A few years back I was introduced to Chris Knox’s genius via the kiwitapes blog. I immediately connected to the sound of his voice, his lyrics, and for sure the production of his many records. Upon learning that I was gonna be lucky enough to travel on tour to New Zealand earlier this year I knew I just had to meet the man behind it all. A few emails were sent and with a bit of luck I was invited over to his house for tea and some snacks! I only a had a few of his various bands records at home and none with me… So I dropped a ton of dough at a local record shop picking up the entire Toy Love catalog along with a few other records…

As the door to his house opened I was overcome with a nervous fan boy feeling I hadn’t felt since I was 16 or so. Our meeting was brief, only 3-4 hours, but in that time we made plans to tour together this upcoming year and made plans to record a single together as well. I found Chris to be so unjaded and so full of ideas and life. A few days back before our LA show I received a text from our NZ promoter letting me know Chris had suffered a stroke. I was pretty shook up but put everything I had into the show that I could muster up. I have had quite a few days to think to myself how lucky I was to meet Chris and how much hope he gave me for my own future as an artist. Here’s hoping for a speedy and successful recovery for Chris and his family! And if you haven’t heard Toy Love, Tall Dwarfs, The Enemy or his countless solo records please do yourself a favor and hunt them down. It might change your life… It did mine.

from exclaim.ca

Thoughts on 2008: Stephen Pope, Bassist for Jay Reatard
12/26/2008

To tide us over while we indulge in the holiday spirit gorging on stuffing and egg nog, we asked a bunch of musicians to tell us their thoughts on 2008. Some of them replied with lists of their favourite music, some told us their fondest memories, and some came up with much more creative ways to commemorate this past year.

Jay Reatard’s super fro’d bassist Stephen Pope, also a member of the Boston Chinks , was nice enough to look back on his year of hectic gigging and give us a detailed list of his freaky celebrity encounters in 2008:

What I’ve come to realize on tour from watching hundreds of hours of television from hundreds of TV sets in hundreds of hotel rooms is the only thing more entertaining than watching these A to Z list celebrities make fools of themselves is meeting them in person. Will barely being able to play bass in Jay Reatard enable me to meet the host of one of those late night infomercials? Can I ask Brigitte and Frank if Extenze really does work? What would I do if I saw Jaleel White (Steve Urkel) at one of our shows? Would I be able to speak if Dave Grohl was wandering around backstage? Do I have a Shot at Love with Tila Tequila? Well, I didn’t meet Urkel, Grohl or Tila Tequila, and I can’t say for sure if Extenze really works or not, but I did meet a few other celebrities (at least in my mind) who totally freaked the fan boy inside of me out. Here is my list of freaky celebrity encounters in 2008 (in no particular order):

J Mascis
I actually met J for the first time in December of 2007 when we played with Dinosaur Jr. in Memphis. Jay [Reatard] and I actually went and had dinner with J Mascis and Jodie Stevens of Big Star. I don’t think I said a word the entire time. I was freaked. It was awesome. I’ve met him a handful of times since. I’m still freaked. It’s still awesome.

Lars Ulrich
Let me say that again. Lars Ulrich. Drummer. Metallica. Lars Ulrich. He was at one of our shows. I met him. Don’t believe me?!?! I have proof. Check out the April 4, 2008 post onjayreatard.blogspot.com. Holy freak I was freaked!

Nardwuar
I’ll admit, not being Canadian I had not heard of the Human Serviette before, but when I found out he was going to interview us in Vancouver I Googled him and was severely freaked. He’s interviewed Nirvana, Snoop Dogg, Mikhail Gorbachev, Slipknot, and Sonic Youth, just to name a few. Meeting Nardwuar was like meeting a countless number of other celebrities, dead and alive.

Meat Puppets/Ween
2008’s Pitchfork vs. ATP festival in England, as I remember, was like floating on a cloud of indie celebrity drug-and-alcohol-induced vomit. Amazing. In one night I had Gene Ween tell me I was his favourite bass player (even though I don’t think he knew who I was), Curt Kirkwood of the Meat Puppets tell me and Billy [drummer for Jay Reatard] that he “smoked weed, hardcore, everyday” and Chris Kirkwood of the Meat Puppets pretend to rape me with a bottle of red wine. When he “finished” he took his thumb off the top of the bottle and spewed red wine all over me. Best friends? Best freaks.

Jay-Z/Slayer
Okay, I didn’t actually meet Jay-Z or Slayer, but we played Roskilde Festival in Denmark together on the same day, and I get to tell people that we “opened up” for Jay-Z and Slayer now. That tends to freak some people.

Dicky Barrett of the Mighty Mighty Bosstones
We played a punk festival called Riot Fest this fall in Chicago. Headliners of the festival included acts like D.O.A., the Casualties and yes, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones. I had a cigarette with the horn section right before we played. Right after we played, while I’m drenched with sweat and voice completely shot (even though I don’t sing), an equally sweaty and hoarse Dicky Barrett comes up to me and says, “your show kicked ass.” I just stared at him because he was so sweaty (the Bosstones hadn’t played yet) and eventually said, “Thanks man!” Freakin it with the Bosstones!

