Daft Punk @ Coachella 2006

Aaaa Coachella, lush green field, Awesome Bands, Two whole days of musical bliss in the California desert. This was our second coachella, you could call us veterans :). However nothing could prepare us for the visual/music onslaught that was Daft Punk @ the Sahara tent on Saturday. Get ready for a long winded post :)



Long Version

To give you some perspective, acts at Coachella are spread across 5 areas. The Main stage (where the main acts/headliners - typically rock acts perform), The Outdoor stage (Various acts not a specific genre but mainly rock/folk focused), Mojave Tent (Hip Hop/RnB), Gobi Tent (Punk, Alternative) and last but not the least The Sahara tent (Dance acts). The Sahara tent was enlarged this year (to hold about 50k people) - Avi and I were under the impression that this was for Madonna (performing Sunday) as Sunday had sold out. Man were we wrong....

We pretty much stayed in the Sahara tent all day. Derrick Carter was very good, nice chicago house - Highlight of his set was him dropping a Kanye West remix right when Kanye West was on the Main Stage!!! After Carter it was Carl Cox's turn on the decks and he rocked it. Carl Cox is one of those Dj's who just has so much energy! His set was high energy and some really good techno/house. Audio Bullys were up next- what a drag. Bad Dj'ing and extremely bad MC'ing. Avi and I left the tent to grab a bite to eat and get ready for some Daft'ness.

Depeche mode had just finished on the main stage - and there was a mass of people drifting to wards the Sahara for Daft Punks set. It finally clicked - the Sahara tent was expanded for this! It was an incredible feeling ~50K people in tent waiting for the french robots.

Background music playing, crowd chanting "Daft Punk, Daft Punk". The curtain was still closed, and the crowd is getting restless. Suddenly out of nowhere we hear the "Close Encounters of the third kind" theme. The curtain opens - Out comes a pyramid with the center cut and TWO FRENCH ROBOTS! The tent went off!

Daft Punk then launched into an exquisite co-ordinated light show (the visuals were stunning) with such beautiful music, O beautiful music. They remixed/remashed/twisted/melded all their own songs into one continuous 60 min mix that had the crowd going...................Holy shit this is epic!

I'd always heard about the mythical life-changing-experience, this was mine. There was something about all these people grooving to some great tunes that was just...special. I know this sounds corny , but you had to be there to feel it. Their set ended at about 12:15 AM. As we were getting out of the parking lot, everybody had a shit eating grin and every car had Daft Punk's - Discovery playing real real loud. We had a smile on our faces and all we could think about was....."One more time"

You can get a good quality bootleg of thier set here.

Short Version

Pitchfork.com summed it best

That is not to say some of the main-stagers were not up to snuff. Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Kanye West, and Massive Attack all performed predictably entertaining if not overwhelming sets. The exception to the headliner rule, and probably to anything said above, was Daft Punk's mindblowing appearance. Not to get hyperbolic, but people were crying at two French robots. Yes, chemicals may have played a part, but Bangalter and Homem-Christo deserve much of the credit for creating a relentless, dynamic live show based around two dudes standing in front of equipment. A towering LED pyramid; dizzying light show; hilariously choreographed camera movements for the screenwatchers; and, of course, an exhausting selection from their catalogue, sequenced on a seemingly impossible upward trajectory for a solid hour. Heart-attack shit. And for all those who argued Human After All's worthlessness: You were wrong.