The beloved singer died in his sleep last night, according to a brief post on the (now crashing) record labels website. He was twenty-nine.
Rumors started circulating via Twitter just a few minutes ago, when our staff noticed a
post on Brooklyn Vegan speculating and linking to a bunch of accounts, including the band Air Waves (who later tweeted a pretty tasteless response; "I wish Brooklyn Vegan wrote more about our band then about our knowledge of when a friends, friend died"). The news broke when Goner Records made an announcement via their message boards, literally crashing the site. The statement read:
"It is with great sadness that we report the passing of our good friend Jay Reatard. Jay died in his sleep last night. We will pass along information about funeral arrangements when they are made public."
More information as it is released. -
joe puglisi