Talk to Me, Jay Reatard

I heart Jay Reatard. I’ve got 2006’s
Blood
Visions memorized. I have the brand-new comp
Singles 06–07 sitting right here on my desk. I’m the one
who bugs all my friends to loan me the Lost Sounds and Terror Visions
albums, plus some of the other five or six side projects the Memphis,
Tennessee, hyperproducing garage punk has churned out since the baby
age of 15. I’m the perfect superfan to do an interview. But I
fucked it up. Yep. There I was whooping it up with R&B punks King
Khan & the Shrines the night before, and I fell dead asleep the
afternoon that I was supposed to do the phone interview. I guess a
booked-solid U.S. tour (including a stop in Chicago for the Pitchfork
Music Festival) is more important than finding a time to reschedule
with me, but I really wanted to talk to him. So let’s just pretend I
did get to talk to Mr. Reatard. Which I didn’t. These answers are all
adapted from things he’s said to other people. Damn it.

How do you churn out so much awesomely raw-sounding, lo-fi
material so quickly?

It’s kinda like a Polaroid of music. It’s just right then and there.
Quick and spontaneous. I think that’s how music should be
made.1

What about the lightning-fast 20-minute sets? At SXSW this
year, I stood around for two hours waiting for you guys to play, and
then the set seemed to only last 10 minutes.

You definitely have to do something, be different than everybody
else. Most of the time, they only give you 15 or 20 minutes to play. A
lot of bands don’t utilize that so well. We just try to blitzkrieg
everyone and play as many songs as we can, as fast as possible, with no
breaks or no bullshit in between. I think that approach kinda takes
people aback, ’cause a lot of times they’re just used to seeing bands
who are looking really lazy in the middle of the day, hungover… I
think just the energy level sometimes will make you stand out among a
bunch of bands who seem like lazy drunk assholes.2

You’re probably sick to death of talking about it—but
the recent Amy Winehouse fan-punch made me think of you. What the hell
happened at that Toronto show?

That show got completely fucked up. The Silver Dollar holds 190
people, but Craig Laskey, the promoter, let 350 people in there. That’s
cool if there’s some sort of security or crowd control—we don’t
need people getting so wild they jump onstage and smash our
gear—but that’s exactly what happened. Right when we started
playing, someone pushed the monitors right on top of Stephen and onto
his pedals, breaking them. People were throwing beer bottles at us,
someone jumped onstage and smashed my pedals, another guy took a full
pitcher of beer and dumped it all over the rest of my pedals, and then
threw it right at my Flying V, breaking the pickup and the input
electronics. After three songs, all our gear was smashed and unusable.
Even when shit gets that crazy at a Circle Jerks show, there’s at least
some security.3

Speaking of your blog, I love how much random music, how
many MP3s you’re always posting. Ooh, like that old Final

Solutions demo…

That was recorded while we were trying to write our masterpiece
“Songs by Solutions.” I liked how fucked up the
live-in-the-store-to-mic recording turned out and wanted to share
it.4

I love the new Singles 06–07.
What sort of singles are you listening to? Other
bands?

Earth Men and Strangers—Ryan from the Reatards’ new band.
Great pop/punk weirdness Cola Freaks, Denmark’s best kept secret. And
Cheap Time, Tennessee’s second best band! Ha.5

Nice! Hey, thanks for interview, sorry I slept through the
phone call.

No problem, Kelly O. Next time, watch out for those late-night King
Khan parties. I once ended up in a fucked-up blond wig and a pair of
so-small-one-of-my-nuts-was-hanging-out silk underwear because of him.
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