Shut Up and Play The Hits

I've been interested in electronica music and the Amazon computer suggests a lot of things that it thinks I might like. About five years ago it suggested a CD by LCD Soundsystem titled "Sound of Silver." I took the suggestion seriously because I'd read a review in "Rolling Stone" and I'd already decided that this would probably be a disc I'd enjoy. I bought and I indeed liked it very much and followed up later by also purchasing (and reviewing) "This is Happening" and "London Sessions." This was just a very good band and I loved their music and James Murphy was a terrific singer! Excellent recordings!Well, LCD Soundsystem quickly and easily worked it's way into my list of a half-dozen favorite musical acts (including deadmau5, Daft Punk and Matthew Dear) that were the highest on my playlist. Then the notice came out that they were shutting the band down. Quitting? How can this be? This is one of the freshest and best bands around and they're quitting right as they reach their peak? Say it isn't so! Well, unfortunately, it was so and they gave a final concert at Madison Square Garden (a very large boxing arena) to a near-capacity crowd last April in New York City. The 3 1/2-hour concert is now available on DVD. Well, if you're a LCD fan this package is a must-have! They call it "Shut Up And Play The Hits" and it makes for an outstanding three-disc DVD package. The first DVD presents selections (highlights) from the concert together with assorted scenes and interviews with James Murphy and other band members. It's quite an interesting and well-done DVD. Be sure to look over all the extras. The second and third DVDs present the entire concert. The total package is just overwhelming and is probably the best concert DVD set I own (out of about 25). It's a wonderful addition to my collection.It's a terrific concert presentation, both the short version (disc one) and the long version (discs two and three). The boxing venue turned out to be a surprisingly good setting. The concert was staged toward the center and the cameras were set both to record the activity on the stage and look out over the large audience in all directions. Well Done! The acoustics and sound quality of the recording were rather good for a live concert. I was surprised at the size of the band. There might have been about 15-20 people on stage, including the singers. I was also surprised that an emphasis was placed on actual musical instruments, in that I had the idea from the LCD CDs that the reliance was more on electronic music.The band was disbursed all over the stage, seemingly almost at random, rather than a set facing the audience as in a more normal concert-hall setting. Most of te band members had a specific setting, particularly those playing large instruments, but James Murphy wandered about the stage and the scattered musicians carrying his microphone, playing with a few instruments now and then and interacting with the audience. In his wanderings, he was then able to face most of the audience from time to time. Nice arrangement. Murphy put on a terrific performance and demonstrated that he was an excellent multi-instrument musician. He really stood out as a percussionist! Murphy left no doubt that he was the heart and core of the LCD organization. And what a terrific singer he was. Previously, I'd only listened to him on CDs and this guy really put his everything into this concert. All of the other band members were great too and were fun to watch. Evidently there was no dress code at all. Band members were each doing their own thing and you had everything on stage from tank-top undershirts to shorts to some rather formal looking outfits. One fellow looked as if he was in audition for those Sasquatch Jerky commercials you see on TV. Murphy, himself, looked as if his haircut was about a month too old and that, somehow, he had forgotten to shave in the last week, although he was wearing a rather formal jacket (sans tie). No matter. It seemed as if everyone was relaxed and just having a really good time, and the audience responded warmly to it.The concert was both a joyous and sad experience to watch. The band was obviously having a lot of fun, but as the long concert came down to the final songs you could feel the sadness gradually set in. Very late in the concert, they played New York, I Love You, But You're Getting Me Down. It fit. Most of the songs were newly updated versions of the songs on the "Sound of Silver" and "This Is Happening" CDs, but there were a few new ones (to me, at least), including one 23-minute-long extravagenza. Then it was over.What's going to happen here? Murphy and his motley collection of musicians (but quite excellent, I would hasten to add) aren't just going to go away, Will Murphy be reincarnated in some other form? Will the other members of the band regroup and form new bands? Stay tuned.Gary Peterson

