(10) LCD Soundsystem, “All My Friends”
outlasted
(3) Destiny's Child, “Bootylicious”
503-355
and will play in the championship!

Read the essays, listen to the songs, and vote. Winner is the song/essay with the most votes at the end of the game. If there is a tie at the end of regulation, we will play a one-hour overtime (and repeat until we have a winner). Polls close @ 9am Arizona time on 3/28/24. (Note that Arizona does not do Daylight Saving time, so AZ time now = Pacific.)

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WE’VE BEEN READY FOR THIS JELLY: DESTINY’S CHILD “BOOTYLICIOUS” AND THE PURSUIT FOR SEXUAL SOVEREIGNTY BY AVERY FERIN

Picture it: icy rain spits on the window beside my head as my mother drives me home from swim practice sometime during the slushed winter of 2010. I'm sitting in the backseat of our 2004 Saab with my scabby knees propped up on the seatback in front of me and a library copy of The Twilight Saga: New Moon clutched in my hands like a crucifix. I’m chewing on the lip of a bottle of strawberry-kiwi Propel when the introductory notes of Stevie Nicks’ “Edge of Seventeen” filter from the car stereo. I bob my head along to the familiar strum pattern as I flip the page. It’s not long, no more than 7 or 8 seconds, before the percussive scratch intersects what I’d assumed to be an ordinary song for the evening car ride home. If I had to guess, within the next few moments a woman’s honeysuckle voice would fill the cabin as the song fades, reminding us that we were listening to Delilah on Star 105.7. 
Kelly, can you handle this? My eyes drift up from the page.
Michelle, can you handle this? I’m hanging on every word. Who’s Michelle? Can she handle it, whatever “this” is?
Beyonce, can you handle this? A name I recognize, and I’m not even fully certain I can handle it by this point. 
I replay the hook over and over in my head, determined to remember the lyrics so that when I arrive home that evening, I can look it up and listen to it again. I make a mad dash to the family computer and type “I don’t think you’re ready for this jelly” into the search bar. A video pops up. The video pops up. I hover my mouse over the play button, and I am immersed in a sort of pop excellence I’d never experienced before. 

“Bootylicious” serves as the fourth and final #1 hit for the power group Destiny’s Child, a sort of au revoir before the three women split in separate yet triumphant directions. What makes this song so incredible lies within its layers. Upon first listening, it’s easy to write it off as just another earworm-heavy dance track, and this is not to say that it isn’t, but I beseech you to consider it on a grander scope. 
Looking past its superficial veneer, “Bootylicious” functions as a narrative that punches upward from a place of fierce sumptuousness—a sense of self-empowerment that women, namely black women, have been coxswained away from for centuries. Though much of the world exists under the supposition that we’ve come far enough as a society in terms of body acceptance, the problem is enormously prevalent and subsists right there in plain sight—in the very words themselves. 
See, body acceptance is all well and good, and is a baseline requisite. It’s one thing to merely accept one’s body, but the suggestion of such is that this is the pinnacle of self-love. This standard is exactly where the song pokes holes. Is “acceptance” the utmost bar for which women are expected to reach? Just contentedness? Destiny’s Child certainly didn’t think so. 

Peering through the rubble left over from years of derisive body negativity imposed by the 90’s high-fashion industry, with its Kate Mosses and Naomi Campbells, “Bootylicious” shone through the cracks (no pun intended) and proposed an alternative narrative. What if women were encouraged to not just make peace with their bodies and instead given the conviction to celebrate them? 
I wish I could say that I was too young to understand the context of the song, that the sexuality of it all sailed right over my head, but I was a thirteen-year-old girl in 2010; I already knew what it meant to exist in a sexualized body, in this objectifiable framework. What I didn’t know, however, was the power such an anthem could hold or what sort of hand that song could play in what can only be described as a sexual revolution. At thirteen, though, I had already started feeling the ache of expectation on my back as my body began to swell in new places and my hips no longer fit into clothes I’d worn not even a year prior. But in that video, I saw bodies that didn’t just look like the ones I was used to seeing in my mother’s copies of Elle or Glamour. I saw bodies of various shapes, colors, and genders – a completely novel concept for what I’d previously known to be “fabulous”.

