The Thousands

How’s this for an in-store performance! It’s classic Jay Reatard. With his Stax records shirt dripping in sweat he plays as loud and as fast as he possibly can to the point where his band struggle to keep up.

Of Reatard’s staggering musical output, his 1998 debut LP Teenage Hate is still the best at capturing the punk spit and snarl as seen at the Fall Out Records in-store. Originally released when Jay was a teenager, the 1998 album received the posthumous deluxe reissue treatment from venerable US label Goner earlier this year and is about to be distributed locally when the first shipment arrives in Australia this week.

With pictures and notes from the original album plus material Jay put out (an interview with himself?) the reissue also includes covers of Fear and Buddy Holly, Lil Bunnies’ ‘Carrot Belly Bunny Blues‘ and the early Beatles B-Side ‘I’m Down‘.

In Reatard’s own songs the lyrical themes are typical of what you’d expect from a pissed-off 18 year old living in Memphis. If he’s not pissed off, he’s bored, then lonely, then angry again but all the while he expresses these different emotions at the loudest rock and roll volume. An astonishing performer. A classic album.