Other music documentaries playing at Silverdocs, which runs from June 20 to 26 in Silver Spring, include Bob and the Monster, about how Thelonius Monster singer Bob Forrest went from hard-living post-punker to celebrity drug counselor; Better than Something: Jay Reatard, a biopic of the late garage rocker shot shortly before his January 2010 death; Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels With A Tribe Called Quest, the directorial debut of the actor Michael Rapaport that caused some division within the hip-hop group; and making its world premiere, Never Make It Home, about the Kansas alt-country band Split Lip Rayfield, whose cancer-stricken singer and guitarist Kirk Rundstrom spent the last two months of his life on a farewell tour. Additionally, D.A. Pennebaker, who will be honored at Silverdocs' Charles Guggenheim Symposium, will be screening Monterrey Pop, his seminal 1968 concert film about the 1967 Monterrey Pop Festival.

There's plenty of hard stuff, too. Hoop Dreams director Steve James will be on-hand to present The Interrupters, a study of reformed gang members in Chicago who are trying to quell the rising tide of street violence in that city. Following up on last year's double-shot of stellar films about the Afghanistan war—Restrepo and The Tillman Story—is Hell and Back Again, the personal tale of a Marine sergeant dealing with devastating combat wounds and his return home. There will also be a panel in tribute to Restrepo director Tim Hetherington, who died earlier this year while photographing the Libyan civil war, at Silverdocs' accompanying International Documentary Conference.

At a press luncheon earlier today at Birch & Barley, Silverdocs director Sky Sitney said the conference is being revamped this year to provide more opportunities to directors with a few credits under their belt, in addition to the usual panels and workshops designed to connect burgeoning filmmakers with seasoned veterans. "The mid-career filmmaker was often neglected," she said.

A handful of food documentaries will be making their local premieres. Cafeteria Man profiles the Baltimore chef Tony Geraci's attempts to improve the woeful food served in Baltimore's public schools, a mission not unlike what the celebrity chef Jamie Oliver has attempted to do in West Virginia and more recently Los Angeles. Then there's El Bulli—Cooking in Progress, a feature-length version of what Slate's David Plotz called the "I Ate at El Bulli" piece.

There's plenty else to be excited about at Silverdocs this year. Alex Gibney, who last year cranked out two features—Casino Jack and the United States of Money and Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer—along with a segment of Freakonomics, has a new film about the Chicago Cubs. And Chris Paine, whose 2006 film Who Killed the Electric Car? damned the auto industry for not developing battery-powered vehicles, will present the sequel, Revenge of the Electric Car.

The full slate of films and showtimes will be released Friday by AFI Silverdocs. Update | May 26: The full slate is now online.

There will be a memorial on Saturday in Memphis for garage rocker Jay Reatard, who died early Wednesday morning at 29. Already, it appears Reatard left behind at least some unreleased material. To start, there's "Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle," a Nirvana cover that popped up on his Web site yesterday. Another cover has also been making the rounds: Reatard's take on Chris Knox's "Pull Down the Shades," from a benefit album for the New Zealand singer. Hear a sample here.

Also on that comp: The most substantial piece of new music from Jeff Mangum, Eminent Indie Recluse, since he put out a disc of Bulgarian field recordings in 2001.

- We should've reported this Tuesday: the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities announced its 2010 grant recipients, who will receive $7.25 million total. Read the full list of individuals and organizations who received grants here.

- It looks like Jay Leno's heading back to The Tonight Show, WaPo reports—unless, that is, Conan O'Brien changes his mind about hosting program at 12:05 a.m.

- Industry Gallery in Northeast opens Saturday. Its first show is "Round the corner" by the aluminum and metal artist Shlomo Harush. WaPo has a feature; ReadysetDC has a preview.

- Joel Pollack, who owns Big Planet Comics, has been updating an autobiography on the store's Web site (via ComicsDC).

- James Murphy says he may retire the LCD Soundsystem name after an upcoming album and tour.

