The punk rocker Jay Reatard — born Jimmy Lee Lindsey Jr. — was found dead in his Memphis home Wednesday morning. As of Thursday, a cause of death hadn’t been determined, but Reatard lived aggressively so however he died, I doubt it will shock me.
Even so, the news of the 29-year-old’s death jarred me in a way the death of Michael Jackson, from whom I didn’t expect much more than creepy headlines that would appear at intervals into his twilight years, did not.
Of course, I realize it’s ridiculous to compare the two. Jackson transformed popular music forever, and Jay Reatard is sort of famous for beating up fans, alienating his band and once, allegedly, spraying oven cleaner on the one body part where a man would most not want oven cleaner going.
This is to say Jay Reatard isn’t a household name, but I liked him. Or, to be more precise, I liked his music. A lot.
Reatard made ecstatic garage rock with big hooks and melancholy lyrics that veered from angry to morbidly romantic. One of my favorite Reatard songs, the 2007 single “I Know a Place,” begins: “I know a place where we can go to be alone / I know a place where we can crawl to die.”
Reatard dropped out of school in the eighth grade. After years recording in numerous bands as part of Memphis’ punk rock scene, he achieved a measure of fame outside Tennessee in 2006 with the release of his first solo album, “Blood Visions” — a catchy and classicist punk rock album awash in fuzzy guitars and songs that rarely lasted longer than 2 minutes.
Reatard seemingly sneered or barked every lyric in a slightly nasally, placeless accent. Soon after he had fans like Ryan Adams and Beck, for whom Reatard recorded a cover of “Gamma Ray” to go on the B-side of the much bigger star’s 2008 “Modern Guilt” single.
I began to pay attention to Reatard with the limited-edition vinyl singles he began releasing in 2006. On these Reatard retained the homemade do-it-yourself ethos of punk, but began to incorporate vulnerability and a wider variety of styles — such as power pop and ’60s pastiche — into his palette.
The “Blood Visions” songs “Nightmares” and “Fading All Away” became the slower, more wistful “Haunting You” and “Searching for You,” both of which sounded like Reatard recorded them in his bedroom around midnight because he most likely did. In 2008 he graduated to the prestigious indie label Matador and continued releasing vinyl singles, proving on songs such as the irrepressible “Always Wanting More” and anthemic (and acoustic) “See Saw” that he was now better than most of the bands from punk’s late ’70s high-water mark.
I can’t recommend enough the two Reatard compilations “Singles ’06-’07” and “Matador Singles ’08” that collect this fertile period. Reatard’s last album — and follow-up to “Blood Visions” — “Watch Me Fall” is nearly as strong, kicking off with one of the best songs of 2009, the blistering “It Ain’t Gonna Save Me.”
Of course, as with the deaths of most young musicians, from Nick Drake to Kurt Cobain, the lyrics are now fraught with a dread that implies we should have seen this coming.
Musically, “It Ain’t Gonna Save Me” is exuberant with handclaps and jangly power chords played at breakneck speed, but Reatard sings verses such as: “My negativity it takes a toll. It uses me just like a bone. It scares away the things I love, it keeps its fight and push at shows. Ever since that night, I’ve never been the same. Tired and lonely with no one to blame and in this bedroom is where I sit ’cause I don’t really don’t give a ****.”
I saw Reatard play at a medium-sized bar in 2007. I was almost the only person in the audience who wasn’t a member of one of the two opening bands.
Reatard, with his long ’70s rock star hair and vacuum-sealed jeans, would shout a song title and his band would rip into it. This continued, with one song fading into the next, until the set was over less than 30 minutes after it’d begun. Then Reatard and his two band mates quickly packed up their minimal equipment and exited.
The show was short and exciting with no moment wasted, hopefully not unlike Reatard’s life.
Address correspondence to Jeremiah Tucker, c/o The Joplin Globe, P.O. Box 7, Joplin, MO 64802.
