LCD Soundsystem - "Losing My Edge"

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wifey freaked out when it was on. told me to mute the computer or she'd mute my face

― JaXoN (JasonD), Sunday, 11 January 2004 20:25 (twenty years ago) link

I'm sitting here with my pro studio monitors and computer running through a pro interface and everything, really clear and loud, and my teeth were shaking. And it stayed on even if you clicked on one of the videos. weird.

― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Sunday, 11 January 2004 20:30 (twenty years ago) link

i think the last line is actually "we all know what you really want."
and he is referring to daft punk the band in the other song - it's a what-if kind of scenario about a kid who saved up enough $ to get them over to play his house party in the suburbs.

― lauren (laurenp), Sunday, 11 January 2004 21:17 (twenty years ago) link

I was that guy. Or at least I can sympathise.

― Ronan (Ronan), Sunday, 11 January 2004 21:24 (twenty years ago) link

I heard you have a vinyl of every Niagra record on German import.

like this one here, on ebay right now!!

http://people.freenet.de/dustyouoff/Niagarafront.JPG

― the surface noise (electricsound), Friday, 16 January 2004 04:54 (twenty years ago) link

one year passes...

I've been reading William Empson, and the idea of 'daft punk' *not* meaning Daft Punk on 'Losing My Edge' is genius.

― NRQ, Thursday, 17 February 2005 09:55 (nineteen years ago) link

uh?

― Alienus Quam Reproba (blueski), Thursday, 17 February 2005 10:29 (nineteen years ago) link

it's a case of empson's second variety of ambiguity, where the ambiguity is resolved eventually. playing 'daft punk' to rock kids at cbgbs in the context of the song could just mean playing the ramones in 1975. but it could also mean playing daft punk at some point in the late 90s. both things being epochal. the eventual resolution is, i guess, that we know that murphy intended the 'ambiguity', it's a case of 'clever wording, cheers'.

― NRQ, Thursday, 17 February 2005 10:34 (nineteen years ago) link

so not really 'genius' then? (sorry i just get so irked by the over-use of that term)

― Alienus Quam Reproba (blueski), Thursday, 17 February 2005 10:37 (nineteen years ago) link

no, it's not really genius. it's not even scenius.

― NRQ, Thursday, 17 February 2005 10:41 (nineteen years ago) link

What ambiguity

― Andrew Blood Thames (Andrew Thames), Thursday, 17 February 2005 11:51 (nineteen years ago) link

How would the Ramones be a "daft" variation on orthodox punk in '75

― Andrew Blood Thames (Andrew Thames), Thursday, 17 February 2005 11:55 (nineteen years ago) link

they were daft. and punk. not unorthodox. no-one said they were an unorthodox variation on punk. but they were dafter than television. and punk is a bit daft.

― NRQ, Thursday, 17 February 2005 12:00 (nineteen years ago) link

Yeah it WOULD be pretty crazy to play a Ramones rec at CBGBs in 75

― Andrew Blood Thames (Andrew Thames), Thursday, 17 February 2005 12:16 (nineteen years ago) link

um, no-one said it was 'crazy' either. the lyrics are about being in on the ground floor of canonic musical scenes. not about being crazy, unorthodox, or daft. (you could say '1974' instead of 1975 i suppose, being pedantic.)

― NRQ, Thursday, 17 February 2005 12:22 (nineteen years ago) link

This song has one of my fav recent lyrics (actually fuck "one of", it's about the only one that's really got me at all, they're mostly not my thing), and it revolves around EXACTNESS. All the right references, an exact history of the narrator's experiences and credentials as a hipster. Ambiguity doesn't come into it. In fact, ambiguity contradicts its nature and fucks any worth it has. xpost Henry have you HEARD or READ the lyric?

― Andrew Blood Thames (Andrew Thames), Thursday, 17 February 2005 12:22 (nineteen years ago) link

"I was the first guy playing Daft Punk to the rock kids.
I played it at CBGBs.
Everybody thought I was crazy."

