What We Can Learn About Ourselves From LCD Soundsystem's Farewell Show 

This weekend marks 10 years since the band played their defunct "farewell show"

    When I find something I like, a movie, music, video game, any kind of art, I latch onto it. If it's something that I get myself so involved with that I drive myself to the point of obsession and almost exhaustion with. I wanna know everything about where it came from, who made it, what the story behind it is, what kind of people made it, and what are they doing now? This is something I consider to be a huge strength and a huge weakness for me because I like learning about people and other things, but sometimes I feel like I drive other people to the point of insanity when I profess all this useless shit about what kind of gear they used for this record or how he directed that scene and how she tapped into her childhood angst to get that performance. People don't care about that shit, and neither should I, but I can't help myself, I find other people fascinating. Maybe I'm an alien. 

    On the other hand, I think that it's endearing and important that I become obsessed and surround myself with great art, that I impulsively try to learn as much as I can about the process of making art and the story of the people behind it. I like documentaries and podcasts and interviews and books for this very reason. Every record or movie or anything else has a story behind it and sometimes you get really interesting stories. 

    Case and point: James Murphy and his project LCD Soundsystem

(Photo by Theo Wargo for the NY Post)

       LCD Soundsystem, if nothing else, are one of the most unusual successes in the history of rock music. It's kind of an anomaly that this band is popular at all considering that they didn't even really originate from a rock scene. They get lumped in with the post 9/11 aughts New York rock scene, but the origin of this band, and James Murphy, is a little more nuanced than many of their contemporaries (sans maybe The National, who are closer in age to LCD and are a little bit of a trickier band to talk about). LCD is not a band that really had any interest mingling with a lot of their Manhattan based contemporaries like Interpol or The Strokes. LCD Soundsystem, despite being a rock band, are rooted in a dance scene. Which is ironic, still, because James Murphy had absolutely no interest in making dance music. DFA Records, LCD's flagship label, basically started on accident and out of boredom. Murphy, Johnathan Galkin (yes that Johnathan Galkin the one from Nick's "Hey Dude" that's right I know it's weird), and Tim Goldsworthy started DFA out of sharing a vision for a New York where more people partied. Murphy came from a rock background and had spent close to 17 years at that point working on engineering other bands as well as his own projects like Falling Man, Speedking, and Six Finger Satellite. None of these bands received any commercial success and Murphy was beginning to burn out between not making much of a name for himself or any money. Murphy turned down a gig to write for Seinfeld in the hopes that his music career would go somewhere but it wasn't until he met UNKLE's Tim Goldsworthy who turned his attention to dance music. Murphy began to try DJing after realizing how easy and natural it was for him and very quickly became one of the most celebrated and unique DJ's in New York in the early 00's. His unconventional style of using everything but the kitchen sink to DJ these extravagant Gatsby-esque parties where in one breath you might here a Liquid Liquid track and then in the next a violent cut away to The Stooges. It was this kind of carelessness, this breaking of borders and merging of world between rock and dance music that is what would ultimately set the stage for LCD Soundsystem. It didn't start in sweaty punk bars, it started on dance floors. 

    I won't sit here and bore you with the very long whole distinct timeline and history of the bizarre success that is LCD Soundsystem, chances are if you're one of a measly few people reading this you most likely know it all, but the reason I felt the need to point out how LCD started this way is because it was genuinely a hilarious accident. Nobody even believed in "Losing My Edge", LCD's debut single, and arguably their most important still, except for Murphy. Murphy said in an interview that everyone he showed the song to hated it and his labelmates all thought he was making a huge mistake. This is the first lesson we can learn: in times of sincere doubt, trust your gut. If you truly believe in something, fight for it and make it happen. Don't do what other people say if you know better than them. 

    LCD also started out of fear. Fear of failure. 

