I remember the electric atmosphere in the auditorium going to see the film the Epilogue video is taken from, Electroma [1], on screen. It was only playing in a single cinema in the world in Paris and only at midgnight. So glad I got to catch that.
I am kind of glad to hear that Daft Pank is over and I say this as someone who their music means a lot to. The arc of their art is complete and there is nowhere left for them to go without it becoming forced, awkward or irrelevant: teenagers with attitude and samplers to elder statesmen recording with an orchestra.
As this is HN, does anyone remember their more interesting dives into technology: Daft Club [2] and the multi-angle DVD of D.A.F.T. [3]?
This quote [4] about Daft Club, and the state of music on the internet, from 2001 is really interesting in hindsight:
> It's great to find a new channel where there is an open access, open door to more, but not more than had to be done before. It's establishing a connection between people that listen to our music and ourselves. There's no limits of time, and it helps people get and listen to this music. A track that could have been done today can be online tomorrow. The other thing is to really express ourselves through the Internet.
> ...
> Napster is a cool thing with us. The important thing is to make a difference. Napster is a positive thing because it raises questions, it raises issues.
I was a Daft Club member!
I remember being made fun of when I was like 15 listening to Human After All, and people just not getting it.
Daft Punk was the soundtrack to my hacker youth. I’m forever grateful and wish them the best in their retirement.
Daft Punk is what united my high school anime nerds with the “obscure” music nerds. What a lovely little merger we made. This would have been 1999 or so.
I always thought Daft Punk figured out the perfect solution to the how to be famous problem. Everyone recognizes their artist name and their artist costume, but virtually no one knows their real name or would accost them on the street.
I saw Don Schlitz[0] perform "The Gambler" at The Grand Ole Opry[1] last year (juuust before Covid). He said something like "Yeah, Kenny Rogers did well with this song, but I can still go to the grocery store without being recognized, and I still get paid when they play it" (or something to that effect). Funny guy, and a great singer too.
This essay [0] from Tim Ferriss really crystalized for me a lot about why fame is a drag.
During my college years, one of my dorm mate’s dads was a famous Hollywood producer. He once said to me, “You want everyone to know your name and no one to know your face.”
Taking it a step further, we could quote Bill Murray:
I always want to say to people who want to be rich and famous: ‘try being rich first.’ See if that doesn’t cover most of it.
I like that Bill Murray quote. But here's a Jim Carrey semi-rebuttal (I read it as mostly talking about the rich part):
“I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it's not the answer.”
Getting rich would absolutely be the answer to a lot of my current problems. Sure not every problem, but even for those problems it sure would help.
I'd have more control over my time (no need to work a day job I don't feel passionate about). I have issues with making doctors appointments and things because I still feel kind of awkward taking the day off, if I were rich that would also not be a problem because once you have fuck you money you can absolutely take the day off to go to the dentist.
I'd have more of an ability to set my own schedule meaning I could more readily do things like go learn a martial art or participate in hobby groups.
Like sure I don't think it would solve anything but it seems very much like an out of touch ultra rich thing to say. I don't think most people think being rich would make their lives perfect, just a lot fucking better than they are currently.
It's a great take from Tim and seems to ring very true. I just don't think people really think about what fame means. It's got huge tradeoffs and its mostly not fun but rather scary and unnerving. Eric Weinstein also seemed to run into this fairly quickly and has now stopped making his podcast because the fame part is mostly toxic.
I'm so grateful there are people with the courage to stand up and say unpopular things. Weinstein is a human whose outspokenness I've been particularly grateful for.
I loved Jackass. I genuinely think it was a great show, and I think some of the cast were brilliant.
To say some of the cast members had issues though is an understatement.
Also to the GP - trying getting famous by being stupid. I'd say it's harder than getting famous by being smart. Instead of competing with a handful of geniuses you're competing with a world of morons.
Saw a podcast by the guy who played Lex Luthor on Smallville. He pretty much admitted to being a Narcissist who is addicted to attention. Good that he has self-awareness but many seek fame and attention without really understanding why they're doing it. Had a friend like that who was an otherwise wonderful person but her need for attention culminated in her being arrested for faking an attack on herself while hiking. It's a difficult need to control without awareness.
