One Song - Daft Punk, Part One: The Road To Get Lucky

Episode Date: March 14, 2024

Hey One Song listener, did you ever wonder how much Diallo and LUXXURY like Daft Punk? Well, the answer is a lot. So much, in fact, that one episode could not contain their love of robot helmets, French house music, obscure samples, and pyramids. So we’re doing a special Two Part deep dive into Daft Punk and their feel-good pop masterpiece, "Get Lucky". This is Part One: The early years of Daft Punk, their inspirations, and how they changed pop music with their triumphant Coachella performance in 2007.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, One Song Nation. Diyallo and luxury here. Hello. Just a quick note before we start the show, we're splitting our dad punk episode into two parts. That's right, Dialla. We made that decision because we had so much to say about Tomah and Gimann and Get Lucky that we needed a little more time and space. That's right. Time and space for all the fun facts, Easter eggs, samples, stems, robot helmets, pyramids, all that good stuff. All of it. This is part one. We're going to cover the Genesis and early years of the band and take you all the way up to their triumphant Coachella performance. Right. In part two, we'll get into the stems for Get Lucky, and trust me, you'll want to stick around for all of it. Whether you're a longtime fan of the band like us, or you don't really know them and you kind of want to know more about them, this is the episode for you.

All right, let's do this. Enjoy the show. Luxury. What's up, my man? Sorry. That was a robot voice. I could tell what you were trying to do. I get it. I get it. I'm sorry, dude. I'm so amped. I'm so excited. Okay, so we are talking about a band that Luxury and I love. I think a lot of our listeners love it. And honestly, luxury and I are just obsessed. We are just obsessed. In fact, I would say that the biggest fomo moment of my music life came from missing their legendary cocella performance in 2006.

And I did not miss that performance. I was there that night. I saw it. I'm so sorry. So sorry, not sorry. But it was pretty incredible. It's everything you've heard. And it was a live set that shifted the landscape of pop

music and brought dance to the masses. We're going to talk about that night and Diallo a little later on the episode. But first, let's say a little more about today's song. After its release in the spring of 2013, it went to number one in the UK, Australia, Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg. Luxembourg? Luxembourg. You went number one in Luxembourg? That's really saying something. That's at least a dozen people felt like it needed to be number one. No Luxembourg shade. I won't have it. It was pretty much number one everywhere around the world. wink, wink, nudge, except for here in the U.S.

where it was beaten by Robin Thick's blurred lines. I mean, Robin Thick always beats everybody. You don't want to get beaten out by Robin Thick. It did, however, win a Grammy, and it was not just any Grammy. It was the Grammy for record of the year.

And Rolling Stone, they're never wrong, ranked it as one of the 500 greatest songs of all time, Rolling Stone. I'm coming for you. And also, unlike Blurred Lines, it didn't get anybody soon. important distinction. It's true to be sure. This time on one song, we're up all night for good fun, and we're up for daft punks, get lucky. I'm actor, writer, director, and sometimes robot, Diallo Riddle.

And I'm producer, DJ, and songwriter luxury, aka the guy who talks about... Interpolation. Interpolation. On TikTok. I'm so happy I brought that today. So Get Lucky drops in 2013. Diallo, what is going on in your world back then, and how did you first hear the song? Oh, man. You know, I'm full on writing mode. We had just left late night with Jimmy Fallon, and we were starting to work with people like Maya Rudolph and Drake. Drake was getting ready to host the Espies in a little bit, and so we were working with them,

and so there were a lot of drives up to Calabasas. But, you know, I was just like everybody else. I remember that Steve Aoki put out a tweet on an app called Twitter back then. and it said something to the effect of, you know, can't wait for this daft punk album because to me they are God. You know, and I knew exactly what Steve was talking about. He wasn't wrong. He wasn't wrong.

Because I remember there was everyone who was at Coachella. That's how it was announced at Coachella. They had like a giant billboard where they just played that two-minute snippet from the video, right? Where it's the silhouette of the four of them playing the song. And so I was getting text left and right. It was on the internet. It was being tweeted like you said. Yeah.

When I first heard the song itself, I had just put out a record. and I was thinking about my next music, and I was thinking in a similar vein, sort of 70s disco, California vibes. And I was like, God damn it, deaf punk beat me to it. And there's no chance in hell I'm going to compete with that. Not that there was any competition that could have been had. But what I think it's interesting about that is that I think that you have to remember in 2013, there is arguably no hotter music or sound than EDM. Right. EDM has completely taken over, you know, you could argue pop music.