    Murphy was 32 when he released "Losing My Edge" and 35 when LCD's debut came out. He was 37 when "Sound of Silver" released and 41 when they played their "final show" which I promise we're getting to. Age, and fear of ageing, is perhaps the most prominent theme in LCD's music. This is LCD's most discernable quality. It's the thing that made this project instantly recognizable. Murphy is a year older than The National's Matt Berninger, 5 years older than the youngest member of TV on the Radio, and 9 years older than Karen O and Julian Casablancas, all staple members of the New York rock scene that LCD exploded out of. He is by a significant margin the oldest face of the "Post Punk Revival", whatever that even means. For years though, he did nothing, out of fear of failure. Murphy was worried, for the better part of a decade prior to LCD, that he would fail at whatever he did. So he spent most of his 20's doing nothing. He didn't start DFA till he was 29. The music industry is not easy or patient, it's a young man's game. Had he been an actor (sans "The Comedy") he would be in the sweet spot, as most actors have their best roles in their 30s and 40s, but in the music industry, especially for young rock bands post "Is This It?" you're now expected to go big or go home early. Interpol were no older than 25 when "Turn on the Bright Lights" released. It's amazing then, that despite this significant difference in age, that LCD manages to have more energy and pure youthful ambition than any rock band of their time. If you didn't see what Murphy looked like or know anything about him, if you only heard his voice, you would've assumed in 2005 that this was a younger band, and while 32 is hardly jumping into your senior years, it is where life gets a little more serious (These are just educated observations from someone in their mid 20's 💀). This is where DFA's slogan, "Too old to be new too new to be classic" was coined from. The idea that you're just never cool enough because your too old to be taken seriously by the younger generation but too young to be taken seriously by the older generation. LCD exist in this very specific time where if you did not experience it in some form or fashion you probably just won't get it the same way the people who were there to see it were, and if you were too old, you're still too old. Obviously good music is good music and can be enjoyed by anyone, but culture plays such a significant impact on the whole experience too, and I fell in love with the cultural aspect of what LCD and DFA was, and still is. 

    But none of this matters with LCD. There is such a level of uncoolness that comes with being actually cool. Being actually cool can only be achieved by understanding that you'll never be cool to everyone, only to a pretty small group of people. Boring people spend an embarrassingly long time just trying to appeal to everyone to be cool, but actually cool people just naturally are cool by doing what they do and having the other cool people come to them. This is the next life lesson: age, culture, and social status don't matter if you want to be actually cool. You cannot appeal to everyone, and you shouldn't try to, because the second you do you lose a real authenticity to yourself. I knew fucking nobody in high school and college who cared at all about LCD Soundsystem or any group of bands and DJs DFA produced, or subsequently any other remotely artsy dancy punk music that I find myself developing an increasingly hard addiction to as I get older. Even this kind of music itself, is not cool anymore. The indie kids born past '99 or 2000, the ones in high school and college now today do not care about LCD, in fact I think they're skeptical of this time of rock music. More and more I see younger faces getting more and more critical of the aughts and the art that was being created around that time. I see a lot of people who are more interested in artists like Mitski or Car Seat Headrest or SOPHIE or whoever else, and while it's a little terrifying to see artists I really loved in high school and college, formative artists who have made some of my favorite records, become so heavily scrutinized by a younger generation who doesn't understand some of this music the same way that I did, I also really appreciate this. I appreciate that cool is not something that lasts forever, what was cool 10 years ago is not cool in 2021 and what's cool in 2021 will not be cool in 2031. It's like a cyclical thing, or a rite of passage, coolness does not last forever. The coolest thing about LCD is that from the start, they recognized this, and because they came out of subculture of hipster jackassery where everyone thought that you were cool if you wore hideous converse shoes and listened to some flavor of the month NME backed garbage. LCD tapped into peak cool, by being explicitly uncool. The culture of hipster snobbery that latched on to LCD is not the same culture and inner circle of genuine comradery and friendship that LCD fostered, and that is really cool. 

    

   In 2010 LCD peaked, and for probably about the last year and a half of their existence, they truly probably were the best live act on earth. They embarked on a year and a half long farewell tour where they headlined festivals, filled small clubs and large ampetheatres, and 10 years ago this very night, they sold out Madison Square Garden. With three stellar records under their belt and countless accolades from critics and fans alike, LCD "departed" at the height of their powers.

