Not long after I turned 22, I found myself spending a lot of time on the first floor of a multi-floor club around the Wynwood section of Miami a few years before some developer had the big idea to try and turn it into Williamsburg in Miami by getting a handful of graffiti artists to spray paint all over the walls, luring in the artsy crowd, then the artsy crowd with money, then the people with money that want to be around the artsy crowd and then you know the rest. The club was your typical early-aughts Miami alternative to the rest of the city’s nightlife, the sort of place you went to if you wanted a mix of old Britpop and new wave and whatever was hot in Brooklyn and Berlin at the moment—think Miss Kittin and the Hacker’s “Frank Sinatra” blending into Soft Cell’s cover of “Tainted Love” then going straight into “Common People” by Pulp—but downstairs was more of a lounge vibe. This smaller bar didn’t have a dancefloor that could fit 500 like the one upstairs where DJs from out of town who maybe play. So one week you’d have a member of the Secret Frequencies Crew spinning IDM, the next it was some guy with an incredible collection of funk 45s, and the next it was some really good-looking person with great hair but awful taste in music, but “they have a crowd,” so the promoter would let them spin. The little lounge, not surprisingly, was where people went to snort cocaine in the open. This is Miami I’m talking about.
One week, one of the DJs who usually stuck to northern soul and garage rock, showed up and decided he wanted to go in another direction, spinning mostly post-punk stuff like the Fall, Wire, etc. It was all so he could play one specific song. A single he’d picked up when he was in New York a few days earlier. This very janky, very simple little drum and synthesizer track with a guy mumbling about how he was losing his edge, about how he had discovered everything from Captain Beefheart to the island of Ibiza before anybody else knew it was a place to party. I wasn’t sure what I had just heard, but thankfully, a few of the coked-up crowd loved the song enough that they started screaming for the DJ to play it again. This was around 3 in the mourning so it was real “anything goes” territory and the guy obliged. I had my chance to actually listen to what the guy was yammering on about and, dear god, I loved it. That was my first intro to LCD Soundsystem.
After that, I was mostly a casual fan of James Murphy and whoever he was making music with. I was more interested in other stuff on the label he co-founded, DFA. Yes, the man wrote some true bangers and I appreciate his work. But did I ever for a second want to see LCD Soundsystem live? No. Not really. I was offered a chance to see their last show at MSG and I was like “Eh. I’m busy.” Then, a few years later, when the band announced a “comeback,” I remember thinking how cynical that seemed and, once again, I turned down an opportunity to see them.
The point of this is to say that in the 20 years since I first heard “Losing My Edge,” I have come full-circle. I am at a place where I can gracefully accept that my lack of enthusiasm for seeing the band live is more about me than it is them and I am totally the character in that song now. I don’t think I’ve lost my edge or if I ever had one to begin with, but I’ve gotten to a new point of full-on James Murphy appreciation in a way I never thought I would. It’s not because of his music—although, I do find myself a little wistful when some of his songs come on and 2017’s American Dream is going to live on for a long time as one of the best albums to come out during the nightmare 20teens years—but simply because the man is a washed god. Not only is he a washed god, but 20 years ago when the song came out, the guy was only in his early-30s and already singing about how over he was.
And that’s what got me thinking about the true genius of James Murphy. The music is great. The man has a great ear, he’s a terrific songwriter, you know all that. But what really gets me is I look back at everything I’ve had to read about the guy over the last two decades and I’ve concluded that Murphy was and might still be what I’d like to call a washed prepper. He’s 52 now and he’s been building up to this moment, making his whole thing about being over-the-hill and making fun of himself has been a big part of his schtick, and when I saw a picture of him looking like what I describe as “Brian Wilson being forced out of the house in the 1990s” at the New York Film Festival.
I mean, look at this king. Those sleeves rolled up like he borrowed a blazer to get into the place and they only had one that was a few sizes too big, the somewhat pointless vest underneath it that is almost totally obscured by the jacket, and the shirt. The shirt! The man is rocking a Mandarin collar like he’s Wayne Gretzky accepting an award in 1991. He’s either not trying at all or he’s so far ahead of the game it isn’t even funny. And given his track record, I’m willing to bet it’s the latter. Here’s why.
He anticipated getting washed and uncool ahead of time. He had a plan in place. He was ready for this era. We can all learn from this.
He was playing Daft Punk for the rock kids before just about everybody else. I think that’s actually a fact.
All your friends want “organic” wine or “anything orange” and Murph Dog was way ahead of that when he helped open up the Four Horsemen in Williamsburg. I distinctly recall after it opened I started hearing people ask for “something biodynamic, maybe Georgian” at every single restaurant I went to.
His audience is aging. They’re hitting middle-age and Murphy seems as if he’s been middle-aged his entire life. He’s the hero millennials need to look to as the zoomers continue their assault on making people who are barely old enough to remember the first George Bush presidency feel obsolete.
So what I’m trying to say is rush to the nearest Salvation Army and buy up all those grandfather collar shirts now, and be like James Murphy and start planning not just for your retirement, but for your washed period. If you’re reading this, you’re likely already there or fast approaching it, so there’s no time like the present to just sip some organic wine, play some records and tell yourself that you’re aging out of relevancy when, in fact, you’re probably still way cooler than the people you went to high school with.