It's, you know, it's the music of Las Vegas. Like, DJs are signing $14 million. I think Hakasan signed Dead Mouse to a $14 million deal. It's the sound of planet Earth in 2013. I mean, like Afrojack, Avici, everybody is making. Swedish House Mafia. Big dollars. Huge money. Huge rooms.

So much excess. And this is the moment that. the people who you can argue popularize this music. This electronic dance music, Dapunk, the granddaddies, they're coming back

with a new album and everybody's like, what is it gonna sound like? How do you go any bigger? And I totally get it too. We're gonna get into it on this episode, but I totally got it because in that moment,

I, like so many people were maybe exhausted hearing those similar sounds. So I was like, I don't want to make that. I was making dancey music. I was doing remixes. Again,

I'm not comparing myself the Deaf Punk, this is not my John Lennon Jesus moment, but I am saying that I understood the vibe that led them to make this very controversial decision after pioneering this sound to not do the sound anymore. They have a long, long history

of not doing what is expected of them and sort of going the other direction. And we're going to get into that. But this album is in some ways absolutely in keeping with their habit of saying, no, not going to do what what you want us or expect us to do.

And it has to be said, not doing what's expected of them goes all the way back to the very beginning of this group. It kind of goes to why you and I are so obsessed with two French guys in robot helmet's luxury. Give the one song, Nation, a brief biography of Tomah and Guillemont. So I'm going to take you back to Paris, France. This is the 1980s. A young gentleman called Thomas Bangalter meets another young gentleman named Guy Manuel de Omim Christo, who from... Nice job. Here to four.

Nice job. So many of us avoid. that full name. From this point in far, we're going to call him Gimon and Tomah. Tomah and Gimann meet. They form a band with Laurent Bronkowitz. Yes. Called Darling. You want to say something about this? Yes. Well, I think this is a very fascinating thing. So, okay, so Darling is named ironically,

well, not even ironically. It's named after a Beach Boy song called Darling. And Darling sounds like this. So they're California dreaming already. They were surf guys. They were trying to make surf. pop. And so that's the Beach Boys. Darling is only around for about six months. And they came up with a song called Cindy So Loud. That is the first song that Giaman and Tomah ever put out with their friend Laurent who goes on to be a founding member of the band Phoenix. That's right. Yeah. Two seminal

bands came out of this one. I really love that demo by the way because it gives us such like demo vibes of like a teenage band who send this with stars in their eyes to the melody. maker who calls it a daft punky thrash, which is the origins of the band's name in their second chapter. There's one more track I want to play from that same demo, because it actually has the seeds of what's about to happen next. This is Untitled 18. So I don't know if you recognize that, but do you recognize that? That's a sample. And that is, um, what is that? What is that SWAT? What is that? It's actually not the theme from SWAT, but I totally hear what you're hearing. Very similar kind of like urgency to it, but it's from

this. So they already got a Bowie sample. Early days, they're playing with sampling and samples. Yeah, what's cool is that that's the first song where you hear sampling coming into their repertoire. And that's where they're like, hey, we kind of like this better than this punk rock thing. And that's the direction they go down that path. This might have been their first foray into music, but music's kind of in their blood. Tell us about Tomah's dad.

Perfect timing to step back for a minute and talk about a sort of unsung third member of this band. That's been a theme recently. He's talking about the behind-the-scenes people that were big influences. So in this case, it's Daniel Vanguard, aka Daniel Bangalter, Thomas' dad, Tomaz Dad, who himself in the 70s was a fairly well-known French artist and producer and songwriter in the 70s. He wrote over 350 songs. His output, his catalog is incredible. It's very eclectic.

And he was experimenting with a lot of exotic rhythms and instruments and really cool eclectic catalog. Yeah. So Daniel Vanguard is making all these incredible songs in the early 70s in France. but his mind is blown after he's in a French club in a Parisian disco, and he hears this song for the first time. That is, obviously, Sheiks Le Freak, a little foreshadowing of another member who we're going to be talking about.