I acknowledge that I am a White woman writing about Black women singing about Black love and, moreover, the celebration of Black bodies. I do not know what it felt like to hear “Bootylicious” for the first time as a young Black girl in the early 2000s. I do not know what it is like to be a Black woman, nor will I ever pretend to. What I do know, however, is what it is like to feel as though I am a product of own body, self-worth equated with my figure and frame. I know what it feels like to toss the dice of self-opinion each morning, wondering how I am going to feel about the woman in the mirror when I finally get out of bed. And I do know what it feels like to try and navigate a culture that favors figures I have tried and failed to embody. I was young girl hearing a song about body-love for the first time and it sounded something like the unlocking of a cuff. 

The pervasive cultural obsession with thinness bears a steep history embedded in racism that stems as far back as the Renaissance period. Most of us are familiar with the term “fat phobia”, or the compulsive fear of fatness, in the contemporary sense and the detriment it has on the mental health of those targeted. But fat phobia, as it relates to Black women, was not derivative of medical outcomes or perpetrator’s concern for the physical welfare of others, but rather with the belief that fatness was indicative of racial subsidiarity that dates to the Enlightenment era. It expressed itself in the medical industry with the genesis of the body mass index, which levies white male body standards on the world. In the 1940s, the ideals for the Miss American beauty pageant boasted strict obligations for participants, stating that they desired “slender bodies of good health and white race”. 
In the book Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia, Sabrina Strings writes “Slavery was an incredibly lucrative enterprise and so it was so important to race scientists, who were invested in slavery, to keep a hierarchy in which Black women were not deemed to be the equivalent of white women.” 

The conversation surrounding human sexuality has historically omitted the voices of women, muting us into submission and annulled of opportunity to express our desires. When we dare to speak about sex, even in terms of our own bodies, we are branded with labels, scarlet letters, reputations, and ostracization. The censure of avowed sexual desire makes it so that sex is able to be employed as a weapon of power, status, and even manipulation. Further than this, the enforced proclivity to evade conversations involving women’s sexuality can lead to feelings of insecurity and discomfort with any critical health concerns that may correlate. 

So how does a singular, inconspicuous dance track from 2001 become a purveyor of bodily and sexual autonomy for women, namely Black women? The answer lies right there in the question itself. “Bootylicious” offers itself as a simple club anthem in the ilk of TLC and The Pussycat Dolls, skyrocketing to the tops of charts and wriggling its way onto dancefloors everywhere while concurrently opening the door for a larger conversation about sexual autonomy. It’s the demonstration of power through joy and celebration and an outrageously catchy chorus, daring to confront the racially charged idea of “beauty”. 

Did “Bootylicious” unanimously cure the modern world of body negativity? Probably not. Did it diminish all cynics who attempt to tell women what we are allowed to feel confident about when it comes to our own bodies? Hardly. Did its raucous declaration of self-confidence intimidate, nay, defeat every single person who sought to impose shame upon women for asserting their desires? Not likely. But perhaps this is entirely beside the point.
The power of a song resides within the individual and their singular set of experiences. What “Bootylicious” means to me will always be different from what it means to, say, the woman standing behind me in the CVS self-checkout line. What might be just another Top 40 hit to one person could be the reason behind the self-freedom of another. Everything we create holds the ability to endorse change, and everything we create possesses the power to inspire. So yes, the world is ready for this jelly; we always have been, we just needed the lyrical influence of one of the best girl groups of all time to remind us.  

Avery Ferin is a teacher and fiction writer presently residing in Chicago, IL. She attended DePaul University, where she graduated with her BA in English and MFA in Writing & Publishing, and served as the Editor-in-Chief of its art & literature magazine Crook & Folly. Her work has been featured in numerous publications, including Kitchen Table Quarterly, Motley Magazine, and The Grand Rapids Press. She is the recipient of the 2022 Story Studio Master's Award and the 2024 AWP Scholarship. Her short story, "Summer on Lloyd's Bayou" was nominated for a 2023 Pushcart prize. She currently teaches Creative Writing at The Chicago High School for the Arts.

