LCD Soundsystem @ Making Time in Philly
My Friday night did not go exactly as planned.
I had friends coming up from D.C. to see the Making Time Summer of Radness Finale with me, and we were excited. We had become more than slightly obsessed with Sleigh Bells in the beginning of the summer, and we jumped on tickets when we saw that LCD Soundsystem was bringing them along to Philadelphia. Good thing, too, as we heard of people buying tickets on CraigsList for three times their initial price. But, like I said, the night didn’t go as I planned. Due to work, traffic, acts of God, whatever, my buddies didn’t make it up to Philadelphia until much later than we had anticipated. This, combined with a severe underestimation of the length of the queue to get into the show (R5 Productions claimed, via Twitter, to “not be expecting us all at once!”), made us miss the Sleigh Bells performance. Yes, I am devastated. No, I don’t want to talk about it.
We were in line waiting to get in when they went on, so we were able to hear their performance, see a bit of their light show, and sometimes even see them rocking out on stage through the windows of the venue. Even standing outside, with their shredding and screaming being muffled by exterior building walls and drunken Philadelphian “Ass hole!” chants shouted at line cutters, it was impossible not to get into their sound. It killed me to be standing outside when I had anticipated raging with a crowd full of sweaty people when they played A/B Machines and swaying happily when they belted out Rill Rill. But hey, look on the bright side, right? I got to hear it. And they sounded awesome.
We finally made it into the venue with several minutes to spare before LCD Soundsystem hit the stage. We safely pushed through the crowd, found some people we deemed just sweaty enough to stand with, made sure we had a decent view, checked out the massive disco ball dangling over the stage, and waited. Then there they were, and the first couple beats of the opening track to their newest record came on. And yeah, we’re excited. We cheer. We start swaying, and we’re dancing, we’re getting nice and sweaty, we’re singing the “Ah aaah!” parts with Mr. Murphy, and we’re having a good time. But it came to a peak and the show really started right when you know it would during Dance Yrself Clean. Just over three minutes in and the electronica really bangs out, the light show comes on full force, and the room lost it. One big ol’, happy, sweaty dance party.
LCD played a nice mix of old and new tunes, following up Dance Yrself Clean with Drunk Girls before launching into some older songs, with the energy coming to a head (in my opinion, at least) with All My Friends halfway through their set. They wrapped up their first set with a marathon of a performance of Yeah, with Murphy calmly screaming into the microphone and whipping the crowd into a frenzy despite his collected stage presence. After a brief break, they encored with Someone Great, Losing My Edge (much to the crowd’s excitement), and ended the 90-minute show with the same song that ends their most recent album, Home.
And that was it. Murphy finished his vocal part in the song, waved good night to us, and walked off the stage. The remaining band members quietly, one-by-one, finished playing their instruments and exited the stage. And the show was over… until you walked into the parking lot and kids were blaring All My Friends and You Wanted a Hit, trying to recreate what they just saw played live. – Katie Miller
