Dancing about architecture.

Sometimes you go to a gig that throws the folly of writing about music into stark relief. I got home from LCD Soundsystem's gig at Manchester Academy last night, completely pumped and wanting to get my review down on page, but what do you say? What can you possibly say to convey the purely visceral (shudder - I hate that word but it's totally applicable here) nature of a LCD Soundsystem live show. I went, danced my skinny, whiter-than-white arse off for almost an hour and a half, soaked my clothes through with sweat and thoroughly enjoyed myself, but beyond recommending people who haven't yet witnessed the LCD live to catch them as soon as is humanly possible, what the fuck else do you write?

I was debating with a friend recently about the pointlessness of live reviews. I can understand why people enjoy reading them and, occasionally, I enjoy writing them but, as opposed to a record review where you can actually get the record, listen to it and decide whether you agree with the writer of the review that you read or whether they were full of shit, unless you were actually at the gig that you're reading a review of (or you're some kind of time-travelling pedant), there's little to no interaction between writer and reader. You might as well just piss in the wind. Or post your shopping list.

Anyway, live reviews are inherently impotent. They're the written equivalent of saying, "I guess you had to be there", and that just winds up being a fruitless endeavour. I could say that, as always, LCD Soundsystem completely fucking rocked it, from start to finish and pitch in with the odd little minor detail that was unique to last night's gig, like the power going out onstage before 'New York, I Love You...', or drummer, Pat Mahoney's "mannequin shorts", but what would be the point, other than it being a kind of personal document, something for me to remember the night?

So yeah, I guess this is me saying that I'm done with live reviews. Knowing my tendencies towards hypocrisy, this is something that I'll probably go back on sometime in the future, hoping that you guys forget I ever said it. In fact, I know that there's at least two live reviews I'm going to have to write in the not-too-distant future, so there goes that promise. Felt good to get it off my chest though.

Video of LCD Soundsystem playing 'North American Scum' at Cargo in London last week.