Losing My Edge
There is a shot in the Shut Up And Play The Hits documentary where James Murphy, performing Losing My Edge, arrives at the lyrics I'm losing my edge/To the Internet seekers/Who can tell me every member/Of every good group/From 1964 to 1978. He recites those lines holding a mic with his left hand while, with his right, mimes the touch gestures -- taps, pinches, swipes -- that are so well known to, are the calling cards of the wired kids from Tokyo to Berlin to Brooklyn, the relevant, really nice kids who hold in their own hands their tableted nervous systems and memories. You know what you can recall, says Walter Ong over the recorded evanescent sound of LCD Soundsystem. You know what you can recall. The song is certainly a lot of things, many of which are inaccessible to me, but it seems one thing the song is is an invitation to consider the different kinds of recall and, thus, the different kinds of knowing. Every member of every group from 1964 to 197...