New Doc Highlights LCD Soundsytem’s Gangbusters Grand Finale
LCD Soundsystem is tied with Bright Eyes as hands-down my favorite band of the past decade.
The Brooklyn-based electro rockers – led by mastermind James Murphy – almost single-handedly revived and reinvented a genre known as dance punk. Loud. Fast. Fun. It’s rock music with a disco beat that you can shimmy and shake to. It’s electro music dressed in punk clothing – jam-packed with thumping bass lines, acid-washed keyboards, live drums and distorted guitars. And of course a cowbell thrown in for good measure. It’s all part of LCD’s signature sound.
LCD Soundsystem broke up in 2011. The new documentary – Shut Up and Play the Hits – follows the band as it prepares and performs its final, sold-out show at Madison Square Garden in New York City. This is a band that played much smaller venues than that but they wanted to go out with a bang, and they sure did.
I was lucky enough to score a ticket to one of four sold-out screenings at the Music Box theater in Chicago. The movie played at one-night-only screenings throughout the country, but the demand was so high in Chicago there were four screenings. A total of 2,600 Chicagoans have seen the film – the most in all of the US.
I moved away from New York before the band played that final show, but I would’ve undoubtedly been there had I still been living in Brooklyn.
I had the privilege of seeing LCD Soundsystem four times while they were still together. Twice in New York – at Randall’s Island opening for Arcade Fire in 2007 and at Terminal 5 in 2009. And twice in Chicago at Lollapalooza 2007 and at the Aragon Ballroom in 2011.
James Murphy broke up LCD Soundsystem that year and everyone was shocked that a band on the brink of superstardom would quit. The film documents the 48 hours which encapsulate the moments preceding the concert, the show and the aftermath.
It intercuts live scenes from the concert with bits of Murphy mundanely moping around his Brooklyn apartment, shaving his face and walking his dog.
In an interview on The Colbert Report that is excerpted early in the film, Murphy told the comedian he was ending the band because it was getting “embarrasing.” At 41-years old, he didn’t feel like he was fit to be in a band anymore.
In a memorable scene, rock journo Chuck Klosterman asks Murphy what LCD Soundsystem’s biggest failure was. His answer: breaking up the band. But maybe it’s for the better.
Neil Young said it best and Kurt Cobain famously quoted him in his suicide note: “It’s better to burn out than to fade away.” LCD Soundsystem never put out an album that sucked. They have three – all of which are artistic triumphs.
Maybe Murphy will continue his music career playing sporadic gigs as a DJ. I saw him spin at The Mid in Chicago in the spring and I was absolutely blown away. None of this two laptops and iTunes nonsense. Murphy actually spins vinyl. The records he drops are spine-tingling ear candy. I don’t know where he gets his vinyl, but they are songs you’ve never heard of but wish you had. I went by myself – my date cancelled on me – and I danced my ass off.
Here’s to hoping that James Murphy will keep dance punk alive, even if it’s just on the ones and twos.