    Except they didn't. LCD came back. Only a few short and simultaneously long years later. They weren't just running victory laps either, the project was back for good, they put out a new album in 2017 (and supposedly a new one is coming aS sOoN aS cOvId iS oVeR). This is where our next lesson begins: humans are dumb and make mistakes. Before I go any further I am not one of the weirdos that is anti-LCD Soundsystem reunion, quite the opposite, I actively welcome it. But Murphy rushed back to LCD without thinking about how other people would react to it, it's easy to forget now but this was a huge deal. This farewell MSG show meant a lot to a lot of people, for many, it was the best night of their lives. For James to rush back into things like this without considering that maybe some people felt cheated was indeed not considerate. Murphy did acknowledge this and apologized and life went on. A lot of people feel that since Murphy "got the band back together" after only about 5 years of being away (Arcade Fire takes longer to just release a new album) that the Madison Square Garden show was a fluke and some of what made it special no longer exists, they feel it's lost a little bit of what made it so valuable. I vehemently disagree. If anything I think that night is only more special. 

(From "Shut Up and Play the Hits")

    On April 2nd, 2011, 10 years ago this very day; James Murphy, Nancy Whang, Patrick Mahoney, Al Doyle, Tyler Pope, Rayna Russom, and Matthew Thornly played what was then their last show as LCD Soundsystem to a sold out crowd at Madison Square Garden. There are two kinds of LCD Soundsystem. There's LCD Soundsystem, the man, James Murphy, who creates the songs and makes the records and is the face of the band. That LCD Soundsystem died (and has partially stayed dead) with "This is Happening". However LCD Soundsystem, the band, is alive and well and was on full display the night in my honest opinion is that a good band is not a good band if they're not able to not only match the quality of their studio stuff when played live but make the songs pop out in a way that they otherwise wouldn't on the record. Most of my favorite bands are better or just as good live as they are in the studio. LCD's damn near reworking of their catalogue when played live is such a distinctly different beast from the records that it's almost a different experience. It's louder and more bombastic and instead of singing James Murphy is seemingly shouting over his bandmates just to be heard. It's all amplified in such an insane way. This is the next lesson: if you're in a band, be better live than you are on your records. Nobody wants to be bored, so be exciting. Rework stuff, strip it down or build it up. Throw in surprises. This is show business so put on a damn good show. I love it when live versions of songs I already love are even better but I really love it when a live version of a song is significantly better than what was heard on the album. That shows true artistry to me. It shows me that you actually care about your craft. You're not just trotting along to the same shit you were playing on the album, no, you genuinely give a shit. That is so important. More bands need to do this. 

    This whole night was so brilliant. The idea behind it is genius. If a band breaks up, you might as well go out on the highest note possible. You might as well throw the biggest party you can throw. LCD were always a party band after all, they never really played shows, they just threw big parties around in a tour bus and filled venues, and just like the Murph said, "If it's gonna be a funeral...let's have the best funeral ever". So on that night, the band played for 4 hours, a career spanning setlist that didn't just include the hits but also the deep cuts, covers, and 45:33 performed in its entirety. It featured balloons, tin foil spaceships, special guests, old band members, probably a lot of drinking and drug usage, and the most passionate performance of Harry Nilson's "Jump Into the Fire" I have ever seen. Special guests included Reggie Watts, Jayson Greene, Arcade Fire, Collin Stetson, ex LCD guitarist Phil Mossman, The Melvin's David Scott Stone, The Brooklyn Men's Youth Chorus, members of Hercules and the Love Affair, Shit Robot, The Juan Maclean, but surprisingly no Daft Punk. I'm eternally envious of anyone who went to this, who got to see this unfold in real time. This had to have been one of the best nights to ever be alive. The show does not live on in just people's booze fueled hazy memories however, it was given a documentary that comes with the entire show kept in it's entirety called "Shut Up and Play the Hits" as well as an album of the songs "The Long Goodbye" which was released in 2014. "The Long Goodbye" is my favorite album of the last decade, which is probably cheating since "Sound of Silver" is also my favorite album of the 2000's, but this band is absurdly good so shut the fuck up ok. Though I never attended this show, I was only just getting into LCD when this happened, I feel a really strong attachment to what happened in Madison Square Garden that night. 