I guess it depends how rich you aspire to be. If you have a a million social media followers, it's trivial to cash in on that attention to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
I don't believe those numbers (the site it comes from has interest in telling people that influencer marketing is worth much, so grain of salt.). But anyway, even if they would be true today, they won't hold tomororow because everyone gets more followers but not more attention. Also, it's a "winner takes all" market like all media. Still, if you're famous today I bet it's easier than ever to make at least SOME money out of it due to social media and the ability to cut off a lot of middle man.
You have to repeat that once a month to break into the middle class, assuming you have to pay for all your own healthcare, retirement, insurance, etc... What a dismal existence.
You mean once a month you have to make some social media posts? You conside that a "dismal existence". I know it's almost a cliche to point out HN users being out of touch with normal people, but have you ever had a real job that didn't involve sitting in a climate controlled office typing on a computer?
Despite the low effort though, being entirely reliant on online fame isn't exactly something with a lot of longevity built into it. Having 1MM followers this year is nowhere near a guarantee of growing or even keeping your follower base the next year.
$100K doesn't seem like a particularly amazing payoff for that. Most "real jobs" tend to become more stable and lucrative as you gain experience. I'd definitely prefer a job that paid $50K that I could at least somewhat rely on to exist next year over $100K that could disappear at any second.
You might be surprised how little of a “disguise” can make you unrecognizable. Shakira took a history class at UCLA and just by not wearing makeup and using her legal name Isabel, nobody recognized her (or if they did, they didn’t say anything). The “Shakira” you see on TV is such an artificial construction that someone seeing her without any of the artifice has no idea it’s “her.”
Agree. David Bowie once demonstrated it to a reporter. They walked together through Manhattan. No one bothered them. Bowie then said he was going to “turn it on”. Something in his expression slightly changed. And then he was mobbed by fans.
You're probably right. If I'm remembering the article correctly, he would just put a bland hard face on. Wear boring & ordinary clothing. No one would pay him any attention.
The article I'm remembering was linked as part of an obit right after Bowie's death. I wish I could find it, but I'm apparently not coming up with the right phrase for Google.
I wouldn't be surprised if this is a common trait of celebrities. Wear a mask, literally or figuratively, on stage or camera. Take the mask off and you're just an ordinary person that no one else will notice.
Bowie talked about that mask here, and how he used it to face his fears:
What a beautiful story. Bowie's invisible mask reminds me of the 'glamour' that fey creatures were imagined to have in the old stories. Puts the term 'glam rock' into new perspective for sure...
I’m sure when Bowie acted like the famous person, it subconsciously cued other people to treat him like a famous person. Act like a private person and most people will treat you like one. I’m not saying that this is a universal constant, or even the dominant explanation for what Bowie demonstrated, but there’s definitely something to it.
My local neighbourhood has its fair share of nationally known famous faces. I’ve never once seen any of them treated like a celebrity because they don’t act like one.
I think a bit of that is you don't expect to see someone famous just walking down the street. On more than on occasion I've passed someone and went "Was that.... naw, couldn't be" then found out later that yes, it really was that person.
The corollary to the S.E.P. field in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (SEP - Somebody Else's Problem Field - loved the concept for the ultimate invisibility cloak)
> I think a bit of that is you don't expect to see someone famous just walking down the street.
Even if you somewhat it, you don't really expect it.
One early morning at tourist area (where I'd already seen a few celebrities), my friend and I are playing Daytona USA and this sunglass-wearing dude comes down and sits next to us to play. He looks vaguely familiar, but I guessed I had just seen him there before — there were a lot of regulars at this arcade. I'm bragging, but not exaggerating, when I say we were world-competitive at this game. This guy was good, but we destroyed him.
After the race, the guy got up, smiled at both of us, said nothing, and left. My friend and I talked a bit about the race — a sort of post-race analysis we often did to see if there was anything new we could learn — and during that process it sort of dawned on us that we had just played against a NASCAR driver.
I think a bit of that is you don't expect to see someone famous just walking down the street.
This reminds me of a celebrity encounter I had once. I walked into a Gold's Gym in Raleigh, and saw a guy doing triceps press-downs on the machine right by the path to the locker room. I had to walk past to get to the locker room and as I approached I realized I was looking at Arn Anderson (professional wrestler).