That's definitely never coming back into play. That's not going to come back to the story. Exactly. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. So a little foreshadowing of Nile Rogers is going on there, the guitar player and songwriter for the band Sheik. At this point, he changes his direction and goes, doubles down on disco. He becomes a huge disco fan, produces a whole bunch of,

great tracks, including a couple that I'll play for you now. This is the Gibson Brothers from 1979. This track is called Cuba, or Cuba. So he's making disco records. He's loving it. He's a huge disco fan. Like, he's a believer, like deep in his soul that it's music that brings people together. Disco Devotee. He's a disco devotee. That's right. That was the name of my first group. Oh, really? That's pretty great. I know. We should use that. We should definitely use that. It's definitely a song of nothing else. When Disco Demolition happens in Chicago, 1979, he's very upset by it. He goes, I felt crazy that people will say this will stop. It's a rhythm.

You can't stop people dancing to a rhythm. You can't stop the rhythm. So he wrote this song kind of as a tribute to like that disco will never die. Yeah. This is Adelon, D-I-S-C-O from 1979. I can't spell. Disco, D-I-S-C-O, you know, periods in between, like it's an acronym. Like it's an acronym.

My first exposure to DAP, real exposure to them was in the summer of, you know, of 2000, I was an intern at Virgin Records. And so we had a lot of really cool. Yeah. They came out with a collection of their music videos. And the collection was called a story of dogs, Android's, firemen, and tomatoes. So I thought that punk stood for dogs,

and droids, firemen, and tomatoes. What? I never made that connection. I blew your mind just now. By the way, one of the coolest things I own. This is a really rare shirt. I can say that we had a whole box of these Aversion records that, that, that. Oh, man, I'd love to find that box.

This is a Dapunk t-shirt. I have gone looking for it on eBay. That is expensive. I've seen it nowhere. It is the official Dapton, I want to get it right, Dapton direct tour, Dap Punk Live t-shirt. And you can see where they were playing in the summer and the, I guess it's like the summer of, it's all 97.

This is like from February to April 1997. But I went look. And if you're the fifth caller, this is yours. This is one-800. One song. Actually, that's a perfect one-down hitter. One-800 number. Last deviation.

1997, driving down the street. I see my friend Danny Passman from college. The Danny Passman. His dad is a famous. Is it Don Passman? Donald Passman. The guy who wrote the book on record. He literally wrote the book.

I know exactly. Everyone knows that book. So his son, Danny, was a college classmate of mine. and I was driving down at Sunset and I saw him on the side of the street I think it was outside the House of Blues or something I've been trying to find out where this location but I just know I saw him

and I was like Danny what are you standing in line for he's like oh we're going to go see Daapunk today you want to go and I was like I've heard of them nah I think I'll just keep driving and I did so that was the first time that I missed out because I could have seen Daft Punk live in Los Angeles in 1997 I digress no I love this I love the fact that too

this is a band that kind of generates that kind of, that moment of like where were you, when X kind of band? They were just cool from the beginning. I don't, I'll never forget the first time I heard it. I was working in New York City and a guy called Stuart Mattson, who's the head of planning at my ad agency, and he was the guy that was always like the cool hunter. Like, his

job at the agency was to know what was going on. What's the new cool shoe? What's the new cool, whatever? And he walked into my office and he put a CD in my machine. He's like, listen to this. And he played me homework. I never heard it before. He played it on CD. He played it on CD. And that moment is burned into my brain because that was my first exposure to one of my now, for these last 20, whatever years, favorite bands. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

More than 20 years? Oh, my God, 30 years. No, no, no, it's been 20. No, it's been 20. Okay, jeez-7. I had to do the mouth in my head. It's almost 30 years ago. It's been a while. But we both have 1997 memories of the first exposure. The first time you heard that name. Yeah, it was a catchy name. But let's hear some more about the dad. One more thing I want to play from you from, this is another

Daniel Vanguard, aka Tomah from Duff Punk's dad. Another one of his tracks. I think this is really interesting. He's in his disco phase. Check out this song. It's called Dancing Machine. So, first of all, sick track, right? That tune is so sick. That's a cool track. It's a cool track.

And you're basically hearing the two words Dancing Machine for the entire song, six minutes long. Repetition. Repetition. You know exactly where I'm going with this. I like it already. I feel like the dad's influence is not just in the disco.

