James Murphy On LCD Soundsystem Plans, Anniversary Shows
James Murphy has shared a statement on LCD Soundsystem‘s Facebook page, updating fans on the band’s recent activities. In the post, Murphy explained his and the band’s reasoning behind their recent residency arrangements, wrote about their Saturday Night Live appearance, and discussed their 20th anniversary.
Murphy spoke about his desire to break free from the usual album cycle, “We played 17 shows in Brooklyn at the end of last year, and now we’re doing mini residencies in a few places, like Philly and Boston. And then London. You see, we tend, historically, to take big chunks of time off between tours and LPs. And then, after the break, I begin to feel like I want to make a record, or we want to play some shows. But then I start to think ‘Oh man, if I make an album, then we need to rehearse for months to get ready to tour, and you need to book a tour so far in advance, and who knows when the record will be ready?’ This happened with American Dream.”
“We booked the shows, thinking I’d be done or nearly done with the record, and then I wasn’t, and there we are on this full tour with me trying to work on the record in the gaps, which weren’t that many… there’s a thing with tour, also, where you invest so much time, energy, and cost into ‘getting ready’ that you wind up touring for ages just to make it worthwhile… then you need a big break again. Then you are reluctant to start all over again. It’s a cycle.”
“We really wanted to stop living like that, so we talked about just playing some shows in New York, since most of us live here, and not making it too big of a deal. Like, just playing because we like it, and because we like one another. Just be a New York band for a bit. And maybe we’ll do something like that every year. Just stay in shape, if that makes sense. And just make records along the way. Maybe just singles for a while, so there isn’t some ‘album panic’ etc. We don’t know. We DO know that it was great to play those shows, and we’re looking forward to the rest of the shows we’re playing this year.”
Murphy went on to discuss the band’s recent Saturday Night Live appearance, “That was great for us. A lot of us really grew up on that show. We had nothing new to promote, but they were totally open to us playing whatever we wanted, and we could basically just take a cab over, so it was obvious for us to do it. It was incredibly fun. Who wouldn’t want to do that?”
The band’s forthcoming 20th anniversary was also discussed, “It’s horrifyingly going to be 20 years this year of us being a performing rock group. I mean, the Losing My Edge/Beat Connection” 12” came out in the summer of 2002, and then we played our first show November 19 of that year. It was in London, at Arthur Baker and Sean Mclusky’s Return To New York party at the Great Eastern hotel. So we’re kind of celebrating, albeit in a more low key way.”