I was a bit shocked and as I walked by him I did a double take and blurted out something stupid like "Tell me you're not Arn Anderson!?!" Of course he dead-panned the whole thing and just looked at me and said "I'm not Arn Anderson". By this point I realized it was absolutely him, but I was too awe struck to think of anything intelligent to say, so I just kept walking.
Probably about as stupid as I've ever come off in public in my life. :-(
The conclusion of the story though, is that he wound up in the locker room while I was still getting ready for my workout and I got a chance to chat with him for a while. We talked about the "good ole days" of Crockett Promotions / WCW and the 4 Horsemen, etc., etc. He seemed like a nice guy. I just regret forgetting to ask for an autograph.
It turns out, that gym is (well, was... it's closed now) close to the arena in Raleigh where the WWE shows take place, and it used to be common-place for professional wrestlers to stop in when they were in town for shows. That just happened to be the first time I personally met any of them.
I saw Mr.T at a networking conference in the late 90s posing for pictures for attendees. He was a hero of mine as a kid. I was star struck and couldn't think of anything to say, but I did get a picture. He was in a variation of his A-Team outfit.
I also saw Ed McMahon in an elevator a few months later at my shared office space. Something to the effect of, "Going up?" and I replied, "No down, thanks." Totally normal average Joe encounter.
I got to sit next to Jamie and Adam on a plane from Phoenix to Atlanta once, everyone totally knew who they were because they were wearing their stage clothes and everyone kept bugging them (and by extension, me). They were understandably annoyed the whole time. I suspect if they had taken a minor effort to not look like their TV roles there'd have been far fewer people that recognized them.
I worked at a Best Buy which was the most easily-accessible location to residents of one of the most affluent majority-black counties in the country (that is to say, most of the county is not particularly affluent, but that it attracts a small proportion of extremely well-off individuals and families who want to be near DC and aren't spooked by the demographics). We apparently had several celebrities come through the store - some that I even directly interacted with or sold products to - but 99% of the time, I didn't even know they were famous until after they'd left (it happened enough that I developed a reputation for overattention to customer service, to the detriment of my ability to be aware and suitably star-struck).These included:
> A famous actress, who was just the warmest person ever
> Several rappers
> Several championship-winning athletes
> Michael Steele, who was apparently a Geek Squad regular
My favorite was probably the gentleman who I believe had been on the Cosby Show: he came in twice, both times to drop 5 figures on TVs. Dude singlehandedly saved my job.
I was in the shop the other day and I had a small ice block related interaction with a little kid. Then her mum turned to speak to me and it was one of the Orange is the New Black actors. Which surprised me quite a bit - even though I knew she was a regular at the shop. I wonder if she'd clocked that I recognised her. I think I hid it well though.
> I think a bit of that is you don't expect to see someone famous just walking down the street
I remember seeing the French ex-president in a retirement home (he was visiting his father) and I was thinking 'nah, can't be him, what would he do here' until I got confirmation from the people I was with that it was in fact him.
I’ll never forget learning that Sinead O'Connor had been recording in my hometown. Must have walked by her a dozen times and although I felt a “vibe” off her, I never pieced it together.
Peter Gabriel chilled out in Rochester NY (my home town) for a while. In an interview he mentioned that it was nice to be anonymous. Not sure what that says about my home town that nobody recognized him ;)
A lot of it is context as well… you see this in videos of world class violinists busking in the NY subway and everyone just goes along on their way and doesn’t stop for a minute to listen.
Celebrities on campus is likely also a much more normal thing at UCLA, USC and in LA in general.
Facial recognition is being banned for law enforcement use not because it doesn't work, or is ineffective, or is undesirable, but because it reveals politically uncomfortable truths about who commits crime that existing crime stats were already pointing out in a less visceral way.
LOL. And reveals uncomfortable truths about what the law has defined as a “crime,” where killing one person in a $100 drug transaction gets you life without parole, while fraudulently marketing OxyContin as non-addictive while knowing it is addictive, thus creating the opioid epidemic that has killed 500,000 people to date, and hiring McKinsey to solve your “my drug is killing people” problem gets you a $3 million fine.
