When it comes choosing the “best of” garage rock, Jay Reatard should be at the top of any respectable list. His music is like an assault on tempo – regularly going over the 100 beats-per-minute mark, his live set is relentless going continuous for forty-five minutes to an hour without coming up for air once, and his personality can best described as “keeping it real”. I was fortunate enough to catch a recent show of his at 59:1 in Munich, Germany.
Opening for the night was Munich’s own Mondo Ray which, if you recall from previous shows, proved to be a nice set-up to the Wavves show a while back. Although 59:1 is small, it definitely isn’t as small as the coffee shop sized Kafe Kult where they performed last. This provided a not-so welcoming atmosphere for them as the dreaded European force-field extended about ten-feet from the stage providing an awkward buffer from the crowd to the band. Regardless of the weird dynamic, Mondo Ray put on a hell of a show with their high energy garage rock/punk that would have fit in nicely with anyone’s SXSW line-up had they been there. Oh yeah, and the drummer is ridiculous, beating out hard-driving tempos and slamming downbeats like there was no tomorrow.
After they left, it was only a couple of minutes before Jay and the crew (bassist Stephen Pope and drummer Billy Hayes) took the stage for a non-stop fifty minute set where even switches between instrumentations were filled with heavy noise guitar providing absolutely no relief. The antithesis of banter-filled bands, Jay Reatard only spoke (or more like shouted) the names of each track prior to playing them. And play them did he ever…
