the sweet 16

(10) LCD Soundsystem, “All My Friends”
CLEANED OUT
(3) Christina Aguilera, “Dirrty”
224-143
AND WILL PLAY IN THE ELITE 8

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 3/20/24. (Note that Arizona does not do Daylight Saving time, so AZ time now = Pacific.)

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IT’S ABOUT TIME FOR MY ARRIVAL: ASHA GALINDO ON CHRISTINA AGUILERA’S “DIRRTY”

You can only be 21 once, and there was a first time for those chaps, and it was a pretty epic thing. —Christina Aguilera on Dirrty

I stole a purse. Someone’s purse. On purpose. I’m telling you it seemed like a good idea at the time. I was intoxicated, so almost everything seemed like a good idea. A third or fourth Adios Motherfucker? Good idea! Dance to bad pop remixes? Great idea! Go out to the patio for air and see a Coach purse all by its lonesome? Steal it! Definitely seemed like a good idea. Besides, my friends Mark and Lisa didn’t stop me. They watched me grab it, watched me tuck it under my arm, under my jacket, and lead the way to the exit, stopping to get hand-stamped on the way so we’d get back in. In my memory, they cheered my petty criminality. “Our little Winona!” The run to the car a few blocks away was exhilarating. I did that. I lived.
Once safely inside the car we opened the bag: a cell phone, a Ruby Woo Red MAC lipstick, $2 cash, and a Texas ID. We split the booty. Mark took the $2 (back inside he used it to buy Blow Pops from the bathroom lady). Lisa got the lipstick, and I got the purse. We briefly discussed how or why we “actually” did that when the phone rang. We all screamed wildly, as if the people in the club could hear us, tossing the phone between us like a hot potato. Then, we did what any drunk 20-somethings who stole a phone and purse would do: we threw it out the car window and when it rang a second time, we decided to destroy the evidence by running it over.
It was the mid 2000s; branded handbags were all the rage. Louis Vuitton, Dooney & Burke, and my fave, Coach. On TV, Lauren Conrad was fighting with Heidi Montag while at clubs called Butter or eating at Ketchup. Carrying little handbags off their thin wrists, sparkly everything winking in the sunshine. I wanted what they had. I could blame it on the vapid capitalist consumerism that hallmarks American culture, and it seems more reasonable to blame my own drunk-ass lusting after a designer purse I was never going to afford, even if I wasn’t paying any rent. But I’m going to blame Christina Aguilera.
Though blame is not what I mean. “Dirrty” was more than a bop. It was more than something I regularly shook my ass to at Rich’s, the San Diego gay club we frequented, the site of my crime. “Dirrty” was an anthem for feminism, for I’m-not-a-girl-hell-yeah-I-have-pussy-ing. It's the anthem of rebelling against the squeaky-clean image and the safety of tight choreography that handlers prescribed for Christina to become a star.  Instead, she fought to have control over songwriting and more importantly her image. Even though her previous hits “Genie in a Bottle” and “What a Girl Wants” played with a suggestive but sanitized sexuality, “Dirrty” allowed X-Tina to fully embody a sexual, powerful woman. When she sheds her clothes, it’s like she’s shedding the old Christina, the adolescent self and moving into adulthood. 
With her soaring vocal range and her red-dipped blonde hair, Christina Aguilera set herself apart from the cookie cutter pop princesses that filled the 00s music scene. Her second album, Stripped, and its raunchy lead single, “Dirrty,” were evidence of this new, bolder, risk-taker: not Christina, but X-Tina. As in, the X across the tiny triangle of red fabric covering almost none of her ass, worn under ass-less chaps in the stunning music video for “Dirrty.” The video directed by hyper-real surreal savant, David LaChappelle, is a testament to all that is dirty, filthy, rough, raw, and writhing around in mud and wet clothing. And it announced X-Tina with style, and no room for grace. To begin the video our life sized Bratz doll zips up her motocross jacket, pouts her glossy lips, and hunkers her custom helmet emblazoned with X-Tina on her tiny head, before jumping on a motorcycle and riding into her favorite underground boiler room meets sex club. Just a night out with the girls. X-Tina then strips down to her chaps and bikini while being lowered from a cage, and unleashed onto an adoring sweaty audience who are pumped to watch her and her girls, “shake the room.”
I’d be remiss not to mention that all of this, the raunchy club, the women in cages, the plushies, and the girl fights, all of it was also featured in the Redman video for “Let’s get Dirty.” A song that Christina was a fan of, so much so that she asked Rockwilder to produce a track using the beat he created for Redman for her upcoming album. But even with the borrowed beat, and the homage in the video, “Dirrty” is a Christina Aguilera song, right down to the extra R. That this song is unlike the rest of the introspective, bluesy, emotionally powerful songs on Stripped, an album that sealed Christina’s place in the pop kingdom, and despite the backlash about the “ho” image she seemingly portrayed in the music video, “Dirrty” is her moment of becoming: X-Tina has arrived!

