MP3: Jay Reatard - "Gamma Ray"

"RIP Jay Reatard"Jay Reatard covered Beck's "Gamma Ray" off Modern Guilt apparently in, like, August 2008.

Jay Reatard - "Gamma Ray"

Where the fuck was I? I love that song! (Well actually I love the (unofficial) music vid starring Chloe Sevigny. So good.)

Also I wrote this silly review a while back last summer on an old blog of Jay Reatard's free show at the Oval in StuyTown:

Jay Reatard played at the Oval in the quad of Stuy Town. That place gives me the fucking creeps. It's a housing community that has been transformed from low-income projects to yuppie family dwellings and city college kid housing. There were kids everywhere, pot smoke bellowing out of windows, and hipsters pouring out of the L at 1st Ave to take advantage of a recession-friendly free show. Funnily enough, this series is also advertised as family-friendly.

Also giving me the creeps was the old (homeless?) dude standing next to me wearing roller blades and wrestling with a stray cat under his tee-shirt. Next to him was a 10-year-old girl in a wheelchair with cerebral palsy, and on the other side of me was a half-assed attempt at a pit being made by aforementioned Brooklynites who were just aware of themselves enough to elbow and push each other around for five minutes.

The show was free, like I said, and the band was great. They played a tight, 40-minute set, banging out all your Reatard faves. But still, I couldn't help but feel like I was bearing witness to something wholly inappropriate and just sort of, wrong. The icing on the cake was the Verizon sponsorship of the summer concert series. Blech.

I left quickly and braved the Sephora in Times Sq to load up on free eyeliner before meeting this guy for a date to see Todd Barry at a fucking comedy club. I know, I know. Jesus christ, I must be a masochist. Lately more and more I have been looking in the mirror and not recognizing the person staring back. It takes only one trip to midtown Manhattan on a summer evening to make you completely hate yourself, in case you were wondering.

I forgot to include in that review the best part of the show. Jay was shouting out songs sorta 1-2-3 Ramones style, as per usual, and as he shouts out "Useless Children" he looks at the dozens of kids playing around the playground and in the grass, and totally gives them all the finger. Oh, and MGMT was there. Hence all da cloudsa smot poke.

Also check out this mini doc of him where he looks pretty thin and happy and awesome at home in Memphis:


So cute when he not spitting on/pissing on/punching people at his shows. This sucks. Everybody's always dying.