I had never heard of LCD Soundsystem before late one night, bored and with nothing to watch, I was flipping through the Netflix instant suggestions and came across this film. I figured I'd give it a shot and though the first two minutes had me questioning my choice, I stuck with it and am so glad that I did. I watched the film all the way through and found myself sofa dancing without even realizing it. I was in love with the music. But not just the music, the story of the man too. Heartbreaking at times and uplifting at others, this film was done so well. In this one film I learned (albeit very limited) about the band itself, the man who created it, and a little bit about why he decided to end it. The mixture of storytelling with actual concert footage is what makes it. Being able to see dance music performed live on stage, and all the complexity and talent that goes into it, was mind blowing. It isn't someone standing on an empty stage with turntables and dials bobbing his head while you hear complex orchestrated music playing, not sure how or when it was actually created. No, it's a group of happy and talented folks right there in front of you strumming every string, hitting every cow bell, hitting every snare, playing ever key, and booping every beep-blop! And they look so happy and euphoric doing it! It's spellbinding.So after I finished on Netflix I jumped here to Amazon to see about picking up the film to own. I was so happy to find that the blu-ray edition actually includes the full 3.5 hour final concert which the documentary is in service of. Incredible. The concert itself takes up two of the three discs in the set, leaving the documentary and some extra features on the third. The packaging is also very well done and includes a really touching and spot-on essay printed on one of the flaps. This is a fantastic package and it has made a fan of LCD Soundsystem out of me. Too bad I'm so late to the party.I can only think of two negatives for this set. First, at least for me on my system, the concert discs seem out of sync. The video is slightly slower than the audio. I don't have this problem with any other blu-rays on this setup so i don't think it's a system lag issue. That's with the 5.1 mix, btw. The stereo mix I had better luck with, it seems closer, but it's still just a bit off. My second negative would be that while there are subtitles on the documentary which include the concert footage (so you can see the lyrics to the songs being performed) the concert itself does not have subtitles. My wife is hard of hearing and while she would really love to watch the entire concert (like me this is her first experience with the band and was equally impressed) she can't. And even though my hearing is fine, it would be nice as a new fan, to be able to see the lyrics to these songs since occasionally (by design) Murphy's vocals are hard to make out over the music or distortion. This may not be an issue for most people, but if it could be done for the concert footage in the documentary, i would think it could have been done for the concert too.

I have always been a bit of an LCD Soundsystem sceptic - yet something compelled me to buy this video.By and large it's compelling stuff from beginning to end: the band's last performance in its entirety, which must run for the best part of four hours. It's a mark of this group's class that they can pace a set of this length so well and retain interest throughout. Instrumentals and interludes are cleverly used as a way of giving the audience a mental break. The performance, in its style of execution, if not in sound, is somewhere between a jazz supergroup and an orchestral concert. James Murphy, though still "the main man", doesn't hog the limelight, and nor do any of his colleagues - which include virtually all of his DFA Records' and LCD Soundsystem collaborators past and present. At times there must be upwards of 20 people performing at once - which left me thinking that this must have been one hell of a piece of work to rehearse apart from anything else.The style of filming is also very clever, at times giving you a performer's eye view. It's also a well-packaged set with a fair amount of extras - some interesting and some, ahem, a bit daft ("Catching Up With Keith"?)I watched the DVD (well Blu-ray, actually) in the order of disc 2, disc 3 and then disc 1 i.e. the concert first and the documentary second. Whilst this is probably the best order to watch it in, a word of warning: the documentary does use a lot of the concert footage, so one small criticism is that it's a bit repetitive. Another minor disappointment is that the documentary mainly focuses on Murphy and leaves out the other band members. For me, though the concert is the "main feature".Overall the style of presentation is, for someone who prefers generally to listen to music rather than watch it, a bit if a benchmark. It certainly made me want to go back and reassess the LCD Soundsystem albums.