It's also in the specific way the songs are written. And there's one more thing that he brings to the table for young Tomah is that his music industry experience ends pretty poorly. He has a bitter experience with the French music industry when he discovers that a lot of royalties were stolen from Jewish composers during the Nazi occupation of France. He goes down the path of fighting for the rights of their ancestors, for their intellectual property rights, for the money that was stolen from them. And the official report comes out and sort of denies anything was happening. In communities across Canada, hourly Amazon employees earn an average of over $24.50 an hour. Employees also have the opportunity

to grow their skills and their paycheck by enrolling in free skills training programs for in-demand fields like software development and information technology. Learn more at aboutamazon.ca. Anything ever happened. They never pay anybody. And after that, he is so disillusioned. This is one of a few steps that leads him to just completely abandon the music industry and his entire music career. In one fell swoop, he's like, this is it, I'm out. And that is something he takes to his young son and his friend who are starting.

a band saying do not let them mess with you oh that's cool he advises them he gets a thank you credit on their first record he advises them about hold on to control don't tell them what you're going to do only you can know artistically what your direction is going to be in life so that was a very valuable lesson if you know the story about that fuck that is definitely a fundamental through line of their whole career like you know they famously said to the label we get to decide what the cover art for homework is going to be You guys don't. All the control all the way down the line.

They were very early on in their career. They're like, we're not doing any more of these pictures. You know, like we don't want to take any pictures. Like, we're going to be, you know, completely in charge of our output. And we also don't want you to like, no offense to the night crawlers, which is like a seminal, you know, house group. But they're like, we're not the night crawlers. We don't want to see Dab Punk 2000 and we had nothing to do with it. You know, like they were very controlling of pretty much every.

bit of their process. Absolutely. And it's not like a prima donna thing where we're like arrogant. There's, I mean, I suppose there's a lot that goes into that. They actually care. I mean, and there's no small part of it feels to me at least, like having their father's experience clearly informed their confidence that this is the way to have a successful and sane career. I think that they saved. I think the dad is probably no small part, part of why they've treated their career completely different than the average. They were always completely hands on. And, you know, we're going to get into it. But like, they've turned down so much money. so many times.

Oh my God. So much money. So many times. Stardust was supposed to have an album. Yeah. And the labels. Millions of them. They were offered $3 million to record the Stardust album.

They were like, no, we did music sounds bad with you. We're done. We're good. We're not going to do that album. We are definitely going to talk about that song. That's a big, important song. So I'm going to walk us through the 90s with this group. So eventually they find out that, you know, with their friends, they have this love of

American Chicago House and Detroit Techno Music. and I want to say to anybody listening to this show, one of my favorite movies about music and definitely my favorite movie about DJing is a French film called Eden. Mia Hansen Love directed it.

I thought you're going to say that Zach Efron one. Oh gosh. I didn't think we are your friends. No, I actually have a friend who pops up in that one. I'm going to leave that one alone. But Eden, E-D-E-N, French film, 2014, I believe.

It is so good. It talks about the relationship of not just the DJ with the music, but the crowd with the music in such amazing, artistically sound ways that DaBunk licensed their music to it for the absolute lowest possible amount, which was $3,000.

They licensed their entire music to this movie for $3,000. And it's because they have this composite character, they have three characters in the movie. They have a composite character that represents sort of the people who they used to party with when they were teenagers and young adults.

And these two guys are supposed to be the members of dapp punk and then they go off and they become daft punk and this composite character just he rises to the high level of being the manager of the bar where they all met and then at one point they all come back to town they're like hey how you been he's like oh i'm you know i'm managing the bar but over the course of the movie you see how the music goes from you know that's sort of like them trying to sound like their heroes paul johnson and all those people who they name check on the song teachers to they go through the electro phase and the ed banger phase of music which, you know, to those who don't know, is like a sort of like I've heard it called

Stadium Anthemic Electronica, and all the way to, you know, roughly the movie was May 2014, about the time that Daft Punk comes out with this song. But I do want to walk you quickly through some of their early releases, because some of them don't sound like Daft Punk songs at all. This was the very first song that they ever came out with. This is a song, this is a single called The New Wave, and I'm just going to play a snippet. So you can see they start off with a really sort of, like hard, sort of dark techno sound, but it starts to take off and people start hearing some

of their songs. And defunc, defunc was the song that sort of broke them really big. Like the Chemical Brothers heard it. They worked it into their set. Richie Houghton heard it. He was like, this song is amazing. This is a time when like the BPM on music is like 127 to 130 BPM. That song clocks in at a cool, what, 116, 112, like it's a very slow song. Yeah. With defunc and music and other songs blowing up. They finally released their first album, which we said, they told the label, hey, we have to control every little bit of this album. And it comes out at a unique time in France, because this is around the time that there's a certain sound in French music, especially French dance music. Yeah, let's talk about it. French touch comes out of house music. Some of the early

pioneers, Cassius and Alan Brax, who we're going to talk about later on. It's RIP. That was such a tragic passing in 2019, right before his new album came out too. Yeah, Philippe Zadar passed away. Yeah. A great producer did Phoenix, among other things. But they pioneered this sort of interesting new version of house, or I would say builds on house music, which uses the 909 beats. Yeah.

