Jay Reatard, 29, a Force in Punk Rock, Is Dead Obituary (Obit) - NYTimes.com
Jimmy Lee Lindsey Jr., a prolific songwriter who, under the stage name Jay Reatard, was a force in the worlds of punk and garage rock, was found dead in his home in Memphis early on Wednesday. He was 29.
The Commercial Appeal of Memphis reported that a roommate had found him in bed, and the police have opened an investigation into his death. A spokeswoman for the Shelby County medical examiner in Tennessee said an autopsy had been performed but that a cause of death had not been determined.
With a discography of 22 albums and more singles than even he could keep accurate count of, Mr. Lindsey was a creative tornado. And while his aesthetic was deliberately rough — he favored corrosive blasts of guitar and simple smacks on the drums, usually recorded by Mr. Lindsey alone with the most minimal equipment — his facility with sweet melodies and his concise, economical songwriting style earned him wide respect among critics and fans.
Mr. Lindsey was born in Lilbourn, Mo., and moved with his family to Memphis when he was 8; his precociousness as a teenage noisemaker got the Lindseys ejected from more than one address. “We’d stay three to six months in a place, and they’d make us move ’cause he wouldn’t turn that volume down,” his father, Jimmy Lindsey, said. “They even said, ‘Don’t worry about the lease, just go.’ ”
With help from members of the Oblivians, a proudly sloppy veteran Memphis garage-rock band, Mr. Lindsey started his recording career at 15 and released music with numerous bands, including the Reatards, the Lost Sounds, the Bad Times and the Final Solutions. By the mid-2000s he had established a reputation in the rock underground for his songwriting skill and devotion to do-it-yourself production methods, as well as for a sometimes belligerent stage manner.
Mr. Lindsey began to reach a wider audience in 2006 with his first solo album, “Blood Visions” (Fat Possum), and in recent years he continued to produce music at a rapid pace. “Few indie-rockers have ever been on a roll like this,” Spin magazine said in a review of his latest album, “Watch Me Fall,” released in August on Matador Records, a trend-setting independent label in New York.
Jay Reatard Remembered By Fellow Musicians - News Story | Music, Celebrity, Artist News | MTV News
Jay Reatard (real name Jeremy Lee Lindsey Jr.) may not have sold very many records in his all-too-brief career, but he picked up plenty of high-profile and extremely talented admirers and collaborators. Many of those musicians took to the Web to pay tribute to Reatard, who was found dead early Wednesday at the age of 29.
The Pixies, who brought Reatard along as the opening act on several dates of their recent Doolittle tour, paid tribute to the late Memphis rocker via their Facebook page. "We want to express our condolences to the friends and family of Jay Reatard, on his sudden passing today," the band wrote.
Beck also tipped his hat to Reatard on his Web site. The singer posted Reatard's cover of "Gamma Ray," a single from Beck's album Modern Guilt. Beck originally commissioned the cover as a B-side to the U.K. version of his own "Gamma Ray" single, and in typical Reatard fashion, it takes the original tune's minimalist pathos and turns it into a loud, joyous, gutter-punk stomp.
Deerhunter frontman Bradford Cox posted a lengthy tribute to Reatard on his band's blog. "Jay was what few people have the capacity to be," Cox wrote. "He created an undeniably classic album that contained so much pain transfered (sic) to tape in such an explosive way that it made you feel different after hearing it. He was transgressive and honest. His flaws were something he focused on and overdubbed and distorted until they made you forget who he really was: a person with feelings and a good heart. He loved music and worked hard from a young age to pursue it. He was a self-made and unmade man. I am truly sickened to see him go."
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