No Age and Jay Reatard

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

The Kings Arms, Auckland

I’ve been singing Jay Reatard all day. Easily one of my favourite sets of all time, Jay Reatard catapulted through a lightning speed set of songs mixed from his back catalog, although unfortunately seemed to pay less attention to my personal favourite, Blood Visions. Like the other crazy sweaty messes up the front I too was left hankering and hollering for Blood Visions, the title track. We were at least blessed with Greed, Money, Useless Children from the same album, a highlight song for me. Living up to his rep, the incredibly hairy Reatard simply yelled out the song title of the next song between each sweat-soaked rollercoaster track. Come to think of it, listening to Blood Visions now, you can almost hear him doing the same on the record, between Greed, Money… and It’s So Easy! The band had one of the best stage presences I’ve ever seen, EVER. His bass player was like Gene Simmons (but less creepy), pulling epic poses with his flying V that matched Jay’s, waving his head around loosely with his mouth agape so that his sweat and spit sprayed a metre in diametre. The quiet drummer was poised and perfectly fast. An incredibly talented and fun band, it was always going to be a hard one to beat.

Fortunately No Age delivered a great, fun, energetic set, but I knew it wouldn’t compare to Jay’s, at least for me. The crowd loved it though, crowd-surfing throughout, and Randy Randall even dropped his guitar to join them at one point. I loved how excited and enthusiastic Dean Spunt was, continuously praising the crowd (unlike other recently visiting bands who diss us). At the end Dean got up from his kit and sang with a towel on his head, sparking us back into life at the end of what felt like a rather long set. Unfortunately the shitty sound at the King’s Arms let me down again, it was hard to enjoy the music at times because of this, but this was also due to insane circle jerks running rampant centre stage and smashing into people with complete mental abandon and zero respect. While I can appreciate people getting into it in their own way, I do wish they’d pay a little mind to the screeds of people surrounding them who are getting into it too. That aside, it was one of the nicest audiences I’d been amongst in a long while - so many friendly, excited people. This gig lived up to its hype, and some!

More live photos of Jay Reatard and No Age

Posted by Sarah Gooding under U.S.A