And to tell the truth
Oh, this could be the last time
So here we go
Like a sail’s force into the night

And if I made a fool, if I made a fool, if I made a fool
On the road, there’s always this
And if I’m sewn into submission
I can still come home to this
— LCD Soundsystem, “All My Friends”

http://listen.grooveshark.com/songWidget.swf

On Saturday night at Madison Square Garden, James Murphy and the rest of LCD Soundsystem got that song out of the way early — near the end of the first of three hour-long sets that made up their last hurrah. I could feel the tears swelling up in my eyes, but my jumping up and down and singing along kept them from actually falling. If I had stood still, though, I would’ve lost it — just like I almost did the last time I saw them, last year with some of my best friends. That band means a lot to me, and while I’m sad it’s over, the night was one hell of a celebration with some of the people closest to me, made even more exciting by the really awesome folks we met throughout the night. I won’t recap the whole thing, but I’ll at least say that the show was equal parts phenomenal and exhausting. By the end of it, I was so worn out that I didn’t have much energy to even be sad anymore — which perhaps was the plan. Some random thoughts: I flipped out when Win, Regine and Will from Arcade Fire joined the band on stage for “North American Scum” (fun fact: I tried to get that song’s title engraved on the back of my iPod, but Apple decided it was inappropriate); “45:33” didn’t feel as long as I expected it to; and I sorta wished James was a little closer in drunkenness to LCD’s show at Music Hall of Williamsburg last year. Anyway, even though we nearly froze waiting three hours in 15-degree weather to buy the tickets, and then got in line way earlier than we needed to, it was all totally worth it. Very excited to see what James Murphy does next.

(Me with my ticket; photo by my buddy Dominick Mastrangelo, on Brooklyn Vegan)

THE DISH
Classic black and white cookies (recipe link + photos from the show)

THE INSPIRATION
I made classic New York black and white cookies for a classic New York band, and a nod to James Murphy’s request that everyone at the last show wear all black and white. A lot of people followed it but, to the girl in the teal jacket, and the other in the floral dress: WTF? The silver behind the main photo is because of LCD’s amazing 2007 album Sound of Silver. “I was there” is from the band’s first single, “Losing My Edge” (got this idea from Evie, who joked about people selling T-shirts with that on it), and the lightning bolt is the logo of Murphy’s record label, DFA.

THE RECIPE
I mostly followed the recipe here, with a couple of substitutions (I didn’t have cake flour so we sifted 2T corn starch with about 3/4 c of AP flour per each cup of cake flour; I ran out of white sugar, so we used a little bit of turbinado to finish it off). I don’t think the texture was totally on, but they tasted great.

As for the icing, it was the PERFECT consistency and really kind of just filled itself in when we spread it on the cookies. I ended up with a lot of extra chocolate icing at the end, so you could probably get away with making 2/3 of the icing recipe (or you can save the leftovers for the un-freaking-believable recipe I’m going to post sometime next week…). For the black text, I made a very small batch of royal icing dyed with black food coloring. Overall, these were so much fun to make and I’d definitely do them again (minus the text, of course). (My friends Tony and Missy took some of these photos, although I have no idea who did what.)

My partners in crime waiting in line for the pit at Madison Square Garden (this photo also by Dominick Mastrangelo).

I gave cookies to people around us in line; the writing definitely got super squished, but at least they still tasted good!

Friends. Waiting for the show to start.

It’s hard to see, but Win, Regine and Will from Arcade Fire are singing behind Nancy! Honestly, they didn’t add a whole lot to the song (“North American Scum”), but it was still exciting to see two of my favorite bands on stage together — especially since the last show I saw at MSG was Arcade Fire.

The end.