I may have been the naked-ass girl in the video, but if you look at it carefully, I'm also at the forefront. I'm not just some lame chick in a rap video; I'm in the power position, in complete command of everything and everybody around me. —Christina Aguilera on Dirrty

I was firmly in the pro-X-Tina camp. I viewed her taking control of her image, being obnoxiously raunchy, and letting the world know she was in charge as a watershed moment. Though I was a shy and quiet girl, still too afraid to process her own power and sexuality, I was inspired by X-Tina. I knew what she had done was subversive and ballsy and in the heat of the song as the bass is thumping and Red Man is barking, I transform into X-Tina too, if only for a few minutes. 
The first part of this transformation though was the shared bottle of Kamchatka vodka (the cheapest bottle we could find that was at least Russian) in the car before going into the club, so that we wouldn’t have to buy three or four Adios Motherfuckers (a concoction best described as a blue-long island iced tea) but would be uninhibited enough to dance with abandon. To Britney and Kelly Clarkson. To Cascade and Beyoncé. And especially to “Dirrty,” a song that never failed to pull us from the bar line or the bathroom stall for a chance to “shake the room.” If you’ve never danced in a gay club to Christina, it is an empowering and encouraging place, it was for me. When “Dirrty” was playing everyone on the dance floor were all pushing each other towards our dirrtiest, nastiest selves, emulating the slut drops and the subtle choreography from the video. But it wasn’t just being dirrty for “Dirrty’s” sake, we were prying loose the door from the jamb, opening our hearts and legs towards our own joy, infinite and free. 
I’ve never been freer than under the influence of vodka, theft, and X-Tina reminding me “it’s about time for my arrival.” Because I was drunk and dancing, I could be whatever I wanted to be, my eyes closed, my hips churning away in the assless chaps in my mind. Every lyric pushed me to the belief that it WAS time for my arrival. I too was freshly 21. I too was beautiful and young and had the world at my feet. I, too, was an alive sexual woman. I deserved to be a little bad, a little unruly, a little getting riled up in a hurry. I wanted to get dirrty. 
I became in my own moment of rebellion: I stole that purse. I’m not going to lie; stealing IS as exhilarating as The Bling Ring made it seem. I kind of recommend it.  Don’t make it a habit or anything but try it. Cheat a little. Test the boundaries. It feels awesome, a secret, a crime. I was the kind of kid who never did anything bad. Absolutely nothing. I never did anything, period. My mom didn’t have to set up any boundaries for me. I was too afraid to test them.  I never snuck out. I didn’t date. I never went to parties. I was never really drunk until I was 21. The worst thing I did was not clean my room on a regular basis. I was ripe and ready to bloom. Should that have manifested into petty theft? Shrug, but even Winona Ryder was a shoplifter. 
When my friends and I returned to the club from the car after destroying the evidence we were nearly immediately confronted with a crying blonde and a group of friends drunkenly trying to support her. I looked nervously at Mark, who shook his head and led the way to the ladies’ room where he bought Blow Pops we could stuff in our mouth instead of talk. I felt guilty. Again, I was drunk. That doesn’t seem like a good excuse. Now it seems like a symptom of alcoholism but I’m going to ignore that.
Had I known the victim was a woman my own age on vacation from Texas, I probably wouldn’t have done it. For all I know she was dancing right beside me, feeling every bit as Dirrty, and empowered as I did, having the night of her life, free from whatever shackles she had back in Texas. And I ruined her life, or at least her night. 
20 years or so later, I want to apologize for my younger self, and I can in retrospect understand the weight of this crime that I so nonchalantly share as an anecdote of my youth. What if she was flying home to Texas? And I dropped her ID card down a storm drain because that seemed like the funniest move. But there's a part of me that is unapologetic. It wasn’t that stealing a purse was good for me, or anyone, but it was a necessary mistake. It was a shy fat girl version of being lowered from a cage onto the dance floor. Ring the alarm, cuz I'm throwing elbows.

Ooh, I'm overdue
Give me some room
I'm coming through…

Asha Galindo is a writer from California. She thinks way too much about pop culture and would be content to live on tortellini and weed. She got her MFA from the Iowa Nonfiction Writer's Workshop. Her work has appeared in OxMag and Toyon. You can find her online, always @ashiepants or asha.writes

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.