DANCE MUSIC FOR GROWNUPS: KATE CARMODY ON “ALL MY FRIENDS” BY LCD SOUNDSYSTEM

We put Sound of Silver on the record player in the living room. We dance with Corky St. Clair, our shih poo, between us. We are in a band together and play weird, dancey synthy songs inspired by bands like LCD Soundsystem. When the needle wanders into the grooveless black space, I raise it, replace the first Sound of Silver record with the second, and carefully drop the needle on “All My Friends.” Before I moved in with my husband I thought about getting a record player—I have fond memories of dancing to Donna Summer and Michael Jackson with my family in our sunroom—but I didn’t have room in past apartments and instead opted for the best portable Bluetooth speaker I could afford.
Now in our house in North Denver, we regularly listen to records and give them to each other on holidays. This past Christmas we gave each other Rupa, EGS, Can, Funkadelic, and Fever Ray. After I moved in back in 2017, he gave me every LCD record for my birthday and we listened to them all from start to finish. I like listening to an album all the way through. I like watching the needle go round and round, thinking about all the instruments and voices pressed into a sleek sheet of vinyl. I like watching the needle wobble from the old, uneven floors beneath the console but not enough to make it skip a beat. Dancing too close to the console is another story. That’ll make the needle jump with us, so it’s best to keep some distance.
When I hear the piano start on “All My Friends,” I ask my husband if it would be hard to play those same keys over and over for over seven minutes. After years of listening, I’m well aware of the song’s length. “It would take practice,” he says motioning the keys with his fingers. My husband’s a musician. In addition to our band together, he plays in the psychedelic cumbia band Don Chicharrón and the rock band Eric vs the Demons in Denim. He taught me to pay attention to things I never noticed in songs. I’m not sure I ever really heard the bass until the tenth time he said, “How awesome is this bassline?!” It’s through those lessons that I hear this song about aging and friendship, build with accompaniment.

*

It’s 2009. We go back to my friend’s house after dominating the jukebox at Barry’s or Don’s or Candlelight. We crack open beers, though we probably don’t need another, and my friend shuffles through songs while everyone shouts requests. We dance to Hot Chip, !!!, Katy Perry, Beyoncé, always Nelly—we may live in Denver, but there are too many of us from St. Louis to pass him over —and always, always LCD. He plays “All My Friends,” and inevitably, someone starts playing air piano. Another friend bounces their knees up and down like they’re doing a plyometric exercise before a big game. We inch in closer to each other. Some of us swivel our hips, some shake our heads back and forth, a couple have jumped on the couch, we all move together to the rhythm.
My first memories of “All My Friends” and LCD Soundsystem are of dancing. In my forty-three years on this planet, few times have brought me as much joy as those spent dancing with friends. I’ve always been lucky to find friends whose dancing is one part grooving to the beat, one part singing the lyrics we know, and one part making each other laugh. In high school we stuffed pillows under our shirts as we danced to Ace of Base’s “All That She Wants;” in college, we spent way too much money on one of those claw arcade games until I won the Mr. Magoo doll that we desperately needed to prance with around the dancefloor; and after, we use whatever’s in each other’s houses that we think can accompany our routine. Here’s a hot tip, friends: a broom or Swiffer Sweeper can serve as a microphone, dance partner, or guitar. If you extend it into the crowd, watch how quickly someone grabs the other end and a limbo line forms. I’ve got lots of moves but limber limbo moves are not in my bag. I was, in fact, kicked out of gymnastics right before I conquered the back bend, so I relish in my duties as the limbo bar holder. At one friend’s wedding when there was no broom in sight, I picked up a slice of pie and learned that anything could be a calling card for limbo as long as your arm’s extended.
I love dancing. Dancing is an act of communion and personal expression. I like to think that at every moment of the day, there are people all over the planet dancing. You could throw on music right now, and someone across the globe would be dancing with you. If you are in the middle of your workday, surrounded by coworkers or students, this may sound preposterous. But go ahead and try it. I’m willing to bet you can get at least one person to join you.
Dancing is in our DNA. When we hear music, we want to move. When we dance, we are connecting. We are kinetic energy.