And the tempos are often faster, but really the new innovations are the way looping is done starts to be like a little bit more repetitious. And more specifically, there's these DJ effects and actual, like, compression. Let's talk about the filter. We're going to talk about filters. We're going to talk about minimalism and repetition. All of this stuff finds its way into this very French version of the way house music is coming out. Yeah, I mean, like, I love French touch.

I mean, like, I will say that, like, it's got the house influences, obviously, but then there's also there's the filtered disco sound, taking like those disco songs. A lot of it specifically is the sound of a DJ using their DJ tools, which is EQ cuts and filter sweeps in the recorded music. As a DJ, I'm not above a good filtering moment. I think that's one of the big innovations of the genre, which makes it sort of next level, is it takes into account, like house music comes out and DJs play it. French Touch is kind of like, let's record a little bit of what we're doing in the clubs.

It's the same thing as when hip-hop songs have the, you know, no Kisha Cole on the Kishakol record. You know what I mean? Like where they got the b'b-b-b-b-b-be on the record. It's just using the DJ tools on the actual recording. Right. It's exactly what it is. And one great example of this. And by the way, we should note that at this point, both Gimann and Tomah have

their own record labels that they form. Yes. Gimand comes out with Cretemore. Bongaltor is Roulet. And I am going to state for the record, Roulet is one of my favorite. I know. Record labels of all freaking time.

Outrun. Outrun is one of my favorite songs. I often will say, oh, guys, we got to play this dat punk song called Outrun. I always forget that that's actually just Toma. Yeah. It does feel, well, it definitely feels like a dat punk song.

I consider the output. Can we play a second of Outrun? Please do. I consider the collective output of these labels, too, to be part of their catalog. It's fair enough. Here's a little bit of Outrun by Bang Altar, another really hard song, but just lovable. There's that filter.

That's like literally a DJ doing this. The Pioneer mixer. So it's a hard technology song, but like I'm telling you, when you play that song to this day, it goes hard. Right. And it's literally like a lot of what you're hearing and the effects are what are on a DJ on a DJ mixer. You'd be able to do that filter sweep or the sound kind of goes in and out. And that's a way of when you have. a loop that's going through the whole song,

it's a way to keep it interesting. Yeah. To keep it dynamic. And the French touch artists are like some of my favorite artists of all time. You have Etienne de Crecy, who is one of my favorite. He did the Super Discount albums for a little bit. Alex Gopher.

Oh, gosh, Alex Gopher. He has a song called, I think it's you and me. Like, I don't play any more. But like, to this day, if I can ever slip that into a set, I feel accomplished. Ian Pooley, I would throw in the mix there. And by the way, Ian Pooley's song, chord memory is one of the first songs that daft punk did a remix for and that song is it's sort of a

seminal French touch song here's a really brief second of chord memory by Ian Pooley so you hear that baseline you hear that repetition with the with the vocal I just want to say that it's funny hearing all of these songs out of the context of the club because on our show we're usually playing you know songs that are vocally driven for daft punk as producers and the sort of musical output aspect and how they formed their sounds. So much of it is about this repetition. It's about being in the club. It's about the bass. It's about the trance like, you know, if you're going till six in the morning, this is what it feels like. This is the vibe. And the repetition of it, this is one of the innovations, I would say, of French Touch is like you can extend a song for 10 minutes with one

sample and one beat with just kind of things coming and going. That's an accomplishment. Now, whenever you label any genre a name, big beat, French touch, garage rock, inevitably, there is going to be one track that is kind of recognized as the seminal track in the genre. And we agree. Tell us about Stardust. Oh my God. This is maybe our shared. This is,

I'm going to be controversial now. Might be my favorite daft punk song. Really? I know it's not technically a daft punk. Geemann is not on this. This is Tomah with Alan Brax, who we alluded to earlier. Yes.

Part of the French touch scene. And Benjamin Diamond. This is music sounds better. Oh, way, shout out to Alan Brax. I think he actually listens to the podcast. He's one of the seminal, you know, one of the really important French producers. Without further ado, music sounds better with you by Stardust.