This sumptious three disc set is the definitive funeral. The film itself - "Shut Up And Play The Hits" - is one of the most fitting rock films of recent memory. Whilst you can wonder, what is the point of a film about a band splitting up of its own violition being anything other than self-indulgent, this film is is about something bigger : about grief and loss and adjustment in the midst of everyday life. Punctuated by a trio of events - an erudite interview with James Murphy and Chuck Klosterman, live footage of the final show, and the 48 hours surrounding the show, it covers the gamut of emotions that come with any event of a similar nature. The joy, and ecstasy of dancing and release, as the crowd take their last communion and dance their legs down to the knees (every shot of the crowd is a crazy fug of bouncing hipsters), combined with a tearful distraught, finality at the close. The last time I saw a crowd so visibly exhausted and deflated was at the end of Morrissey's first solo tour in 1991 - with no indication he would ever play again, isolated pockets of heartbroken fans were sobbing inconsolably on the floor in a crumpled, exhausted heap. Cut to the quiet, and broken visit to the bands rented rehearsal space the day after. Murphy sits in a chair and stares at the equipment that, less than 24 hours before, was in front of 17,000 people at Maidson Square Garden ready to bring a Wrestling Arena to its knees.And we have all been here. A key moment in our world has come to an end. Sometimes of our choosing. And sometimes not. The end of a job. Redundancy. Being dumped. Leaving, or being left. We carry on. Life doesn't stop. We still get hungry. Still need coffeee. Still need to walk the dog, pick up the messages, and consider the next move. Three hours after the love of my life abandoned the ship, I was eating a sandwich. Life doesn't forgive or forget but pounds on as relentless as our heartbeat. This film is about that moment : when you have to continue. When your to do list is "1., Wake Up 2. Survive 3. Carry On Again Tomorrow. " This is what this film is about - transition, change, loss and the euphoria of one last glorious moment before the inevitable spiritual hangover of the morning after. It is a poignant film that captures the boredom of life, the inevitable midlife crisis, the questioning of reality - and whether we define life or let life define us - which is explored in the interview with Klosterman where he reveals the unshocking truth that there is only so much time, and so much left to do, and maybe he's just had enough for this kind of thing. Like a pop version of Danny Glover. "I'm getting too old for this." It's a poignant ending as even though it is a moment of his own choosing, that it still carries a price, when the life he has lived for a decade has now come to an end - and where do you go from the end?Disc 2 and 3 capture the full, final live show : it is absurd, brilliant, and, at 210 minutes long, stunning : every song LCD have ever played and many they haven't are performed, complete with an astronaut horn section, a reproduction space capsule and alien invasion, guest vocalists and musicians, dancing, singing and playing their arses off to a capacity crowd. Most of their discography is performed in a vibrant concert area that is both - B-Sides, A-Sides, covers and all - whilst Murphy leads the band as a kind of ringleader whilst around 40 people - a choir and horn section, alongside the 11 core members of live LCD and others combine to create / reproduce LCD's peculiarly individual assortment of dancable, rhythmic self-aware drama. But at the same time, the band play without it ever feeling like padding or dragging it out : because they didn't just shut up and play the hits, but they just wrote good songs, full stop. This enormous, six hour set contains not only their final fantastic show, but also a poighnant, touching documentary that is shorn of context and captures just the 48 hours around the funeral of one of the best groups of the past decade. Nostalgia is bunk : to see what we remember and recall becoming history is part of the human experience. What the future holds no one knows, but we can make it the future we want to see. This is certainly the most intruiging music film since "Some Kind Of Monster", that, like all the best films, answers a question we maybe never even knew we needed to answer : how do we survive the changes of life whilst also staying alive? Live through this.

There is a 3 disc version of this, but as it's currently over eight times the price, I opted for this edition.As someone has pointed out, despite the case mentioning 5.1 sound, the disc is in stereo only, which is hardly surprising with the amount of material on here (Feature 104mins, Concert 205mins and Extras 33mins). I don't have my 5.1 system set up currently, so I'm not too bothered about that.The picture is good, the sound clear and blistering. If there is a niggle with this disc, the concert comes in 2 parts, but they are only randomly chaptered, and there's certainly no track select menu, so you can either watch the parts in full, or jump randomly through the 8 or 9 chapters that each part is broken up into. You can't really fault the content though.

Big fan of Mr Murphy and co, but watching this concert took my respect for him and his band to another level- I saw them at Brixton a few years ago and they were good, but this film? They are just awesome, so tight and together it seems a real shame that we won't (or will we?) see them live again or any new material.Reminiscent of Talking heads at their best (Byrne and co must have been a massive influence!) with guest appearances from the likes of Arcade Fire, the gig is way over three hours long but it just dazzles!If you want to see a band at the top of their game buy this movie - love it! Hope James Murphy changes his mind and decides to get the band back together and make more great music!

This seems to be a 1 disc budget edition, if it's even official. The concert is stereo only, NOT the full 5.1 I was expecting. The proper version is a 3 disc set which is supposed to be amazing. If you're a fan I'd avoid this.