*

For most of his life, James Murphy, the founding member of LCD Soundsystem, admits in interviews, he was never a dancer. He says he was in bands throughout his teens and often mentions how uncool he was. As a kid, he struggled with making friends because he was uptight and controlling. When he moved to New York City, he studied writing at NYU and played in a band with another writer. He dropped out of school to focus on the band full-time, but his band never found their footing in the nineties indie rock scene, and he quit playing music. Murphy was turned off by the sameness of indie rock. “Almost everybody in a band wanted to be cool and feel cool,” he tells Sound Opinions. “They wanted to think certain things about themselves, and if you took that away, what was the point?” There’s still a whiff of bitterness when he says this. While he quit music because he was uninspired by the scene, he’s aware that his personality also got in the way of successfully collaborating with others. 
After unplugging the amp on his indie rock, Murphy shifted his focus to sound engineering and built a studio with the help of some friends in the business. It was musician and producer Tim Goldsworthy and DJ David Holmes who introduced Murphy to dance music when they came to New York from the UK to work in his studio. Murphy started going out with them and having fun, which was, as he tells Red Bull Music Academy, “anathematic to my indie rock nineties, which was going out and being judgmental.” But he remained loyal to the indie rock self-serious, too-cool-for-school sentiment, which meant no dancing.
There is social risk in dancing, which is perhaps why so many dance-songwriters remind us how they feel while dancing, instruct us about how to move, or command us to “Get up!” or “Get down!”. Others tell us stories, reminding us why we love dancing. Too often we let our fear of embarrassment get in the way of what comes naturally. Some people need a little help getting out of their heads. For Murphy, ecstasy was the tool to pry open his indie rocker shell and expose a side of him that he didn’t know existed. Once he was dancing and having fun, Murphy realized, as he says in Meet Me in the Bathroom, “This is me dancing. This isn’t the drug dancing. This is the drugs stopping myself from stopping myself from dancing.”
This experience of letting loose led to him starting DFA Records and LCD Soundsystem. “I realized that making people dance had a point that had nothing to do with art,” Murphy tells Red Bull Academy. “It’s like food; if they’re not eating it, then you’ve screwed it up. If they’re not dancing, you’re just not doing a good job.” Murphy didn’t abandon everything he loved about rock-and-roll. He didn’t suddenly become a super laid-back person. Instead, he recognized that with the basic goal of making people move, he could “calm down and stop wondering if what [he] was doing was good or worthwhile;” he could borrow from any genre that moved him emotionally and physically; he could bend and blend genre; he could collage and kaleidoscope; he could be his whole self. Through their DFA label, Tim Goldsworthy and Murphy disrupted the indie rock and dance music worlds, producing bands such as Juan McClean, Shit Robot, and The Rapture.
When The Rapture jumped ship for a major label, Murphy fueled his frustration into making music as LCD Soundsystem. LCD’s first single, “Losing My Edge,” was inspired by Murphy hearing a twenty-something DJ play the same records that he was known for playing at DFA parties—records that audiophiles like him would be well-versed in but ones that were completely new to those in the dance music scene. Murphy realized that what made him cool could be replicated and that he was afraid of losing his cool status. Instead of getting frustrated and quitting as he did in his teens and twenties, he had the sensibility of his thirties to help him lean into his conflicted feelings.
Because Murphy was old enough to have more self-awareness, he recognized that he needed to make music on his own terms, and he needed his friends by his side. He solicited friends and drinking buddies like Nancy Whang to join his band. Soon, LCD would define the sound of the first decade of this century when rock bands were incorporating dance music and other influences as they did in the seventies and eighties.
With the success of LCD’s self-titled debut album, Murphy returned to the studio in rural Massachusetts where he recorded the first album determined to make an even better one. With the recent passing of his therapist, he was ready to dig into more difficult themes. He covered the walls of the studio with silver fabric and tin foil, coating warm wooden tones with reverberations to record Sound of Silver.
“All My Friends” is the Sound of Silver sequel to “Losing My Edge.” “Losing My Edge” interrogates his fear through a cheeky exploitation that equally skewers music snobs like himself and the next generation of DJs, whereas “All My Friends” is an intimate conversation with himself. Murphy’s vocal melodies are the most complex part of the song while the rest of the instrumentation slowly builds with repetition. The four-on-the-floor beat provides the box for him to oscillate between living in the moment and returning to his friends. The guitar and synthesizer comfort his crooning or perhaps accentuate it. His vocals command the most attention and depth. His lyrics are essayistic.
In “Losing My Edge” his feelings are masked with humor, but in “All My Friends” he examines his tendency to use self-deprecating humor as a defense mechanism. He has achieved the level of fame and notoriety that he’s wanted his whole life and he has fun playing music with his friends all over the world, but he also has friends at home who have settled down. He wonders whether this lifestyle is sustainable as he gets older. After he sings, “i wouldn’t trade one stupid decision— / for another 5 years of life,”[*] he questions the sincerity of that statement. The essayist Philip Lopate says, “The spectacle of baring the naked soul is meant to awaken the sympathy of the reader, who is apt to forgive this essayist’s self-absorption in return for the warmth of his or her candor. Some vulnerability is essential.” In the hands of a twenty-year-old, contemplating if he is getting too old for the rockstar lifestyle may come off as disingenuous, but Murphy approaches it with the experience and realism of a man in his thirties, which allows any aging listener to empathize.