I mean, it's repetitious, but you have to actually listen to it closely to know that like the music does change. Yeah. Like, and I notice you pick the place where like the chords. Yeah, it changes and it gets super like the phrase that pops of my head is like caramel and brown sugar. Oh, I love that. Yeah. Yeah. It's really sweet.

And you're like, ooh, that's nice. It's beautiful, maybe perfectly put, because I, Actually, the chords technically don't change. It's just the baseline. It's the baseline. And what's happening prior to that baseline change is there's this like tension. But wait, it's like major. It's like, doon, don't, don't, done.

Once again, public schools have failed me. I don't know how to speak in this language. But like, it shifts a little bit. And then you're like, oh, man, this is the part. It's been harmonized. The baseline is harmonizing with those chords to change how you feel. But I hear, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. dun dun dun dun dun dun but then it goes dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun you know what I mean

to me was like the first time I heard that I was like oh gosh this this music is potent this music is powerful you know like because I was still listening primarily to hip hop in 98 that was when like puffy and bad boy was starting to really take over so I was looking for some other music to listen to because I didn't like their form of sampling and then I heard this stuff which by the way there is a very prominent sample here. We both know what it is. It's a song called Fate. It's by Shaka Khan. And it goes like this. That's it. That's all they sampled. That was it. They just took that little, little, what is that? That's one bar. They took that one bar and flipped it into an international hit that is still revered and loved to this day. So, French Touch is, you know,

really inundating the airwaves. And our original members of Darling have gone in different direction. Darling. Laurent has found it the group Phoenix, which I think, you know, clearly wears its French touch sound on its sleeve, but it was very cool in the sense that it was more of an indie rock band with disco influences. And for those who don't know, Phoenix did a lot of great songs. The first song I ever heard from them, I was walking down the street in L.A. Melrose,

and I stopped in a record store, and I was back when, you know, you could pick out a record, cover look cool, put it on the record, you didn't know what it's going to sound like. And I'll never forget, I was at that Melrose record shop, and I heard this, and I immediately fell in love with Lauren's band. This is, if I feel better by Phoenix. I think I don't try to deny,

I better learn to accept that. There's things in my life I can't control. They say love and nothing but I saw. I don't even know what love is. So you can hear the disco influence in that a lot, and Phoenix obviously went on to a very long indie-inspired career. but at the same time,

Guillman and Tomah were working on what I consider a pure masterpiece of a record. Not only do we think that Discovery is just an outstanding album, it's so infectious,

it really does create this weird zone between pop and dance music where it's like, why was there ever aligned there? And it's a great second album. We've talked on the show in the past, if you can nail that second album, that usually cements something.

Like if you think about low-in theory, that was their second, you know, studio album. This is that punk's second for Tribecoquist. This is that punk's second studio album. And it really cements the idea of them as the robots. You know, they sort of move away from the French touch sound entirely and create something that sounds unique and distinctly robotic. And that's going to carry them for most of the rest of their career.

Yeah, this is where they invent and create this idea of them becoming robots. The joke of it for them was that there was an accident in the studio while they were making this record. And from this point forward, you never see them without their masks. Can I say something about the mask? First off, brilliant on their behalf. They don't have to show up at every show. In fact, there was a great story in that book you gave me that said that I think it was at Fabric. It was at one of the, maybe Heavenly Social, it was at one of the big British, you know, like venues.

And they basically, they didn't show up. Ironically, they left town early because they had to go record with Roman Anthony. they had to go record one more time. Glad they took off and recorded when they did. That was worthwhile. They didn't show up at the show. So they put two other DJs up there. It could be anybody.

Nobody knew what Daft Punk looked like. Brilliant. And they performed. I will say the first time I ever saw Daapunk live after missing them in 1997 was at Nicky Beach. This is back when the Winter Music Conference was like the big deal in dance music every year. Now we have Vegas.

Ibitha is still going strong. But back then, Winter Music Conference was a really big deal. And I remember that DaBunk was DJing on Nikki Beach and I went to see him and yeah, there were two guys. I'm pretty sure I actually saw them, the real guys. They were just spending records. You saw them in the flesh? On the beach, yeah. Just like curly-haired dude

and short dude? Exactly. As late as 2000, 2001, you can still go see DaBunk. They didn't have on the masks. But once they're really promoting discovery, the masks stay on. The robot masks are always there. They're always there. They really lock into the robot thing. They even make a movie in 2006 called Electroma,

which is really great. And interesting foreshadowing, it ends with a moment where they blow up their robot personas. 2006 is also the same year of the famous co-tellip pyramid. You had to bring up source subjects. That I had that you did not have. And I am sorry. But I wish I could share it with you. That's a friendly vibe.

