Anyone who rushes to write off Jay Reatard's music as unoriginal or derivative of punk's past is missing the whole point of the supertalented, highly profilic artist with a love of Lo-Fi recordings. His anticipated new record Watch Me Fall on Matador comes out today and at 6pm today Reatard will play Amoeba Music Hollywood in his first of three Amoeba Music free in-stores. The other two Amoeba parts of Reatard's Indie Record Store Tour are Saturday at Amoeba San Francisco and Sunday at Amoeba Berkeley -- both at 6pm.
Born Jimmy Lee Lindsey Jr., Memphis, TN's Jay Reatard has long been a huge fan of punk and post
punk, especially the type with pop driven chord progressions that you can scream at the top of your lungs along with, as you can tell from listening to his numerous recordings under The Reatards and other names he has played under. It's like he totally absorbs punk's rich, robust past and spews it out with reinvigorated delight in stage shows that have have become so legendary they have threatened to overshadow the music itself, as mentioned last week in the wonderful Amoeblog Jay Reatard Amoeba Instore Tour post! But, getting back to Jay Reatard's music, which at once sounds new yet totally familiar to anyone who has been a fan of punk and power pop punk over the years, the artist has said time and again that he has a deep passion for where music has come from and is merely putting his spin on it. Most recently, in an interview with Mike Rubin published two days ago in the New York Times, Reatard summed it up best when he said, "The whole concept for me behind pop music is to take your influences and filter them through yourself, and then they become something new. I’m not trying to move forward and create territory that hasn’t been mined before, I’m just trying to do my version of something that I like.”
Jay Reatard plays a free instore at Amoeba Music Hollywood, 6400 Sunset Blvd., today (Tuesday, August 18th) at 6pm, Get there early. Same for his show at Amoeba Music San Francisco on Haight Street this Saturday (August 22) at 6pm, and this Sunday (August 23rd) at Amoeba Music Berkeley at 6pm. Note that customers can get a limited edition silkscreen poster designed by the artist with the purchase of his new CD Watch Me Fall on the day of the in-stores only and only while supplies last.
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Comments
Well..that show in Hollywood was a f'n joke. "Jay" whatever, is a big slob, a disrepectful tub of shite, that only pretends to be about anything at all.
He's obviously a deeply troubled self-hater who can't deal..period. He made fools out of himself and his band
and really dissed Amoeba on their own stage. I woulda
pulled the plug.
All I know for a fact is that this "Jay R" defaced the Elvis cardboard grail, something that - as I understand it - has been an (inanimate, granted) amore'd family member of the Amoeba store since THE BEGINS OF TIME, and this (see above for ernie's adjectives) Jay decided to deface Elvis with a Hitler 'stache (so original this season, so original!!) and as far as Memphis has to say, we called, dropped the condolence onto staff, and when transferred to JAY - we hangs up and has no more to say. Welcome to metaphor, there is no phone. Thank you. ***NOTE to PUBLIC: if you has an Elvis, Man of Cardboard: please put him in Cadillac and point West to Sunset Blvd. Thank you, thank you very much***
Jay is a totale rebel. I love him so mush. I never heard thre doughy guys played garage music before. Cocane and whining is tru revolushun.