/|\(;,;)/|\ There's an ocean of music, and I'm swimming as hard as I can. I use this blog to post music & commentary; I hope you find something here that does it for you. Peace!
“Little Man in My Mind” by Final Solutions
I’m probably in the minority on this one, but here goes: Out of the late great Jay Reatard’s entire back catalog, out of all those awesome records he did both as a solo artist and with bands like Lost Sounds, The Reatards, Bad Times and Angry Angles, this song—this amazing, brilliant, epic fucking song—might just be my favorite thing he ever did.
“Disco Eraser” by Final Solutions
Young Jimmy Lee—better known as Jay Reatard—wanted to leave home and crash with some friends for a while, so he stayed with a band called The Jackmonkeys, who used him as their drummer for a battle-of-the-bands competition. They won, of course, and a few years later they reformed as Final Solutions and started touring and recording together.
“Tammy” by Final Solutions
Of all Jay Reatard’s various projects, Final Solutions might be my favorite, or at least a close second to Lost Sounds. It seems young Jimmy Lee wanted to leave home and crash with some friends for a while, so he stayed with a band called The Jackmonkeys, who used him as their drummer for a battle-of-the-bands competition. They won, of course, and a few years later they reformed as Final Solutions and started touring and recording together.
I found this record, Songs By Solutions, almost by accident at Recycled Records on Haight Street, and I’ve been playing it over and over again ever since. The song “Little Man In My Mind” might just be my favorite song in the entire Jay Reatard catalog, and I posted it a few months ago (click here), but here’s another song, “Tammy,” for those of you who need further convincing that this album is Mandatory Punk.
Don’t touch that dial, folks, because next week we’ll be having a Jay Reatard Marathon here at Doc Shoe’s Music Blog. Most of you certainly won’t need me to preach the Gospel of Jimmy Lee Lindsey—he found a wide audience with his final records before he died at the age of 29—but I know that some of you, including my friend and roommate Johnny, are curious about the many other bands Jay Reatard played and recorded with. The dude made something like thirty albums and countless singles with at least a dozen bands in his lifetime, and we’ll be exploring his wild and bewildering back-catalog with posts from Lost Sounds, Nervous Patterns, Final Solutions, Terror Visions, The Reatards, Angry Angles, and Bad Times, not to mention a couple rarities from his solo career.
So stay tuned, folks, and keep on rockin’ in the Free World—
Doc Shoe
This is “Little Man In My Mind,” by Final Solutions, featuring Jay Reatard on the drums. If I had to pick a favorite Jay Reatard song, this just might be it.
