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James Murphy: Artist of the Decade :: A Diatribe by URB Editor Joshua Glazer

By Joshua Glazer   Photography by N/A

02/26/08 :: URB 152

It’s the Monday after Grammy weekend here in Los Angeles, which means the endless barrage of open bars and schmoozing opportunities is over. All that’s left to do is pick up the pieces, shug and say, “Herbie Hancock? Really?” And while I always enjoy a weekend of playing the “who can expense this?” game at dinner with other industry mutts (“Not I,” said the magazine editor) there’s a more pressing matter in my mind: How the hell did James Murphy not take home the Best Electronic/Dance Album prize for LCD Soundsystem’s Sound of Silver? The record had already been proclaimed the best album of 2007 by venerable opinion makers Pitchfork, Village Voice, Mixmag and Uncut [URB gave it top 10 but didn’t rank beyond that]. But would that matter to the voting members of the Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences? Of course not.

Frankly, I thought Murphy had a pretty good chance. Granted, the Chemical Brothers are probably still the only name recognizable to the crusty old men that make up much of the Grammy voting population, but I still held the misguided belief that Murphy had an edge. And here’s why. I’ve always held to the theory that The Grammys, no matter the cultural climate of the particular year, will always find the shortest distance from whatever they have to vote on—and the Eagles.

One look at LCD Soundsystem showed great promise within my theory. Never mind that Murphy himself looks closer to Glen Fry’s age than the kids with cool haircuts that make up Shiny Toy Guns. LCD is a band (at least onstage) who play real instruments, aren’t afraid to jam out, and have a drummer who both looks like a dad and wears jogging shorts onstage. Oh, and “All My Friends,” (which itself scored best song on many a year end list) is a paean to trying to stay cool and hip, even as you grow too old to be cool and hip. That’s a syndrome that plagues music industry folks more than high-blood pressure, hair loss and gonorrhea combined.

But even with all this going for him, Murphy still lost the Grammy. And I guess I can’t be too mad at the Chemical Brothers, even though their cultural impact this past year was limited to knocking up Lily Allen. But I still feel the need to do something.  And I think I know what. I’m going to personally send James Murphy a trophy. Probably a cheap plastic baseball thing. Or maybe tennis. On it will be a plaque that simply reads “ARTIST OF THE DECADE.”

You’re probably thinking to yourselves, “Isn’t it a little early to be making such declarations?” Kinda like selling Valentines Day candy right after Halloween. But hear me out. No single musician has had the pan-cultural impact of Mr. Murphy in the past six years. And much like a presidential primary campaign, I don’t need to wait around until the convention to declare a presumed winner.

Pop culture scholars will tell you that decades don’t start every 10 years on January first. They creep up slowly, usually several years after the calendar claims it so. The ‘60s didn’t start until somewhere in the 80 days between the Kennedy assassination and the Beatles’ first appearance on Ed Sullivan. And the ’60s stuck around until at least the mid-’70s (punk and disco didn’t happen until 1977). The ‘80s kicked off with MTV on August 1, 1981, and while some claim the ’90s burst forth with Nirvana 10 years later, I’d put it at 1993 when Björk released her first solo album that the decade really came together.

CONTINUE READING "JAMES MURPHY: ARTIST OF THE DECADE"

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