- Tonight in City Lights: Reggaeton stars Jowell y Randy. Steve Kiviat says:

Puerto Rican reggaeton duo Jowell y Randy occasionally nods in other directions on its 2009 mixtape Se Acerca el Momento. Involved in reggaeton separately in the late ’90s and together through much of the last decade, Jowell y Randy here reach out with a bachata number, some Auto-Tuned vocals, and even some mariachi instrumentation. On most cuts, however, the team sticks to rapping and singing over that familiar boom-chi-boom-chick rhythm, which could have been a formula for dullness. Instead, rhyme-spitter Jowell’s often nasal flow and rhyme-crooner Randy’s lush R&B melodies contrast and combine with that insistent beat—and prove more invigorating for it.

Puerto Rican reggaeton duo Jowell y Randy occasionally nods in other directions on its 2009 mixtape Se Acerca el Momento. Involved in reggaeton separately in the late ’90s and together through much of the last decade, Jowell y Randy here reach out with a bachata number, some Auto-Tuned vocals, and even some mariachi instrumentation. On most cuts, however, the team sticks to rapping and singing over that familiar boom-chi-boom-chick rhythm, which could have been a formula for dullness. Instead, rhyme-spitter Jowell’s often nasal flow and rhyme-crooner Randy’s lush R&B melodies contrast and combine with that insistent beat—and prove more invigorating for it.

That's tonight at Fur. Happy weekend!

UPDATE: In the Red Records owner Larry Hardy said Reatard was found this morning by his roommate, Jeffrey Novak of the band Cheap Time, who immediately called paramedics. Hardy said Reatard was pronounced dead on the scene.

In the Red released Reatard's 2006 album Blood Visions and a pair of singles compilations. "I'm in shock. He just phoned me yesterday," Hardy said, adding that Reatard stayed with him every time he visited Los Angeles, where the label is based. "That's the saddest thing about this—his career was taking off, he was having all this success, he signed to Matador. It seems like a really horrible waste."

According to the Commercial Appeal, Reatard's friends said the singer had been complaining of flulike symptoms recently.

Original post below.

Jay Reatard, a garage rocker recognized increasingly in recent years both for his prolific recorded output and a series of controversies involving other musicians, was found dead early this morning in his Memphis home, the Commerical Appeal is reporting. Two record labels that have released Reatard's work, Goner Records and Matador Records, have confirmed the death. Reatard, born Jimmy Lee Lindsey Jr., was 29. No cause of death has been reported.

More news as it comes in.

When played at the Black Cat in July, his songs "landed like a punch to the face," wrote City Paper's Christine Ernest. "Reatard’s set was a 45-minute assault on the ears: It was loud and frantic..."

The Village Voice shares some stories of Reatard's antics from bombastic garage rocker King Khan:

Or here's the best Jay story. When he was 17, he played at a mechanic's garage. This guy that was a fan of the Reatards [Jay's former band] set up a show in some garage. So while the show was going on, Jay was getting really crazy. While he was playing, he got naked and he opened up a can of motor oil and dumped it all over his head and was slipping and sliding everywhere. And then some smart-ass in the audience just rolled up a can of something on stage–it was all dirty, so he didn't know what it was. Jay grabbed it and opened it up and sprayed it on his dick. Within 10 seconds he started screaming in agony on the floor in the fetal position–"Ahhhhh!"–while covered in oil. Then he grabbed the can and scrapped the dirt off from it–it was EASY-OFF oven cleaner.

Holding up the 48th second of the Beatles' "Rain" as an example, Wolk claims that, "if some band of 25-year-olds with radio aspirations wrote and recorded 'Rain' today...that take would probably be thrown out, or at least digitally edited to fix the screw-up."

With respect to Wolk, this strikes me as a hollow, distinctly codger-y argument. (And one that cites exactly zero contemporary acts by way of illustration.) Couple points here:

1. "[The Beatles'] recording [of "Rain"] is a mess." Not perforce true. Sure, it's loose, and there's a soupy-psychedelic lag to the arrangement, but the Beatles were always in tireless pursuit of shit like that. (As when John instructed George Martin to make "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite" smell like "sawdust on the floor.")

