daft punk

I remember the first time I heard Daft Punk, and saw it too. It was in Gianfranco’s parents’ living room in 1997, in the summer. Almost thirty years ago. The room was dark, the shutters were drawn or it was night. Hard to tell sometimes in a memory. “Around the world” was playing on MTV Europe, and I had no idea what I was listening to. There were neon outlined astronauts doing a weird march on a circular staircase, and other electric pink and green and yellow people playing instruments and doing other dance-y/music-video-y things. I wasn’t really watching it, I didn’t make any sense of what I was seeing. The electronic sound, the looping “around the world” lyric, it infected me that day. I think I knew then that I liked it but had no idea what to do with it.

All throughout high school I was solidly in the heavy metal camp; Metallica (seen in concert), some Megadeth, Pantera, Tool, and others. Then the rock and roll, and classic rock; AC/DC, Aerosmith, Tool. Electronic and dance music was way out of my scene.

It took me a long time to admit that I liked Daft Punk. The next electronic encounter was a remix CD of White Zombie. I found it on the red bricks of Western, scratched but playable, no idea what it was for a while. This unknown mystery CD was one of my favorites.¹ I think I still have it, but the scratches and age finally got the better of it and it stopped playing years ago. I couldn’t find it just now, but I’m pretty sure it’s out there somewhere.

I think I do own a copy of Homework, the album that “Around the World” is from; I remember listening to the house party opening track, “Stop the music and go home” is the opening line, but I don’t remember when or where I would have bought it. I don’t think it was during college; sometime after I had moved to the east side of the mountains. My branch out, musically, was classical. There was still a lot of alternative and classic rock in my musical catalog during those years. Maybe I got it from BMG; I fell for that a couple of times.

I looked but I didn’t find a copy of Homework. By the time I accepted my taste we were well into the streaming or at least the mp3 and burning CDs phase of music consumption. The only Daft Punk album I have is “Random Access Memories,” and I never even opened the CD. It came with download codes.

I would say that surely by 2008, eleven years later, when I went away to grad school, that I had admitted to myself that I liked these sounds and had gone searching for them. I’m certain that podcasts and Bob Boilen and NPRs All Songs Considered would have had something to do with it. Their relentless search through new releases and latest tracks and festival set lists gave me a high hit rate for interesting songs in those early years. Particularly the SXSW songs. But it petered out after a while, and I wasn’t finding so much stuff that way. I had found Passion Pit that way (I’ve moved on), and almost made it to a concert in Boston. It was a long drive and we decided against it; too much school work to do that weekend. I found Hot Chip too (still with them), and saw them in Santa Cruz. And Chromeo (yes). Glad I’ve gotten to see them, in the Fox Theater. Royksopp (definitely) is another, and Air (when they make something), and so many more that I’m glad to be able to hear.

I never saw Daft Punk in concert; it was years too late by the time I figured it out.

But, the evolution, the archaeology, the history of my listening tastes and how I got here, that is lost to my memory. We stopped making mix tapes in about the year 1999, and stopped burning CDs around the year 2010 or 2012. Everything went digital and into playlists on iTunes or YouTube or Spotify or some other service that has been deleted from the world. My oldest playlists in YT is called “music” but there is no date associated with it, no edit history. I have a playlist in YT Music titled “08-oct” that is apparently corrupted; it has 4 tracks repeated twice. It includes a Girl Talk song from Feed the Animals (good stuff). I found some burned CDs in the garage, unlabeled.

Newer finds (but still not that new) include Kavinsky, The Knife & Fever Ray, and Empire of the Sun. Fever f*cking Ray. I’m not sure what to call this collection, my genre, but it’s something like electronic dance. Meditation through repetition and noise. Not so much emphasis on the vocals, more on the textural soundscapes. It’s all because of Daft Punk. I’m sure I haven’t ever seen the whole “Around the World” music video, or any of their others. Would I have found my way here anyway? Probably. But it was that song on the TV in Gianfranco’s living room that started it, planted the seed that I heard over and over in my head during the dormant years, the searching years, the years of finding. All that wandering should be in the mix tapes that never were and the as-yet-unburned CDs still waiting in the tower. The bits, they just don’t hit the same.

jg

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