― Andrew Blood Thames (Andrew Thames), Thursday, 17 February 2005 12:23 (nineteen years ago) link

shit, this is true. i was finding the idea of thinking he didn't mean Daft Punk funny, as per comments upthread. anything can be ambiguous, of course, but i guess for me the ambiguity was pitched up by my image of cbgbs in the era of Daft Punk as a ridiculous punk-tourist trap as related by people who've visited (may be a false conception). this would make playing DP 'crazy' because the people who go are indeed dyed-in-the-wool rock fans (why would playing daft punk to regular rock fans seem crazy? it certainly wasn't considered crazy in england). but playing cbgbs (again according to my idea of what it is these days) would be very far from the edge in 1997-2002. the only time (again, in my mind) that cbgbs was hipster was in the 70s.

― NRQ, Thursday, 17 February 2005 12:33 (nineteen years ago) link

Well see yr image of the lyric seems like exactly what I took it to mean. Playing CBGBs in the late 90s isn't edgy, but going there and playing the new sounds of the electronica (yeah yuck) "takeover" to a bunch of punk fetishists would be, I think. As you more or less said. Also going by the rest of the song I think we can take it for granted the narrator was around for the venue in the 70s, right?

― Andrew Blood Thames (Andrew Thames), Thursday, 17 February 2005 12:40 (nineteen years ago) link

it's the w'burg 'sympathy for the devil' ((C) everybode, 2002)

― NRQ, Thursday, 17 February 2005 12:42 (nineteen years ago) link

"I was the first guy playing Daft Punk to the rock kids.
I played it at CBGBs.
Everybody thought I was crazy."

Bloody hell! When you write it down like that, it's almost like Wesley Willis lyrics.

― James Mitchell (James Mitchell), Thursday, 17 February 2005 13:28 (nineteen years ago) link

The song is obviously about TIME TRAVEL, duh.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Thursday, 17 February 2005 18:10 (nineteen years ago) link

The melody is lifted from Killing Joke's "Change," by the way. FACT!

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Friday, 18 February 2005 03:18 (nineteen years ago) link

What melody?

― Speedhump Bungle (noodle vague), Friday, 18 February 2005 03:21 (nineteen years ago) link

FACT!

― W i l l (common_person), Friday, 18 February 2005 03:48 (nineteen years ago) link

THE HOOK! FACT!

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Friday, 18 February 2005 03:54 (nineteen years ago) link

I'm as minimalist as anybody, but it's essentially just talking over an 808 pattern isn't it? NB This is a good thing.

― Speedhump Bungle (noodle vague), Friday, 18 February 2005 03:56 (nineteen years ago) link

Regardless, the hook is a bassline (duh-duh-dunna-dunnuh)...lifted from "Change" (itself lifted from "Me & Baby Brother" by War).

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Friday, 18 February 2005 03:59 (nineteen years ago) link

Just fyi, I'm not entirely serious about this, but they are incredibly simillar.FACT!

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Friday, 18 February 2005 04:00 (nineteen years ago) link

Hell, if someone would just hand me the LCD Soundsystem album on vinyl right now, I'd happily to go along with any of these theories. Instead I'll have to be bothered to make a trek to the shop tomorrow. Argh.

Say what you might about it otherwise, but Losing My Edge is without doubt one of the more entertaining songs ever recorded. Not that it has any relation to the album at all for me.

― Bimble... (Bimble...), Friday, 18 February 2005 09:04 (nineteen years ago) link

two months pass...

Pitchfork: How "Losing My Edge" came about, how "Killing" came about.

James: "Losing My Edge" came from a different place actually. That's them, I remember Vito [Roccoforte, from the Rapture] and Matt mentioning that to me recently, about how "Losing My Edge" came from "Do The Du", but it didn't at all. "Losing My Edge" came from a beat out of a cassette deck with a keyboard built in. That's what the du-du-dunk-ka-dunk thing for the whole thing.

