The first time I met Jay Reatard was in a Soho pub. He drank whiskey, I sipped coke. He was funny, snotty ("People say they find it hard to be in a band with me … I don't care") and, in between talking about why he'd punched a fan in the face at a show in Toronto a few weeks earlier and how he tried to write a new song every day, he drew me a cartoon strip about Josef Fritzl. It's in a drawer at home somewhere. I'm pretty sure that, when I find it again, I'll be a lot more upset than I was at the time.
A few hours after our chat, I saw him unleash one of the best rock''n'roll shows of the year. Spit, rage, feral beauty: that was Jay Reatard.
When I heard the tragic news that Jay had died I immediately remembered the first time I saw him play, at White Heat's excellent night at Madame Jo Jo's. I was immediately impressed that a) all of his songs lasted under two minutes, b) he played guitar like nobody does any more, slicing at his instrument rather than strumming it, and c) he had great hair and the kind of grotty, faded Black Flag T-shirt that suggested he'd lived in it all of his life.
I remember thinking, "Here's someone who loves and hates music in equal amounts. Here's the punk Ted Nugent!" I also remembered something Bobby Gillespie wrote on Caught By the River when the Cramps' Lux Interior died: "The sad thing is, when guys like Lux and Ron Asheton go, there's a little less rock & roll in the world. It really is a dying art."
I remembered that last night. And it's how I still feel today.
sourcehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dG65eqfg6bchttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oz6dKtkxt9Q&feature=relatedhttp://pitchfork.com/tv/#/episode/4-jay-reatard/1 
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