What if I told you that both things are bad, and that I want the perpetrators of both crimes to face proportionate punishment? There's no reason for one's critique to fall victim to a false dichotomy here, even if the American political environment tries to do that. Maybe it helps that I'm not American....
Killing one person in any kind of failed transaction is a bad enough offense that I believe you deserve at least a decade in jail. That said, I do believe in rehabiliatory justice, and that we shouldn't just throw people into an environment that's essentially some cross between a dysfunctional highschool and a networking seminar for criminals; but people who are willing to kill over $100 do not belong in public until they have proven conclusively that they have enough self control to be released.
The opiate epidemic, on the other hand, is a crime so heinous that it is nearly genocide-tier in nature. The perpetrators of such (i.e. the Sacklers among others) knew what they were doing, continually doubled down over time, and profited tremendously. Such parenthetical elites usually suffer absolutely zero punishment for their actions, nor is there any attempt to make rehabiliatory justics take on the challenge of so-called "white collar crime". At best, the perp learns how to hide their intentions and actions more, how to operate behind more intermediaries for abstraction's sake, etc.
Now, consider the topic at hand (which is somehow facial recog and not Daft Punk whom I loved dearly): what is the common factor here? It's simple: if you perform an analysis of the group memberships of the people who commit crimes in the aggregate, uncomfortable truths are revealed.
Without links ready, and not being the OP, I have seen many articles saying that "this ML recognition/analysis system has racial bias because the targets it finds are more {insert trait} than average." It struck me how such an unscientific thing made it to so many articles. It's a symptom of a cause that a specific group has greater representation in something, e.g. crime. You can't call factual observations, racist. You should rather find the root cause and solve it.
Well the “factual” observation comes from training data, which unless created in an unbiased manner creates a biased dataset and biased inferences. Unless you believe that American law enforcement is an unbiased process, in which case I don’t think I can help you.
> You can't call factual observations, racist. You should rather find the root cause and solve it.
People already know the root cause, and it is overpolicing and discretionary enforcement of crimes like drug possession.
The broken-windows policy has been disproven, despite disproportionately impacting "the specific groups" (black Americans) that now pollute the dataset that ML uses.
And even in the concept or drug possession and drug consumption, all groups have been shown to use them in the same distribution. For example. These kinds of things start a cycle that means the second and third minor infractions cause greater consequences in court, which further reduce opportunities that lead to the dangerous crimes being committed.
So we already know the dataset is polluted.
Pointing to the top of the iceberg and saying "well they commit the crimes no need to spend any energy on this mystery why don't we all just admit they're the problem" is a complete deflection promulgated intentionally and you should really check your peer group and media sources if this is the extent of the comfortable worldview you (or anyone passing by) have, the problem and solution is already known.
The solutions are being implemented in a patchwork and slowly, which is not incorporated in datasets that ML use, largely due to apathy and lack of awareness of engineers and the management of the tech companies involved, and lack of representation of the affected groups in engineering and management of tech companies.
> People already know the root cause, and it is overpolicing and discretionary enforcement of crimes like drug possession.
No, you've only pushed the root cause back a step by doing this. It's entirely possible to understand that the way we're doing policing is wrong without resorting to an artificial, borderline-creationist mindset on aggregate group behaviour. Religious thinking is not going to help anything here.
> So we already know the dataset is polluted.
The dataset reflects something approaching reality. If anything, it reflects a version of reality that is already attempting to artificially compensate for group differences in order to quell conflict.
If you want to change reality, if you want to see less crime, if you want to see truly fair policing, then admitting to reality is an important first step. You're basically arguing for "juking the stats" in order to find fairness, when in reality such actions won't stop people from getting robbed, murdered, or having lives that offer so few opportunities for advancement that they end up turning to hard drugs to cope. ML is not to solve this problem either way, but it can actively prevent the problem from being solved if it becomes yet another mechanism to paper over the actual situation and instead point the finger for responsibility away from where it belongs: with individuals and their choices.
Unfortunately, I have learned that there's no value in doing so, since anyone who has managed to be willfully ignorant of the obvious conclusions here that have been consistent for decades will not be convinced by anything I link to; instead, typically "shoot the messenger" techniques come into place. Anything 'bad' that anyone I link to has ever said will poison the well for any factual claims they make, etc.