*

I put on my Bose over-ear headphones. The ones I impulse purchased at the airport kiosk when I realized I’d forgotten my much cheaper ones at home. The ones I couldn’t afford but convinced myself I needed because how else would I signal to the guy in 16B that I was unavailable for mid-air chatter?
I tap on “All My Friends” and slide in my socks across the hardwood floor to Corky. And so it starts, a simple piano melody with two imperfect notes repeating. It’s humanity apparent. As it chugs along, I hear one key trying to catch up until it’s in sync with the other. Over and over it chases that union. When the drums and bass come in, they support the fragile composition. I shimmy my shoulders with the piano. A minute later, I’m tired, so I stop to sing, “that’s how it starts / we go back to your house.” I point to Corky, who tilts his head and wags his tail. I continue singing, slide over to the kitchen, and open the dishwasher. I’m dance-cleaning the dishes and thinking about all our late-night dance parties. How we gather closer and closer, dancing in a circle, shouting with James Murphy “and if the sun comes up—if the sun comes up— / if the sun comes up and i still don’t want to stagger home / then it’s the memory of our betters / that are keeping us on our feet.”
It was 2015 and I was listening to “All My Friends.” I was 34, single. It was a Friday night, and I’d opted to stay in. I paid too much in rent. But I was the happiest I’d been since my years-long tumultuous relationship ended. My ex didn’t know where I lived, and I had truly wiped off most of the muck of our relationship on the blue carpet outside my apartment door (the one he sat on while begging me to let him in), leaving only a tiny bit to remind me I was better off alone.
I liked living alone. I liked singing to Corky loudly in my apartment, hoping my neighbors didn’t hear me. I liked snuggling with him on the couch and reading or watching TV. I liked putting on socks just so I could slide across my hardwood floors to do cool dance moves, sometimes with music, sometimes without. I liked pacing in my apartment, twirling my hair while thinking without anyone interrupting me. Weekend nights, yes, going out with friends, but also staying in, helped me find myself again.
But this time, what I thought would be a song to remind me of fun with friends while I cleaned the kitchen took a different turn. This time in the kitchen, when I heard: “you spend the first five years trying to get with the plan / and the next five years / trying to be with your friends again,” I felt like I had accidentally bit the side of my mouth while I chewed on nostalgia. The urgency in Murphy’s voice and his honest, vulnerable lyrics invited me to let my fears reveal themselves.
I pressed the repeat icon in Spotify, wandered over to the couch, and laid down. Corky hopped up and climbed on top of me, resting his head on my chest. I scratched the top of his little head and petted his soft black fur. I stretched my other arm across my eyes so there’d be nothing but the song. I listened to “All My Friends” repeatedly until I wasn’t thinking about dancing with my friends:

you spend the first five years trying to get with the plan
and the next five years
trying to be with your friends again

After one of our numerous breakups, I remember saying to my ex, “You wasted my good years.” He was almost six years younger than me. He had plenty of time. But when I said, “You wasted my good years,” I really meant, “I wasted my good years.” I knew the third go wouldn’t work, and I knew I was only staying with him because I was afraid of starting over.
The song was playing over and over but those were the only lines I heard. I came apart. I started crying, but I didn’t remove my arm from my eyes. I let my tears soak into my sweatshirt and stayed in the darkness, tapping my toes with the downbeat of the kick.
To tell the truth, I wasn’t where I wanted to be. I was never one of those people whose ultimate goal was to be married with kids, but I didn’t like the worry that everyone else had their shit together. Maybe it was the approaching holidays, but I was already dreading hearing friends and family comment about how they wish they had time to go to concerts and have fun like they did before having kids.

oh if the trip and the plan come apart in your hands
you can turn it on yourself you ridiculous clown

Murphy’s words bounced off the silver of the studio and rang in my ears. When my years-long abusive relationship ended, my friends were very supportive, and I took it as an opportunity to purge myself of the trauma. For weeks, I’d tell anyone willing to listen. I thought telling people would make me feel better. In some ways, releasing it from my body did. Soon, I grew tired of being treated like a wound, and instead of crying about it, I morphed it into a punchline. In a culture obsessed with trauma porn, joking about how I was Maury Povich’s dream guest was a lot easier than confronting shame. Eventually, when I started writing again, I vowed never to let another person consume my thoughts and creative energy again.
I swear, after the sixth or so time hearing Murphy belt, “where are your friends tonite?” I heard his voice crack and the silver walls crumble into a ball of aluminum. I was the leaves and twigs left in the street after the street sweeping machine came through. My friends tossed the dead and broken bits in the air and somehow I was alive again. If I could see all my friends tonight, I would thank them. If I could see all my friends tonight, I could get out of my head. If I could see all my friends tonight, I would remember that this song is meant for moving.

