Daft Punk: Best Live Musical Performance of 2007
By Tankboy in Arts & Entertainment on Jan 8, 2008 6:25PM
Usually when we see a show that really blows us away, the initial impact is stunning, and then fades to a fond moment or two in our head. Daft Punk's performance at last year's Lollapalooza forced us to walk away from that show with an entirely new inner relationship with the band.
No drugs were involved, and to be truthful, the full impact of their show was lost on us until we ventured out and submerged ourselves in the middle of the crowd in order to convey an honest account -- sans the usual disconnect suffered between most critics and the audience they write for -- of the performance of two robots atop a pyramid. And that simplicity does in fact capture the heart of the show, but it does no justice to the full scope of the physical presence of the volume, and the stunning glory of the images interlocking and propelling that volume across a field packed with rapturous voices and bodies joined and worshiping in union with the almighty beat.
That sounds a but overly grandiose, we admit, but at the time, that's not precisely what happened. We know for a fact not everyone walked of that field impressed -- but as far as our internal monologue is concerned, the show has only grown in its impact the months since then. When we see video of the performance, something in our chest tightens and we feel nostalgia for a time far further gone than a single month, and I realize that Daft Punk did do something incredibly special with their performance. Luckily a CD representative of the tour was released, and even though the performance was taped in Paris, the gatefold photo is of the Chicago crowd umbrellaed by the city's skyline, so we can just prop that up and pretend we are there, in that moment, all over again.
In the end, all attempts to make empirical sense of an event that truly touches one are doomed to fail, and why would one want to strip away all of the mysticism surrounding such an event in the fist place? We've grown used to hearing the music of thousands of bands, and watching their performances, and dissecting everything involved with it in an attempt to make sense of the experience for people that weren't there, or haven't heard what we've heard, yet. Every once in a while it's a relief to encounter something that can take those filters, decimate them, and allow something unadulterated, and possibly mythical, past the gates.