2. "It's full of mistakes, accidents and inconsistencies that would be utterly unacceptable by the pop-music standards of 2009." What "pop music" are we discussing here—the Jonas Bros., or indie rock's more mainstream extrusions? 'Cuz it seems to me we're still in an era where authenticity, even salable authenticity, gets stored in the garage. manifested in tape hiss, &c. &c. The White Stripes were massive in spite and because of the over-discussed sloppiness of Meg White. And I'm no expert in the whole Jay Reatard thing, but doesn't he tend to drop eighth notes here and there?

3. The Beatles is an odd band to tout as an example of studio imperfectionism. It's true, their obsessions geared toward invention rather than toward metronomics, but after 1964, this was no garage band. These are the guys who lugged 40-piece orchestras into Abbey Road and spent over 30 hours recording this song.

4. Studio perfectionism isn't a product of Pro Tools. And it's not a phenomenon unique to rock, either—think Glenn Gould, whose OCD approach to studio work infuriated sound engineers and entailed unprecedented (and literal) cutting and pasting in order to effect a synthetic perfection that live performances couldn't approach. (Christ, imagine what a pain he would've been in the Pro Tools era!)

5. "The lead singer's wobbly notes, and the not-quite-in-tune bass guitar, would get fixed with AutoTune." Sorry, how many current rock acts actually use AutoTune on a consistent basis?

What I'm wondering, I guess, is why we have to discuss this exclusively in terms of songs from the mid-'60s. "The high-tech ideal of popular music means no botched rhythms, no sour notes, no shaky dynamics, but also no 'Sex Machine,' no 'Louie Louie,' no 'Rain.'" These are the only three songs Wolk even mentions in the post. I'd love for Fischer to chime in on the lo-fi implications of all this, and mebbe Riggs has something to say re: Emo or something like that. But this whole thing strikes me as a pretty straw-man mode of obituary.

Last night's Jay Reatard show at the Black Cat was supposed to take place on the club's large Mainstage, but was moved to its smaller downstairs area—probably due to low ticket sales, thanks to the holiday weekend. Still, the Black Cat's Backstage was crowded, and those who ventured out were treated to Jay Lindsey (aka Jay Reatard), along with bassist Stephen Pope and drummer Billy Hayes, in an intimate setting.

The Black Cat staff, likely aware of incidents at past Reatard shows, were prepared for a rowdy crowd. Four staff members barricaded the stage to protect the band and attendees from each other. They proved especially useful when a nasty fight between two young girls broke out during "It's So Easy." Although the confrontation looked painful, it paid off when Reatard apologized to the triumphant girl as she stood  in front of the stage. It was the only direct interaction the frontman had with the audience all night.

The music itself also landed like a punch to the face. Reatard's set was a 45-minute assault on the ears: It was loud and frantic, with material mostly drawn from In The Red Blood Visions and Matador Singles ‘08. Pressed against the front of the stage, an energetic pit of mostly younger showgoers went especially crazy over "Oh It's Such A Shame" and  "Greed, Money, Useless Children," the best track of the night. (I was hoping to hear a lot of new material from Reatard's forthcoming album Watch Me Fall, but since that didn't happen I bought it at the show. I listened to it and it's good. Really good.)

During the encore, show opener T.V. Smith, of the legendary punk band the Adverts, rejoined Reatard and crew on stage. Covers of late ’70s Adverts songs like "Bored Teenagers" were performed to the pleased crowd. By the time the last collaboration, on Reatard's "We Who Wait," kicked in, it was easy to lose track of where the Adverts' covers ended and the contemporary punk started-a feat showing Reatard's music is not just a flash in the pan.