*

I still like listening to “All My Friends” with friends and on my own. I still listen on my old Bose headphones. I still slide around in socks. When I play it now, I think about that time in my apartment and realize I’m in the in-between once again, looping like the galloping piano, fighting to get in sync.
I started trying to have a baby when I was too old. Someone told me they were surprised I didn’t get pregnant like all the other millennials who did during the pandemic. But I wasn’t ready. We hadn’t even gone on our honeymoon and I’d just graduated from my MFA program. I was supposed to be jumping into being a writer, not a mother. By the time I decided that I’d rather have tried than not tried and always wonder, the miscarriage rate was over twenty percent. After over a year of trying and two miscarriages, my OB/GYN recommended IVF, which I learned would have been easier at 40 instead of 41. One year later, the time I had blocked off to work on my book was filled with appointments and shots and trying to keep my head straight with the hormones. Then the waiting and disappointment and confusion about what steps to follow, what any of the jargon and numbers mean, and how we’re going to pay for everything.
I’m afraid that this will be yet another thing started late that never comes to fruition. I’m afraid I’ll never finish the books I’m working on. James Murphy may have been a late bloomer, but what do you call a late bloomer who has never bloomed? I’m still emerging. I’m constantly in a state of becoming. I realize that instead of growing up, I’m growing old. It’s not that I want to go back. I just don’t want to be behind. I just want to move in time. If I could see all my friends tonight, I could get out of my head.
This is what I think about when I’m lonely and anxiety plays puppet master. This is what I think about when I feel the frantic hits of Pat Mahoney’s hi-hats and what I feel like when Nancy Whang’s fingers are going to fall off from playing the same keys for what seems like an eternity. I’m not looking for sympathy here. I’m saying this because “All My Friends” makes me nostalgic for dance parties in my younger years and gets me to reflect on my current fears. It’s a song that ages with you.
I think each of us is like the one-chord progression. Advancing at a steady, slightly wavering rhythm. What makes our lives more interesting is who we choose to accompany us. I text my friends and ask them to share thoughts and memories of “All My Friends” and dance parties. One friend says, “LCD is dance music for grownups.” Another sends a video of us dancing on New Year's Eve last year. Right at the crescendo a friend slides on her knees through our dancing circle and across the floor in her silver sequined pants. I laugh watching it and even harder as I read the comments that follow.

* 

to tell you the truth—this could be the last time

“I really wanted to end it while I was making Sound of Silver,” Murphy tells Chuck Klosterman in Shut Up and Play the Hits, the documentary of LCD’s farewell show at Madison Square Garden in 2011. He says he hinted at it in the lyrics to “All My Friends.” Touring and appeasing the record label had taken a toll on his physical and mental health. After kids, after making movies and coffee and the world’s greatest sound system, after David Bowie told Murphy to do what made him uncomfortable when Murphy told him he was making music again, after almost five years, LCD reunited.
I’ve been to three LCD Soundsystem shows since they came “Back from the Dead” as they said on their concert poster, and each time they ended the night with “All My Friends.” The focus on the rotating giant disco ball replaced with red moody lights shining on the band, my friends and I, several of the thousands of fans, arms in the air belting the lyrics with LCD like it’s the last time, the memory of our betters keeping us on our feet. 
When my dad’s friend was dying, he took every opportunity he could get to tell his friends he loved them. “I love you,” he’d say while golfing. “I love you,” he’d say after dinner. So if I don’t say this enough, I love you, friends. All of you. Friends from home, friends from college, friends here, writer friends, I feel lucky to be your friend.

[*] Lyrics appear as they do on the record sleeve.

Kate Carmody, pie limbo innovator, lives in Denver, Colorado with her husband and dog. The three of them are in the band Dadafacer. Find her work in Fence, Electric Literature, Porter House Review, and The Rumpus, among others. She encourages you to support local music. Here’s a start: Don Chicharrón, Eric Vs The Demons in Denim, Body, Language Barrier, Bellhoss, Self Help, Tyler Breuer, Jackie Zubrzycki, Alright Alright, Faceman, Los Mocochetes, The Xisme, Austen Carroll & the Better Neighbors, Townie, Bolonium, Bud Bronson & The Goodtimers, High Plains Honky, Many Places, Zealot, Conductora, Bluebook, Funk Hunk, Ritmo Cascabel, Nikbo, and Uniflora.