A normal changeover time between two artists is around half an hour at Coachella. It was more than an hour and Daft Punk had still not taken their stage.
The Sahara Tent, which could hold up to 10,000 people, was rumored to have captured 40,000 lucky souls who waited for their robotic heroes to come live on stage. Just then, a few keys are pressed, a bass line is teased, Robot Rock starts playing, the Daft Punk Pyramid breathes life and the definition of experiencing a live electronic act is changed forever.
Seventeen years ago, the first Coachella took place and straight away set unmatchable standards & delivered some of the greatest music performances of all time. In anticipation of Coachella’s 17th anniversary, LA Weekly has put together their list of the top 20 Coachella sets of all time. It’s quite a task to rank legends amongst each other especially when you have to choose from the likes of Madonna, White Stripes, Roger Waters, Rage Against The Machine, Prince and more. Four electronic music performances made it to the list with Daft Punk topping it and LCD Soundsystem, Underworld, and The Chemical Brothers being the other three. You can watch the video below and checkout what LA Weekly had to say about Daft Punk.
“Whether into electronic music or not, Coachella-goers who missed this set are still kicking themselves. Moving way beyond the standard laser-packed, confetti-blasting DJ set at the Sahara tent, Daft Punk’s 2006 Coachella performance was the industry-wide wake-up call that established the current state of EDM as the most innovative and progressive musical movement in the United States today.
As night fell, a massive crowd — rumored to be as many as 40,000 — swarmed the overflowing Sahara tent. A thick sense of mystery filled the nighttime air, as nobody knew what to expect from the elusive French robots, Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter. Then, out of nowhere, it appeared: a mammoth LED pyramid, towering over thousands of soon-to-be-converted lifelong fans.
Nobody had seen this amount of LED; nobody had experienced this level of evolved production. As soon as the call of the distorted robot voice blasted through the speaker walls, there was no looking back. Leaning exclusively on their original material, Daft Punk’s set consisted of never-before-heard, on-the-fly edits and remixes, creating new, mutated songs cut out of their classics and deeper tracks. The music alone challenged the status quo at the time of a DJ culture heavily reliant on playing other artists’ works.
This was the paradigm shift that finally placed electronic music as a worthy competitor against its big brothers, rock and rap. After Daft Punk, every active artist within electronic music — and arguably even beyond it — had to rethink their approach to live performance.
Anyone holding their breath for the return of the pyramid should give up all hope. Daft Punk are not ones to repeat themselves, and this performance is one that could never be recreated.”
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