Hopefully I'm giving off that I want you to have been there. To this day, I drag my wife out to things that she doesn't want to go to. And I think somewhere in the back of my mind, it's always that I fear that I'm going to miss out on the next historical moment. You might. I'll be like, hey, S.G. Lewis is playing at the shrine. We got to go. And she's like, can't we just watch it on YouTube? I'm like, yeah, and I can also watch the pyramid from 2006 on YouTube. It's not the same if you're not there.

Not the same if you're not there. No. They did make a record out of it, though. 2007's alive. And that is the end of their electronic music, I would argue. After this point, they are not making music with computers. That's crazy. They're still using Synth.

They're so using Vocoders. That carries over. Yeah. But this brings us to the next phase. And by the way, this is the moment where... Well, can I ask you one Coachella question? Yeah. I want to ask you one call it, Chele.

So you're there. Are you in the, are you towards the very front? Are you in the back? Are you in the middle? I am probably in the middle. I mean, that's a great question. I have to like, I have some. Can you see the bathrooms?

Can you escape to the bathroom if you need? My memory of being in that tent is just the like incredible like wush of excitement. Wait, it was in a tent? I thought it was outside. No, it was in the tent. It was in the whatever that tent is called. I can't remember names. I'm just trying to live through you, my man.

Yeah. My memory of it is that it was. just did you feel the history be made? Like did you feel it? Were you like, this is next level? I'll tell you one thing about the 2007 record. It does convey some of the energy.

When I listen back to it, it really does remind me. Yeah, live 2007. Like, even now I'm getting kind of chills. Yeah. Robot. Robot. That was, I'm getting chills now,

and I was in the room at the time. The excitement of that moment was the simplicity. of it was devastating. Like they had a pyramid. It's two guys you can't see their faces and their robots, but the magic of the music being familiar because these are tracks we all knew and loved going into it. The excitement that Daft Punk

I'd never seen them before, like there was a buzz about it. That was all, that was the energy of that moment. Can I just say real quick, just one last thing about Cochella. I had been at every Cochella since the very first one. 1999, Cochella was a one-day event and I drove

out to the desert by myself because I wanted to see the Chemical Brothers and Underworld. Beck was the headliner. Beck was the headliner, but I wanted to see the Chemical Brothers and Underworld. Two things happened. One, I realized that I loved, because I drove, I realized that I loved electronic music without any drugs, and I was completely sober.

I'm sure that everybody around me was completely messed up. In fact, one guy, I'm pretty sure was 100% messed up. But I was sober, and I loved Underworld. I thought that was a great show. I remember walking over to the Chemical Brothers, passing back and they were performing songs off of the album Surrender. And there's a song called Music Response on there. Oh, yeah.

It's similar vibe to it. And it's like music, response. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Music that triggers some kind of response. And I'll never forget when it was going music response, it was robots in black and white, cartoon robots on their big screen. And then when it went to music that triggers some type of response, when the beat came in, the robots,

they came alive in color. And I remember thinking, robots in color! And I was sober. But I was just like, this is insane. And so I feel like there's something about this music and humanity and robots where it's like, it's like the opposite of how I feel about AI sometimes. I feel like it's in some ways the perfect marriage of what makes us human with a little bit

of just spice and flavor of robots, you know, and just that and that. robotic voice. I think that's what Daupunk was playing with their whole career leading up to this pinnacle moment, literally, literally the pinnacle being at the tip of a pyramid at Coachella in 2006. Oh my God. Yes, at the peak literally. At the peak literally. And this maybe is the moment where they decided that the balance should go in the other direction. You make a great point because the song that we have been building up towards this entire time is get lucky. And it's on random access memories. An album that is unlike almost any Daft Punk album. live album, remix album, any other album.

This is an album that is so unlike them in some ways because it's made with organic instruments. We're going to talk about it. There's almost no sampling to talk about. It almost feels like an anti-dapunk album. So in 2008, they started working on their fourth record, Random Access Memories. And it's kind of interesting to think about the fact that they did, they were offered an opportunity to do the soundtrack to Tron. in 2010, which they did. And that seems to have made a pretty big impression on this record,

because it was after that, it really opened their mind about using actual instruments and, you know, moving away from this global dance revolution that they started. I think a combination of things happened where they had this experience or where they made music in a room with real violin players and real, you know, percussionists and real everything in the symphony orchestral setting. And between that and the fact that what they had been building for many years and pioneered, the EDM sound, as it were. They wanted nothing to do it. Yeah.