The drums came from "Change" by Killing Joke. Like the turnarounds. It's like, I'm a drummer and the things you play when you warm up, I sit down and play "Little Miss Lover" by Jimi Hendrix, it's one of the beats I play. And my friend sits down and plays a different beat. The "Change" turnarounds are just one of the things I've always loved to play. Sorta like Gang Of Four's "Anthrax". But "Do The Du", I heard it about the time I met the Rapture, and was just freaking out. I love how skinny the guitars are. I think it's pretty amazing. The song was on my little MiniDisc of things I wanted people who were gonna play with me to listen to, before I ever made the band.

http://pitchforkmedia.com/features/weekly/05-05-09-jukebox-james-murphy.shtml

― a banana (alanbanana), Monday, 9 May 2005 16:24 (eighteen years ago) link

Told'ja.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Monday, 9 May 2005 16:56 (eighteen years ago) link

I mean, this is like the "Come As You Are"/"Eighties" thing at this point.

I'll add that for YEARS, I disliked "Losing My Edge", until I finally heard it on the LCD Soundsystem 2-CD I got earlier this year. As it turns out, when I first heard it, John In The Morning on KEXP had played ONLY THE FIRST HALF! The best part of the song is the build-up and climax in the second-half. What the fuck was up with John that morning?

It would be cool to have James just scream "CHANGE!" every now and then, just to admit it, though. :)

― donut debonair (donut), Monday, 9 May 2005 17:55 (eighteen years ago) link

one month passes...

http://banananutrament.blogspot.com/2005/06/lcd-soundboard-losing-my-edge-lyrics.html

WHOA

― firstworldman (firstworldman), Thursday, 9 June 2005 16:10 (eighteen years ago) link

At least some other poor sap out there in the ether transcribed the lyrics

Heeey! I resent that!

― Mr. Snrub (Mr. Snrub), Friday, 10 June 2005 00:31 (eighteen years ago) link

I'm losing myself...

― Shame 69, Friday, 10 June 2005 13:26 (eighteen years ago) link

it seems so unlikely that the author of this record does not post to ilm

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Friday, 10 June 2005 13:41 (eighteen years ago) link

hahaha

― s1ocki (slutsky), Friday, 10 June 2005 16:21 (eighteen years ago) link

well, this is my first post, amateur(ist).
just found this thread by accident. hilarious. should i bother correcting lyrics? or let it live on it's own likr this?

― giggles mcj, Friday, 17 June 2005 12:57 (eighteen years ago) link

Yeah James, hook us up. Which Mars are you talking about?

― Keith C (kcraw916), Friday, 17 June 2005 13:23 (eighteen years ago) link

And most importantly, is it "You don't know what you really want" or "We all know what you really want" or "You all know what you really want" or...

― Mr. Snrub (Mr. Snrub), Friday, 17 June 2005 14:54 (eighteen years ago) link

at first I thought 'yaz' was a wilfull mispronunciation of 'jazz'. somehow it fits perfectly in my mind (despite the buying of synthesizer and arpeggiator). 'you want to make something rill / you want to make a jazz record'

― W i l l (common_person), Friday, 17 June 2005 15:10 (eighteen years ago) link

janny hates jazz

― teeny (teeny), Friday, 17 June 2005 15:37 (eighteen years ago) link

This thread is extremely merry. :-)

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 17 June 2005 15:41 (eighteen years ago) link

yanni hates yaz

― W i l l (common_person), Friday, 17 June 2005 16:08 (eighteen years ago) link

When Annie did "Chewing Gum" at Tribeca Grand the bass player swapped the bassline out for the bassline from this song, it was like a mashup kinda, the best moment of the night by far.

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Friday, 17 June 2005 17:08 (eighteen years ago) link

ok--mars is the ny group, from no new york, etc.
and it's "you all know what you really want"

just saying

― gigglesmcj, Monday, 27 June 2005 21:12 (eighteen years ago) link

the mistery is solved

thank you mr. murphy, if it is indeed you

― manuel (manuel), Tuesday, 28 June 2005 01:09 (eighteen years ago) link

ah but what are the unintelligbles?

― shine headlights on me (electricsound), Tuesday, 28 June 2005 01:12 (eighteen years ago) link

xpost

Tell Nancy hubbahubba from me.

― peepee (peepee), Tuesday, 28 June 2005 01:12 (eighteen years ago) link

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