No Dancing

One of the amazing things about New York, one which I have noticed becomes more obvious as the rhythms and possibilities of the city become more familiar, is that a single phone call can send you careening through unexpected territories at very short notice.
For example, take the conversation I had with my friend Colin the night that Daylight Savings ended:
"Hey Dave, what's up?"
"Not too much, dude. I just got home from work."
"What are your plans tonight?"
"A friend of mine got me on the list to see fast-rising progressive house DJ Chad Jack at the Roxy, but that's a lot later. Maybe I'll eat some Teriyaki Boy."
"The Roxy? You are a gay homosexual."
"Yeah, pretty much."
"What would you say if I told you that I had come into some tickets for LCD Soundsystem tonight?"
"Can I call you right back? I have to clean some shit out of my pants."
And like that, I was off on a whirlwind trip through Manhattan at night that left me wondering what, exactly, it would take to get a Bowery Ballroom packed to the gills with hipsters to dance.
You can't say James Murphy and his Soundsystem weren't trying. The robotically tight drummer and cute Asian drum-machine chick conspicuously (both metaphorically and physically) upstaged the guitar players, offering a subliminal testament to the band's groove-centrism, and their set was an energetic run through their smashingest singles, starting by blending their version of "Beat Connection" with the song the opening DJ ended with, and ending with a blistering rendition of "Yeah (Stupid Version)."
But while the band proved itself technically adept enough to translate even Murphy's most complex rhythms with nary a misstep, and the enthusiastic audience got its rock on, on the whole very few booties were set a-shakin'.
The crowd's stubborn refusal to get down struck me as perverse.
After all, LCD Soundsystem makes dance music. Until their full-length was released last November, all of their releases were on vinyl 12'', a format that practically screams "dance to this."
The crowd's rockist response is all the more puzzling given the fact that the disco-punk zeitgeist moment with which Murphy's band (and the DFA production team and record label he formed with Tim Goldsworthy) is identified supposedly concerns itself with getting self-conscious indie kids to shake it.
Mind you, we are now almost two years out from Pitchforkmedia.com honcho Ryan Schrieber's infamous review of The Rapture's (DFA-produced) Echoes. You remember. It was the one that announced the beginning of the disco-punk era with "Finally, we are shaking off the coma of the stillborn slacker 90s and now there is movement," and ended with "You people at shows who don't dance, who don't know a good time, who can't have fun, who sneer and scoff at the supposed inferior - it's you this music strikes a blow against. We hope you die bored."
While it's possible that the great mass of burgeoning disco-punkers at the LCD show refused to dance purely to spite Schrieber's messianic revolutioneering - really, who wouldn't? - it didn't seem likely.
For a moment the idea that hipsters actually just don't like to dance seemed sadly plausible, but a post-concert stop by the aggressively filthy/gorgeous Nü-Wave club night Misshapes - where hordes of heavily pancaked pretty boys/girls/whatevers and their angularly hairstyled brethren and sistren danced like maniacs to a DJ who took the provocative tactic of not bothering to blend songs into each other at all - quickly cleared up that misconception.
Maybe the problem was the format of the concert itself. As music listeners and concert-goers, we're programmed to appreciate the experience in a certain way. Rock music from the last decade or so hasn't generally inspired much ass motion; now that some sub-genres do, perhaps the parts of our brain that command us to settle down and appreciate the authors of our enjoyment onstage with our respect and attention are jamming the signal.
Whatever it is, I don't plan on standing for it. When LCD Soundsystem rolls back through town on June 10th, I hope I won't be the only one in the front row sporting glowsticks and a pacifier.