• Eric Felten Jazz Orchestra. Blues Alley. $25.
• L.A. Guns w/ Mis-Fit, Tilt, Sinner’s Trail, Bitter Pill. Jaxx. $18/$20. +21.
• Sheryl Crow, Ari Hest. Filene Center at Wolf Trap. $30-$48.
• TheoryCast, ReVeL, Fight The Bear, Conshafter. Rock and Roll Hotel. $10. All ages.
• DC Summer Extravaganza w/ Tittsworth, Nadastrom, Will Eastman, Bobby Jae & Ken Lazee, Dmerit. 9:30 club. $10. All ages.
• Canda, Bobbie Allen, Mila Levine, Michelle Murray, Treevibes, Lulu Fall, Vox Pop, Lux Operon, Peter S. Pinocci, Liberated Muse, Rob Wolcott. Artomatic. (For more info, see our Artomatic Manual)

Saturday

• 40th Annual Smoke-In: Human Rights (HR of the Bad Brains), See-I, Christos, Telesma, The Package, The Omsteaders, J.B. Bevereley and The Wayward Drifters, and DJ Bedroom. 23rd and Constitution Avenue NW. Free.
• National Symphony Orchestra: “A Capitol Fourth.” US Capitol, West Lawn. Free.
• DJ Regal, Fort Knox Five, All Good Funk Alliance. Black Cat. $10. All ages.
• Independence Day Noon:30 Release Party w/ The Laughing Man, Achtung Panda, Ghost Light, DJ Natty Boom. Velvet Lounge. $3-$8. +21.
• DJ Dk. Cafe Saint Ex.
• NoiseHouse, BLOODSHOT, HeeBeeGeeBees, Jeremy Steinhaus, Machines of Living Death, Anil Rock, Copper Rose & Bone, Julie O., Fat Roberta, Princess of Controversy, C.O.M.P., Mother Courage, The Very Small, Mambo Sauce, Zip The Uncanny, Vmasta & Cortez, Glasgow Tunnel, The FiF. Artomatic.

Sunday

• Blues Jam with the Idle Americans. Bangkok Blues. Call for price.
• Jay Reatard, TV Smith. Black Cat. $12. All ages.
• The Scare, Energy, Fallen From The Sky, Ante Up, Debaser. Velvet Lounge. $8. +18.
• St. Croix Virgin Islands Reggae Tour 2009 w/ Batch, Ras Attitude, Empress Ima, Jah Empress. IOTA Club & Cafe. $12. +21.
• Smithsonian Folklife Festival: Only Men Aloud! Kennedy Center Millennium Stage. Free.
• Triple Staccs, Mzery Loves Company, Mary Battiata & LITTLE PINK, RC Rex & the Progressionals, SAW Showcase, Seth Barna, House of Echo, Rob Wolcott, Dark Electric Showcase II, Sesshin No-Fi, Sarah Fridrich. Artomatic.

"A Capitol Fourth" 2007 photo by boboroshi, Creative Commons Attribution License.

Sa-Ra Creative Partners: "Bitch Baby"
Los Angeles-based production group Sa-Ra Creative Partners' contributions to Erykah Badu's New Amerykah Part One (4th Wold War) met or exceeded that singer's propensity for weirdness, which was no mean feat. "Bitch Baby," from the forthcoming double-CD Nuclear Evolution: The Age of Love, proves that when left to its own devices Sa-Ra is just as, if not more, bizarre. There are slithering group vocals, suggestive lyrics, and fuzzy nods to vintage Funkadelic, all floating randomly through a flowing stream of off-kilter samples.

Jay Reatard: "It Ain't Gonna Save Me"
Jay Reatard is, if nothing else, one of the last true purveyors of the punk-accent. On "It Ain't Gonna Save Me" he places the emphasis on the brattiest syllable of each phrase with such an artful touch that even The Dead Milkmen should be jealous. "All is lost there is no hope for me," he repeats over the song's final throes, giving it all he's got, singing as if the vocal were being recorded into a giant lollipop instead of a microphone.

Eels: "That Look You Give That Guy"
As the '90sde came to a close E, the brain behind Eels, grew a unibomber beard, locked himself indoors, and holed up while the tornado of boy band-mania swept away Matthew Sweet, Grant Lee Phillips, and a generation's worth of alt-rock crooners. It worked, though. He's still here, setting soft, melancholy melodies to hip-hop beats. "The Look You Give That Guy," currently streaming on the Eels' myspace, along with the rest of new album Hombre Lobo, dusts off that formula and, pleasantly, it's no worse for the wear.