To close out the year (and to give you folks something to read while I finish up scripts), tMR is listing the "Top 20 Trends of 2007". But I need your help putting them in order. Starting Friday, you'll be able to vote for the trend you think is the most important. Somehow, there'll be a prize involved. I've got to figure it out. If you have a suggestion for a trend, email me.
2007: The Unconcert -- Daft Punk's Alive 2007Two words: Robot. Humanity. You can barely make the words out as they're slowly pronounced on a heavily digitized vocoder. Then they speed up until they blur into each other, the crowd goes wild and two motorcycle-helmet-wearing Frenchmen start playing music inside a giant pyramid on stage. There are no instruments, only computers. A lot of ink had already been spilled about Daft Punk, an electronica group known for it's love of repetitive lyrics (if you know the title "Around the World", you've memorized the song's lyrics) before this year's Alive 2007 tour. But in figuring out a way to present totally synthetic music in a live setting, Daft Punk's reformatted everything you knew about concerts.
Strictly speaking, there's no music-making to see at a Daft Punk concert. The elaborate electronics which allows the duo to manipulate the pre-recorded tracks they use are all hidden from view. Instead the audience witnesses shear spectacle-- two robots in a pyramid surrounded by lights. It's iconic, but devoid of meaning, much like the music itself. While most concerts are about seeing your favorite live, a Daft Punk concert is all about you. It's an old stage-saying that the audience makes the show, and by polishing their stage presence into a high-gloss mirror, Daft Punk's creates a show that reflects the audience's energy right back onto itself; creating an adrenalin-induced feedback loop.
The contradiction here is that the spectacle makes for a more genuine musical experience. Without visible ego's and personalities on stage, you focus on the music-- and by "focus" I mean "dance your ass off". While Gen X searched everywhere for ways to "keep it real", Daft Punk celebrates a generation whose reality is an artificial and digital landscape. As our identities dissolve, morph and expand across social networks, text messages and Google searches Daft Punk's robotic vision reminds that we're still "human after all".
Alive 2007 is
available on CD and digital download.
Labels: 2007, music