Beck
Earlier this year Jay got asked to do a cover of Beck’s new single “Gamma Ray,” to be released as the B-side to Beck’s version. Then, later on in the year, we were asked to come open up for Beck in Los Angeles. Freaky! I met Beck right after we played but he didn’t say much. He did however ask Jay to come on stage and sing “Gamma Ray” with him. Only problem was, Jay didn’t remember any of the lyrics. I scrambled around trying to get lyrics printed out from Beck’s manager. As I was looking for the lyrics I heard through the grapevine that Drew Barrymore was in the audience somewhere, and my attention turned from the lyric-sheet to celebrity-spotting. Unfortunately, I never met Drew Barrymore but I did get the lyric sheet and Jay got to freak with Beck on stage.

This concludes my list of celebrities I’ve met this year. If there are any celebrities I met but forgot to mention I apologize. Please feel free to come meet me again. And, to all other celebrities whom I have not yet met, come out to a Jay Reatard show in a town near you. I’ll be standing behind the merch table after we play.

so we left Memphis for Dublin over 3 days ago and I’m just now waking up in glassgow. After my first real sleep in three days!
how did we end up here instrumentless cold tired and hungry you ask ? Well blame it on delta airlines!
Our plane from Memphis to atlanta wouldn’t start so we where 10 min late for our Dublin flight .
So after selling our seats they put is up in a roach motel for the night. The next day they sent us to amsterdam
and then to glassgow where we are told they have lost my guitars. So just wanted to let everyone know we are trying our best to makes this happen despite deltas fuck ups. Hope to see ya soon!

Beck playing Gamma Ray @ Club Nokia on November 10th, 2008, accompanied by Jay Reatard. Reatard didn’t know the lyrics and needed an accompanied piece of paper with lyrics on them. You’d think the Reatard would know the words before coming on. Not impressed with Jay Reatard at all.

So tour is going better than ever so far staying healthy and playing some funny/fun shows. First up was Columbia Missouri played with the wold famous California raisins and another local turn out was a bit slim but everyone there was super rad. Shouts out to the guy from St Louis that brought us the cd’s! The next day we played Chicago at Riot Fest ! Gotta say we tried our best to win over the punx but failed miserably:( But oh well I skanked backstage to the Bosstones while Stephen Kicked it for a bit with Dicky!
From there we loaded up and went to our second show which was fun but I really didn’t dig the incubus sounding band shoved in the middle of the set.Grabbed some Mexican food with The Ponys and hit the hay..Today we did an instore at atomic records which was really fucking fun the kids that came out where great and I think we played the best so far on this tour.. Steve bought a Notorious BIG action figure from the shop which is now his most prized possession … We ate some food at the comet cafe and here we are at the local super 8 ….alright bed time kids.

Jay R.

So I’m back from our last tour drinking a vitamin water (didn’t know this shit had arsenic in it) and eating a candy bar hanging out with my dog cola .Really happy to be home safe and sound and just really wanted to thank everyone who helped make this an incredibly successful tour.We made some new friends meet up with tons of old ones and made a few new enemy’s as well along the way but hey thats how it goes. Shouts out to Chicago ,San Fransisco, San Diego and L.A for giving us our strongest turn outs so far and well of course thanks to any one and everyone who came out to support us on this tour.Oh and you should check out the Atoms we played with these cats in San Diego and they were great! Off to eat at my favorite Vietnamese restaurant now Chào ông !

heres some “Rock Stars ” losing it on stage … Turns out Im not the only “asshole” in rock-n roll.

Guns n’ Roses
AC/DC
Keith Richards
Nirvana
Queens of the Stone Age
Akon
Bjork
Henry Rollins
Jay Reatard
Danzig
KISS
Green Day
Fall Out Boy
Dipset
The Misfits
Tool
Marilyn Manson
Panic at the Disco
Nickelback

Source

Last night’s show in Toronto got completely fucked up. The Silver Dollar holds 190 people but Craig Laskey the promoter let 350 people in there. That’s 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. Right when we started playing someone pushed the monitors right on top of Stephen 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. Even when shit gets that crazy at Circle Jerks show there’s at least some security but when I asked Craig Laskey about it 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.

I’m getting really sick of shit like this happening. 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.

The Tard BoyZ got to talk Tennesee “hardrock” with Mr Lars in S.F dude was pretty nice.

So at home for a few days Oz was fantastic Wanna thank Daniel and Johanna for the great times !! So we flew straight form Melbourne to SXSW had 1 day of and then started out schedule of 7 shows in 3 days.. Met tons of news friends and got to see tons of old ones. Thanks to all who came out and supported our crappy little band.. We leave for the west coast in 5 days and I cant wait !!!