Daft Punk über alles

Good news! I finally found a live recording of Daft Punk's live performance at Coachella this summer.

If I've never before mentioned my love for this French duo, let me lay it down here and now. They are, quite simply, my favorite musicians on Earth. I love the music and I love the way they present it. But really, articles and blog pieces about their awesomeness are a dime a dozen. What I'm here to talk about is their all-around presence.

For one thing, Daft Punk -- composed of Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo -- have to be two of the weirdest dudes on the planet. After their first album became a pretty big international hit they decided that much of today's music had become a cult of personality. For that reason, they no longer appear in public or have their photographs taken without wearing the helmets you see in the photo at right, and as a result no one really knows what they look like (though Wikipedia has links to a few sketchy pics).

They're also trying to create a kind of story with their music. The live set at Coachella is a good example:

Their whole thing is that they're robots... no, humans... no, robots, and the music is intended to reflect that internal struggle. Or something like that. (Hey, I said they were weird.) So, the live set kicks off with those few notes from Close Encounters of the Third Kind when they're trying to communicate with the spaceship. After that, you start to hear these weird computer voices just going back and forth saying, "Human... Robot... Human... Robot..." and closer together and faster and faster and then it kicks into "Robot Rock" and the crowd goes nuts. But the whole story comes back around again, via hit after hit after hit, and they finish off the set with "Human After All."

O! if only I had been there. Unfortunately, they don't perform live very often. This was their first live show in the U.S. since 1998! And they're only doing like six live shows this year TOTAL, all of which are at crazy expensive festival type events, nowhere near My Beloved Charm City.

Anyway, as of today I have two Daft Punk-related goals:

1) See Electroma (a movie they made) when it comes out.

2) Find one of those crazy helmets and where it year-round.

EDIT: I forgot to mention this, but those interested should visit Daft Musique. It's a promotional site for their greatest hits album, which came out earlier this year. The site is totally off the wall and well worth the time spent. Be sure to chekc out the "Private" area, where you can view an interview they gave while in Japan. Hilarious!