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Remembering Reatard

For someone who made such a complete fucking racket, it doesn’t seem right for Jimmy Lee Lindsey Jr to have died in his sleep.

For someone who made such a complete fucking racket, it doesn’t seem right for Jimmy Lee Lindsey Jr to have died in his sleep. It’s not that Jay Reatard was the shrieking embodiment of rock ‘n’ roll or any other such rubbish, just that he was a good dude who lived to play fuzzed-out punk in his parents’ garage and managed to travel the world effectively doing just that. I never met him, but that’s the impression I got from listening to his music: and that’s not a bad way to be remembered, right?

Matador and Goner Records both issued statements about his death, and thanks to Reatard’s ridiculous prolificacy it’s not hard to imagine hundreds of people around the world who feel they need to talk about Reatard. Considering how many bands he played in, released music with and supported on tour, how many labels he worked with and fans he met in his ceaseless (seriously, this guy simply never stopped playing. We all say we live for music but for how many of us is that actually true?) quest for noise, it’s safe to say the internet’s going to be heaving with people who knew him far better than me who want to share their memories. I only knew his riffs and that nasal, bratty whine. But that’s still enough to make me a little sad.