one was, but I figured out that it was what all of those bands, Sebadoh, Guided By Voices, used to record their records.”

This interest in lo-fi is what best delivers Lindsey’s personal passion, that his singing could be caught in a raw format, closest to what would be heard live.
“Before the internet,” said Lindsey, “It was really hard trying to figure out what one cost, or how to find one [four-track recorder] in the first place, but I finally got one for Christmas. Before that, I recorded by using a karaoke machine with two tape decks hooked up to it.”

These experiments, Lindsey with his flying-v coupled with the lo-fi science, unleashed a unique kind of rock ‘n roll monster that likely will leave the listener with utter disgust, or wonder. Lindsey probably would not have it any other way.

Blood Vision, Jay and the Reatards’ first album of critical acclaim caught the eye of Matador Records, opening the floodgates to many extensive musical projects headed by the name Jay Reatard.

Lindsey recalled, in a later interview with Matador, “I’ve always finished my recordings and then a label is decided on. When I made Blood Visions, I had no idea that it was going to see the light of day.”

From 2001 to 2009, Lindsey started Lost Sounds, Bad Times, The Final Solutions, Nervous Patterns, Angry Angles, Terror Visions and also Destruction Unit. In addition to these bands, he released two albums and eight eps/45s with Matador solely as Jay Reatard in 2009.

Lindsey himself sheds some insight to the copious amounts of work he has accomplished not without some curiosity of what the future could bring, “I’ve had numerous people bring that up. ‘Hey, man, are you gonna burn out?’ You know what? I’m gonna fade away. I’m gonna be that person. I’m definitely not gonna burn out. To burn out, you have to have this big fire and this big explosion… I’m gonna slowly dwindle into more obscurity than I ever started off with. I want to be Amadeus.”

As of his unfortunate and unexpected passing, Lindsey was 29. Is it not hard work that really makes or breaks an artist? Lindsey was both a great talent alone and a hard worker. He did not have any presuppositions about what he should or shouldn’t be. Here is the rock ‘n roll of the millennia; pick up Watch Me Fall and understand.