They created the sound. It was almost like French touch writ large, right? So they have a big hand in defining what French touch is and they want nothing to do with it. They want nothing to do with it. And then the EDM. What, the EDM version of it. Similarly, takes over in ways that French touch could have never imagined. I mean, like, when you've got the guys on the Jersey Shore,

prioritizing dance music over hip hop or rock and anything else, you'd fallout boy, like, no, dance music's on top of the world. Yeah. You guys, this is your music. Especially for the generation like ours that grew up, post-disco demolition, where especially in America, especially in America, there was an anti-dance music sentiment. It was hostile. It was hostile.

But now they have been, I would say, through one more time and songs like that, they've helped take over the world. And once again, they want nothing to do with it. So 2008, they start making their next record. They're inspired by, according to Billboard, their desire to make this album was a combination of They're working with live musicians on Tron, and also they just wanted live drums. They wanted to make a record that have a live drummer on it. So it takes two years to make, which is spread out over five years. It took them from 2008 to 2013 to make.

They're inspired by the classic 70s expensive albums, like Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon and Fleetwood Mac Rumors. They spent over a million dollars on this record. They like Todd Rungren, Hotel California, all that stuff. The big, famous records that sold millions of copies. were pristinely produced. Yeah. There's a lot of Steely Dan kind of approach to it.

You're bringing in session musicians. You're going expensive. You're getting a vintage feel with analog sound. This is actually interesting because for a long time, Daph Punk, especially in the beginning, they were like, we like to record at our house. They didn't like going to the studio. Right.

They say this. We like recording to the house. So, you know, like in that way, Daft Punk is like Migos, right? Migos recorded their first record in a closet. You know what I mean? Like a lot of people say, I'd like to record in my place.

They're ready for the next step. They're ready for not DIY. They're ready to spend money, go to other places, and not even touch the music. So much of their first three records are all produced, meaning they made everything. It's producer in the sense of the word, almost the hip-hop electronic sense,

as opposed to the Rick Rubin laying back and giving instructions. We're going to talk about that at the end of the episode about sampling, but yeah, go ahead. Yeah, so they're being, so up into this point, they've been very hands-on and direct. For the first time, they're coming up with ideas and pro-tools, but then they're saying,

hey guys, hey top-not session players here in, I think Henson Studios in L.A., do something like this, but run with it and see what you come up with. And they're essentially... I didn't know that. That's actually hilarious because Hinson Studios is like at the corner of LeBrand's sunset. It's got a big Kermit D. Frog out there. It's literally a block away from A&M Records old headquarters where, you know, Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss did their thing. So it's crazy that it comes from here. Yep, exactly. So they record these musicians,

playing their song ideas that come from just real bare bones putting together a chord change here, a beat there, a synth part there. The musicians play, they jam, they come up with ideas on their own, and this recorded material becomes the basis of what Daft Punk goes away with and comes up with final songs. I can't wait to hear these musicians, the improvisations. Don't go anywhere. Not just any musicians. We say, seriously, I know that was a lot of stuff for this show, but we are about to get

into Get Lucky. Don't go anywhere. Keep listening all night till the sun. Luxury, this has been an absolute joy. Help me in this thing. All right. Well, I'm producer, DJ, and songwriter, and I'm actor, writer, and happily robot DJ Dialla Riddle. And this has been one song. We will see you next week. Don't forget to give us five stars on your favorite podcast platform and leave us a nice review and tell all your friends. We'll see you next time. We'll see you next time. You can find us on Instagram at Diallo, DIA, LLO for me. And I'm at Luxury. L-U-X-X-U-R-Y.

And on TikTok, I'm at Dialla Riddell. And at TikTok, I'm at Luxury X-X. I like that you got both. Yeah. K-1 Song Nation, a reminder that this is the first part of a two-part special on Daft Punk. Next week, we'll be back with a deep dive on the song, Get Lucky. We'll be talking about how the song was made,

including the contributions from Nile Rogers and Farrell Williams. We'll also be talking through our favorite daft punk samples. That's right, Diallo. It's a really special episode. We're excited to share it. So tune in next week for part two, or part D, I should say.