The great Jay Lindsey, otherwise known as Jay Reatard has died at the age of 29. According to the Memphis Commercial Appeal, he passed away in his sleep this morning at 3:30. The cause of death is unknown at this time.

A great talent, who had a bad habit of lashing out at his audience members whenever they got too close to his sh*t (Seriously, if you ever saw Jay live, you know he didn’t like people getting close to his sh*t), he built his reputation on those incendiary live shows. Although the embedded video above shows a rather raucous in-store performance outside Sailor Jerry’s in Philadelphia, my fondest Reatard memory was his September 2007 performance at Now That’s Class in Cleveland. He was in a feisty mood that night, too. Each and every song was introduced with a “Come on you mf’ers,” or a “Let’s go you mf’ers.” Then, he’d break into one of those punked up garage rock songs and it would be pure gold. It was brilliant, it was over in 20 minutes, and it was a night I’ll never forget. Godspeed, rocker.