April 21, 2008
Flame Reatardent
On Thursday night at the Silver Dollar, Jay Reatard's show got ugly. The Memphis band's shows usually do, but almost never like Thursday's: Reatard punched a patron who climbed on stage square in the face and angrily packed up his gear (video above), before Dan Burke, the Dollar's legendary and notorious booker, hopped on stage himself, delivering a tirade against Reatard ("fuck this American...that's fucking pussy shit").
On his blog on Friday, Reatard recapped the night and blamed Craig Laskey—one of Torontoist's heroes of 2007—for letting too many people into the Dollar, saying that the club was overloaded with 160 people more than its 190-person capacity, which Reatard wrote "is cool if there's some sort of security or crowd control—we don't need people getting so wild they jump on stage and smash our gear—but that's exactly what happened."
According to Reatard, the night started off badly and only got worse:
Right when we started playing someone pushed the monitors right on top of [bassist] Stephen [Pope] and on to his pedals—breaking them, people were throwing beer bottles at us, a someone jumped onstage and smashed my pedals, another guy took a full pitcher of beer and dumped it all over the rest of my pedals, and then threw it right at my Flying V, breaking the pickup and the input electronics. After three songs all our gear was smashed and unusable....when I asked Craig Laskey about [security] before the show he told me "I thought you guys were a garage band." When we couldn't play anymore I hung out and talked to people, refunded people's money out of my own pocket, and tried to borrow gear and finish the set a bit later but Dan Burke wouldn't get off the stage, too busy talking trash about me.Reatard concluded that he's "getting really sick of shit like this happening," but promised fans, "We'll come back in Toronto soon and do a free show to make it up to the real fans in Toronto. And we'll steer away from greedy promoters who don't have any control of their shows and who don't care about doing right by the audience."
Either way, Reatard may want to make sure he's got some solid security. If Jeff Tweedy's not safe, no one is.
Via Pitchfork. Thanks to Daniel Cichon for the tip.
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Chart just published their story about the night, and spoke to Jeff Cohen and Dan Burke, who gave their side of the story. Summary: there was security, and they they say Reatard could have dealt with the situation better than he did, which sorta goes without saying. (Neither make any mention of Burke's comments.)
Man, what a reatard.
...sorry, someone had to say it.
Yeah, that show was a clusterfuck. I'm glad he pulled the plug on that shit.
On the bright side, I discovered that my girlfriend is a serious rock and roll badass. Her feet got all sliced up from the broken glass, but all the wanted to do was rock out more.
Your girlfriend is badass, Reluctant!
Cheers to him for belting the drunk. If there was security there, they certainly seem to be making themselves scarce.
The real problem with the Silver Dollar is that "capacity" means capacity for both the back room and the front room with the stage. As soon as the band comes on, everyone crowds into the room with the stage, leaving the back room empty and the front room WAY overpacked.
I was there for a show like that once, and had to leave because the vibe was just getting scary - when you start trying to figure out how you'd get out if there was a fire or a fight, you're not really enjoying the show. Dan Burke isn't really the guy I'd want looking out for me if I was on stage on a night like that...
If they'd just move the bar to the back of the back room, like Lee's did, then a capacity crowd wouldn't feel so much like an over-booked room.