Jay Reatard, Maxwell's

In the spirit of punk, let's try to keep this short and sweet. Jay Reatard, who I've affectionately dubbed "My Bloody Man", plays lo-fi garage punk so energetic and adrenaline-laced that he barely leaves time for you to breathe. No, actually. In his live show (hell, even in his demos), he leaves absolutely no space between songs. No pause. No break. No hiccup. No fermata. No nothing. Instead, he screams the name of the song he's about to play over the whir of noisy remnants from the last song. You're layered into 30 or so minutes of music, and you aren't allowed to escape. Not even for a second.

Ever since I first saw him on the cover of his album Blood Visions, covered in fake blood, half-naked, with messy hair, I knew it was love at first sight. After I listened to his demo, which is almost as energetic and adrenaline-laced as his live show, I'd realized the taste of Blood was just as alluring as the sight.

Jay Reatard happened to be playing two shows the night I saw him: one sold-out show in Williamsburg opening for Mission of Burma, and another in Jersey which he was headlining. I journeyed into the heart of Hoboken- a long and arduous journey made more difficult by wrong directions and inept police officers. (Shut up okay, I'm an ignorant New Yorker- Jersey is a trek for me). Despite the terror of leaving my venue comfort-zone, Maxwell's is well worth the trip: the space is intimate, unpretentious, and not far from the city once you know how to get there.

I ended up meeting some of the members of the band Tiger! Shit! Tiger! Tiger! from Italy who'd just played Lit Lounge for CMJ. They shared a cab with me, and were generally pleasant people. Unfortunately, we all missed Cola Freaks. Their music is very much in the Jay Reatard vein, except they're from Denmark, not Memphis, Tennessee.

There were no fights this time Jay played. He didn't kick anyone in the face. No one was punched. (Click here) for a youtube link to one of the incidents that, by my estimate, was the most blown out of proportion. The crowd wasn’t outwardly receptive to Jay Reatard at all, minus a group of moshing youngin’s at the front. But in some weird modern perversion of punk energy, despite the relative disinterested expressions in the room, I could feel very positive vibes. At closer look, I noticed people's microscopic headbanging and lips moving ever-so-slightly to mouth lyrics. Occasionally this reserved energy would explode when a crowd favorite was played. While apathy is usually irksome at live shows, the quiet crowd was more of a innocuous foil to the rock n’ roll chaos on stage. Just as abruptly as the set began, Jay Lindsey jumped off stage, his guitar still soaring, and fought his way through the crowd. That was his not-so-subtle clue that the show was over, and there definitely wasn't going to be any encore bull.

For a closer look into his bloody brain, check out his interview with Nardwuar, "The Human Serviette". Oh, Canadians...