It is strangely appropriate that Shut Up and Play the Hits—the docu-concert film dedicated to the band LCD Soundsystem’s final show at Madison Square Garden—blew out, for lack of a better description, the sound system at the Art Theatre as soon as the first song came on.
Despite employees assuring the crowd that the movie would be back up in a few minutes, some people impatiently walked out, leaving the rest of us remaining solemnly in our seats. As promised, the movie returned about 10 minutes later, but WTF is an immensely appropriate acronym for the people who did not stick around, particularly given LCD’s jabs at our apathetic, impatient culture. The offensiveness becomes clear when one realizes that this was the band’s true last outing, a special one night only screening across the country to all their fans at once that somehow escaped all the horrific clichés attached to what is traditionally found in rockumentaries.
And it escaped this not necessarily because the film was well-made, but because the music itself is also so well-made and the man who created it all, James Murphy, is the type who—in the screw-it-all-I-want-it-for-free generation, mind you—gets on his knees at his concert and begs the crowd to not download his leaked album, but be a true lover of music and go get the record when the band intended to release it.
The short-lived arch of Murphy’s LCD is one that has been well-discussed following the band’s announcement that their third record—the front-to-back excellence that is 2010’a This Is Happening—will be their last. And unlike most music history outings, where a band who decides to discontinue its trek opts to do so at its peak, LCD wasn’t really at its peak; they were right before the peak, right before the crossover into pop-dom.
Ten years ago this month, I bought a song called “Losing My Edge” and became obsessed with the 32-year-white guy bandleader, a man who dropped witticisms and lamented his loss of relevance deeper than Madonna attempts to maintain that she isn’t over 50.
“I hear you’re buying a synthesizer and an arpeggiator and are throwing your computer out the window because you want to make something real,” Murphy sings in “Losing My Edge.” “You want to make a Yaz record / I hear that you and your band have sold your guitars and bought turntables / I hear that you and your band have sold your turntables and bought guitars.”
I had fallen in love with LCD at 19, discovering that music was not inane or excessively fabricated and falling head-over-heels for indie music.
And if Shut Up and Play the Hits showcased anything (besides Murphy’s heart-melt-inducing French bulldog), it is the fact that we were enormously blessed to have LCD and that, as he put it, we can indeed “walk away from bigger-and-better—and instead do more-and-different.” This was, indeed, the aura of LCD and why I so deeply loved them—they taught every one of their fans the struggle of growing up, the struggle of becoming irrelevant and the struggle that is, as writer Nick Sylvester described LCD’s impact, “attempting to be a good human being.”
You can tell that Murphy is an authentic musician, clinging to the Gods of Melody instead the Gods of Image. But even though he is dearly clutching to his authenticity, there is a pang of sadness that crosses over his face when the show (and film) ended. “It’s over,” he says quietly, almost inaudibly, as he presses his forehead against the window while Manhattan buzzes by.
And though LCD may be over, it is only in a surface-level sense because Murphy did exactly what he set out to do with LCD: “To leave a mark. To leave a stain.”