    Despite being a diehard fan for a really long time, I've never seen LCD Soundsystem, I had several opportunities to and never did. Well that's not true I saw them for about 5 minutes when they kicked off touring for "American Dream" in 2017 but I got really sick and threw up in the venue's bathroom so I just decided to go home. That was one of the worst nights of my life. I hadn't even seen the movie or listened to the album because I was waiting for the right time, which I've since learned, there is no right time. There's only now. I became obsessed with this thing, this event, this illusive mystery to me that took place. There's so much trivia, so many interesting things about it that I enjoy, so much that happened that night that while I'm resentful at absolutely nobody for not experiencing it I'm also extremely thankful that there is something like LCD Soundsystem that exists. Indie rock is a pointless, stupid genre that serves no purpose, but LCD Soundsystem is not indie rock, they are dance music that appealed to indie rock kids. They are a dance band, and dance music absolutely has a purpose. The purpose is to make people dance and have fun. That means so much to me now more than ever. Looking back during this whole wet fart of a past year I spent so much time wondering what I could've done, what I should've done in the time I had, in the time I wasted before life was shut off to just me staring endlessly at my computer for job listings while I try to figure out what direction to take my weird life in next. What I do know now, is that whenever I'm allowed to have fun again, I'm not gonna waste my time. 

  This is where our final lesson presents itself: just have some fucking fun. I will not sit here and fanboy and jerk off like every other white indie rock writer on the internet and tell you why "All My Friends" is the best song ever written, I'm tired of that. It's undoubly LCD's best song and my favorite song of all time, but I'm not gonna slag on to the endless amount of fanfare that song has already rightfully deserved, that's boring and stupid. All I will say is that there's a line James sings in that song "To tell the truth, this could be the last time", which is maybe my favorite and most treasured moment from any of my dumb punk music that I enjoy listening to. It's such a serene moment of vulnerability, to look at who you are now, and say that this could all be over before you know it. Cliched sure but most things in life are, nothing is original in 2021. It's only further amplified by the cheering fanfare of the crowd when he sings it during the Madison Square Garden performance, which taps into such a ferocious level of pure energy that I find myself missing exceptionally now more than ever. LCD's "Long Goodbye" is brilliant because it is a document of a man who learned how to live, and in this beautiful moment, surrounded by his friends and 30,000 people, had his life peak. There is nothing more brutal or loud or emotionally exhilarating to me then the last third of this show which starts with a three song stretch of "You Wanted a Hit" / "Tribulations" / "Movement" before transitioning into a 15 minute performance of "Yeah" which all eventually boils to a climax with a seriously intense performance of "New York I Love You, But You're Bringing Me Down". It's fun but it's so emotional and devastating to see it all happen the way it does. More importantly than that though, it is a document of just some friends, having a seriously fun time. It is the most realistic pure encapsulation of what it looks like to have fun, what it means to just be in that moment and live with the people surrounding you and just enjoy your lives together. Free of worry or anxiety. It is a truly special moment. Even if they came back, nothing takes away from how special the moment was, and still is. When humanity no doubt massacres itself in the future and we are no longer here, I hope that whatever remains of this shouldering destroyed rock of a planet we lived on is found by something greater than us, and I hope that whatever or whoever it is that finds us is able to find this preserved small snapshot of time where everything was just right. I hope the see it and look at how incredibly important this moment was to just a few of the people that existed on this dead rock. I hope that they the people dancing in and hear the music and see that while we were a brutal, cruel, and violent race, there were a few of us who loved to laugh and dance and sing. A few of us who genuinely enjoyed our time together and loved to have real fun. There were a few of us who were beautiful.