LCD Soundsystem Shows Us Jerks How to Rock

I'm posting this so late because I didn't wake up until 3:30 this afternoon, and I'm finally shaking off my hangover. Last night I decided that $20 wasn't actually that much to see DFA records dance bands LCD Soundsystem and the Juan Maclean. What I was grumpier about was that the show was at the Kool Haus, a venue I haven't been to since it was the Warehouse. I imagined it to be like the island the kids in the Scooby-Doo movie go to: An isolated block of drunk college kids wearing outfits from Stitches trying to get laid, and an impending sense of doom forming in the pits of the stomachs of the Velma Dinkleys just there to see the band.

I wasn't far off, but the atmosphere was dwarfed by frontman James Murphy and his drunken antics (He banged some tambourines so hard they fell apart, and passed bits of them to fans), combined with the great dance tracks that had everyone cutting a rug.

I actually only saw the last two songs by the Juan Maclean, who is fronted by former member of Six Finger Satellite, John MacLean. I wish I'd seen more, because his dark, dance-based music sounded a bit more interesting than recorded stuff I've heard.

LCD Soundsystem came on, and defiantly proved that despite comments that electro is "sooo over", good music transcends genres and just is. James Murphy is sincerely passionate about producing soulful dance tracks, and seems similarly dispassionate about being a fashionable or trendy band. I can be just as big a jerk about hyped bands as the next music nerd, but this show proved that if the music is of good enough quality, venue, audience, fashion, scenes - All of that stuff loses its importance. And that is probably the best show that any music nerd can hope for.