Even Heroes Die, Little Billy

LCD's set from last night's Fillmore at the TLA show


HINDSIGHT: A BITCH

I really thought that everyone's championing of LCD's Sound of Silver would place the best possible horseman at the reins of general alternative music, and that this charioteer would be able to lead us straight through the sun, to our much yearned for Eden, a place free of indie bitching, an Eternal Disco. I was wrong.

WHY DIDN'T ANY ONE UPSTANDING CRITIC TRY TO FIND FLAWS IN SILVER?

No good answer. Maybe it was too early to do so. Maybe I am one of the first ones, even just now, able to attempt such a thing. Having now probably listened to each track around 500 times, I can say it is entirely possible to get sick of the sound of silver, to think that "North American Scum" and "Us V. Them" need to be shortened, that maybe the speaker of "Time to Get Away" is too much of an asshole, etc, etc. It's possible. Clearly one of the band's biggest fans, I stalked and then found the leaked Silver files very early, I think it was just before Thanksgiving, IN HINDSIGHT the worst fucking possible time. Everyone stopped releasing music in '06 because "how the fuck am I going to get on critics' year end lists by releasing a record in December?" I had all the time in the world to listen to the new record. And I fucking did, and when I wrote this, I thought I had spent the perfect amount of time with the record, that I had found my own kairos for writing about it. IN HINDSIGHT, what had probably happened is hubris had kicked in, that I had become disgustingly proud of myself for knowing this record inside-out, and that I, like every other critic, had become caught in its spell and gave it just a little more credit than it deserved.

"WELL I'M LOSING MY EDGE / TO ALL THE INTERNET KIDS / THAT LIKE THE LCD SOUNDSYSTEM FOR ITS / 'SONGS'."

What I hadn't thought of was that every other indie, alt, hipster dude/ette out there would soon enough be as enamored as I was with Murphy's transformation into a songwriter. It still took about a month after Silver had been officially released for the oldschool hipster caveat to well up in my mind: if the indie/hipster chic establishment endorses something, there's probably something wrong (not hip enough for uber hip me) with it. I have no problem with this line of thinking. Neither would James Murphy, first and still foremost, creator of "Losing My Edge".

"HOW CAN YOU NOT LIKE 'SONGS'?"

This all came to a head at last night's free (bad idea), myspace sponsored (worse idea), LCD show at the Fillmore at the TLA (worst idea ever). You see, I have been spoiled. In 2005, at what I guess was the fifth anniversary of Making Time, an incipient LCD live act had lots to prove. And IN HINDSIGHT, but remembered like yesterday, on the relatively small main stage of Transit did they ever prove it. They, the accredited members of LCD Soundsystem, not some motley crew, took the stage. Red light on Murphy's mic. He stepped into it, already sweating. He took a swig from a bottle of Jack Daniels. He took two tambourines, one in each hand, looked at them in turn, first the left, then the right, and then slapped himself in the face with them. The band immediately launched into "Beat Connection". It is still the best live performance of any song in the LCD catalogue that I have heard.

Tracks, better, jams, like "Beat Connection" as opposed to songs like "North American Scum" or "Daft Punk Is Playing At My House", work really well live. They are so big that they simply set a crowd on fire. At that early show the set included similar jams "Losing My Edge", "On Repeat", "Yeah" (Crass), and for the denouement a cover of Paperclip People's "Throw." The set and the energy and the environment were perfect, and what happened that night wasn't an LCD Soundsystem show, it was a Rage Against the Machine show, and if, like me you didn't have the balls to go to a Rage show, then you were ecstatic at the realization that another band could set you free in that way.

By comparison an atrocity occurred last night. I need to get this out of the way here, the lighting (I don't know whether LCD or the TLA's to blame) was terrible: way too bright, and white, not nearly enough colors or effects. What was truly upsetting though was how a growing in popularity headliner, now with a more than sufficiently large catalogue, could perform way too short of a set, maybe barely reaching an hour. That set needs to be at least twenty minutes longer. No "Get Innocuous" the best dance jam on the new record. No "Someone Great", Murphy's best song. No "Beat Connection" or "On Repeat" or "Yr City's A Sucker." No "Jump Into The Fire" or "Give It Up." James (maybe this will light a fire under your ass if you, like me, like to Google blog search yourself), The Rapture's live act slaughters yours.

What's worse, made even more unbearable by the fact that it happened here, in Philly, the one place where things like this don't happen, is that general sense I got from the placid and serene, and in no way even 1/2 moshing, crowd was that the show was great. Was nobody else from the Transit show there last night? Why in the fuck weren't we throwing all kinds of weird shit on the stage in protest, throwing shit off the balcony, raising hell, until we got the performance that we didn't pay for, but deserved all the same?

AND THE 64,000 DOLLAR ANSWER...

With songs like "All My Friends" and "Someone Great" LCD stopped being just for kids who didn't want anything to do with the bullshit aesthetics of 21st century punk, and who were maybe just a little bit curious about disco music too, but who still liked to fuck shit up from time to time, and started to also be for pussies. Which isn't entirely a bad thing, but it's definitely not the best thing, especially on stage, and which made me firmly realize this morning, at around 7:02 A.M., that LCD Soundsystem and their new record Sound of Silver have left plenty of room for improvement.