CREATIVE RESISTANCE: JAY REATARD IN RETROSPECT a
by STEPHEN JANICK
lthough it has been a few years since the passing of wayward visionary Jay Reatard, the phenomena of his music and persona have outlived his physical existence. Jay, whose real name is Jimmy Lee Lindsey Jr., was an eminent and controversial creative figure in the garage and punk rock scenes of the 90s and 2000s. Born May 1, 1980 in Lilbourn, Missouri, Jay spent most of his life in Memphis, Tennessee, after his parents moved there with him when he was eight. Having already developed a passionate affinity for raucously expressive noisemaking by his early teenage years, Jay dropped out of high school at 15 to write songs. A volatile home life, loneliness, and a self-described incapacity to learn
in a school environment imbued in Jay an unfathomable alienation that only riveting garage punk could temper. His immoderate passion for music was not inhibited by a lack of formalistic training, and during Jay’s first two years of songwriting he played with a guitar that he had unwittingly tuned to his own alternative standard. Of course, he would come to learn that he needed to adopt a more conventional tuning to play with other musicians in a band. The Oblivians, a legendary local Memphis lo-fi act that was known for sensorial noise rock, inspired the adolescent Jay with their new-wave sound. Jay recorded a tape of homemade punk demos on which he played all of the instruments that added a biting twinge to the spirit
