TongueLash

Shut Up and Play the Hits: a documentary film that follows LCD Soundsystem frontman James Murphy over a 48-hour period, from the day of the band’s final gig at Madison Square Garden to the morning after the show.

LCD Soundsystem is one of those bands that perfectly epitomize a time and a place and a feeling. For me, it was taking the bus to and from work and school 2 years ago when I had pretty much just settled in to my student life in Montreal and things like doing the laundry and buying groceries and interning for a local designer were not just normal things, they were romantic notions of a 20 year old student from a small city (Calgary) living in the big city(Montreal). And I was doing Grown Up things, but not so grown up that I wasnt taking the bus and eating pizza every week, but Grown Up enough where I can choose to eat pizza 3 days in a row if I wanted or smoke a pack of cigarettes in a day if I wanted, or make out with strangers, or vomit on the street. The term ‘romantic’ is thinly applied here. I remember setting Never as Tired as When I Wake Up as my ringtone for a semester straight. I remember getting Yeah (crass version) stuck in my head. I remember googling all the references mentioned in Losing My Edge.

LCD Soundsystem is so brilliantly simplistic and rhythmic that as a lyrics heavy, from the literati school of thought type of girl as myself, it was like a breath of fresh glacial air that punctures your lungs but feels so so good. LCD Soundsystem wasn’t about thinking, it was about doing and feeling and doing some more. Ultimately, all of LCD Soundsystem songs are about the simultaneous desire to both live entirely ‘in the moment’ and to hold it completely still.  This visceral nostalgia was paradoxical, troubling, and hit so hard at the core of the sort of person I was, and probably always will be.

Anyways, I got really drunk that night April 2nd and I played LCD on shuffle and drank wine and eventually passed out, and I’ll probably do it again when I get this dvd. I’m already feeling nostalgic for THAT night and I havn’t even had it yet. Goddammit.

Lastly, here’s an interview Chuck Klosterman did with James Murphy in 2010 for the Guardian that I’m going to quote here because Chuck’s also the interview voice in the trailer, and there’s a great quote here about doing drugs and growing old which is always incredibly relevant. 

When it comes to drugs, I’m a big proponent of the boat-sails-wind analogy: your life is a boat, the sails are your emotions, and drugs are the wind. When you’re a kid, your boat is small and your sail is huge, and drugs are like a hurricane. So you need to get to a point in life where you have a big enough boat to navigate the weather.