Today is the one year anniversary of Jay Reatard's (Real name: Jimmy Lindsey Jr.) death. It was a Sunday and I remember driving to church with a mix CD I'd burned for myself in the car. Aint gonna Save me was the song in the very middle of the mixtape. If you're unfamiliar, the outro to "Aint gonna save me" goes "All is lost there is no hope" for about a minute. I remember rewinding that outro for the entire car ride over and over again. As depressing as that may sound, it really wasn't. Jay's music is so full of life and energy that I just had to hear the outro over and over to
stop me from being bummed. Regardless, I just knew music wouldn't be the same with Jay, and a year later I still feel like there is a huge gap missing. Shamefully, I didn't get into Jay until his last album, and I'm still working through his insanely prolific life's work(over 20 albums in about 10 years). So the three songs I'm featuring don't even come close to portraying the range of Jay's work. Pitchfork has a very
thoughtful article up on Jay's life from friends and associates that is more worthy of your time than this post is, and it also mentions all the Jay related
memorabilia and releases that will be coming out this year.