It's a shame it has to be like this. There's plenty of valid statistical / demographic information out there that lines up perfectly with everyone's lived experience, but the conclusions drawn from it are not pretty. All I can say is that it is possible to make inferences without making value judgements; we can point at problems without having evil intentions and without suggesting tyrannical interventions.
I think that's part of the Kraftwerk play book that Daft Punk have previously acknowledged.
Obviously Kraftwerk's robots look like them to a certain degree, so Daft Punk have taken the on stage anonymity further but the anti-pop star thing is pure Kraftwerk.
There was famously only one way to contact Kraftwerk, via a phone at their studio with ringer mechanism removed.
If you had the number, only given out by their lawyer, you rang a preset time of day when the handset would be lifted... if you were lucky.
Several other musicians have done the same through mask wearing. Gene Simmons of Kiss was probably rarely recognized in public before, much later in life, he started appearing in television programs without his makeup.
DOOM (all caps when you spell the name) even had other people play sets for him because the mask worked so well (according to rumor and REALLY convincing video w/audio)
I'm having trouble finding the article now, but he said that later in his life he had lost quite a bit of weight so when he did do his performances himself, people didn't believe it was him and got mad.
I wonder if this is a 2021 view of Gorillaz possibly being more famous than Blur at this point. Though, for sure there were plenty of contemporary Gorlillaz fans who didn't know anything about Blur.
Not necessarily. I got into Gorillaz when “Clint Eastwood” was popular here in the US. Had never heard of Blur. Didn’t even learn about Blur until years and years and years later, when I realized Damon Albarn had done something before Gorillaz and looked them up.
Not everyone who wears mask ends up sticking with the anonymity though, I can imagine the pull of fame can be irresistible for some. Deadmau5 for example. Others have managed staying hidden just by not appearing anywhere, like Burial.
It was Dark Souls 2 but yeah, it was kinda hilarious, since it was basically the first time we ever heard directly from him or got an "official" selfie in almost a decade of him making music, and it was just to say "I'm not sure if I will have many new tunes for a while because I need to play that game a lot", even though he already had the reputation of not putting anything out for long stretches of time. It was so bizarre.
For reference, it's the guy in the black hoodie on the right side for the first third or so. Also his song plays at around 6m in, and you can see him rolling a join a bit later, hah.
He is pretty "famous" in the underground dubstep scene (and by dubstep, I mean the original UK 2-step music, not whatever it became in the 2010's. He's always been enigmatic and hidden until that one post out of nowhere, releasing music through his friend/record company Hyberdub.
Honestly I can't fathom her solo career, the zero seven era was so brilliant. I'm happy she gets some wide recognition, wealth and comfort, but musically she is off now. Her gamut is trimmed it's all loud and no subtlety.
Neil Peart of Rush went on a 50,000 mile motorcycle trip up and down North and South America and he said he wasn’t flagged down a single time.
I suspect it has more to do with the fact that when he wasn’t actually being (arguably) the worlds best drummer, he wasn’t in people’s face and making himself known. Running into a random dude on a motorcycle in Wyoming, or sitting in the corner of a coffee shop reading a book, most people would never think “Rockstar”.
Of course Gene Simmons, Mick Jagger or even Geddy Lee all have very distinctive faces so they are kind of screwed in that regards.
Sure, but Daft Punk is almost a household name. Even people that don't listen to their music probably know the name and the helmet. Their personal names are mostly just known to fans.
Based on what I know about Jerry Seinfeld, he seems pretty good at setting hard boundaries for himself. It seems he's uninterested in pleasantries and burdens that come associated with fame, and has, maybe uniquely, been able to avoid being foisted into situations beyond his control.
I would assert that being famous is a skill that not all famous people develop, thus the disparity between those who shun fame and those who don't think it's a problem.
Fame is probably great for people who really have their shit together and are confident in themselves, like Jerry Seinfeld. For people who don't have their shit together, it can magnify and provoke even your most minor weaknesses. If you aren't confident in yourself, you can end up maladjusted, surrounded by the distortion field of fame. Elon Musk would probably have continued to be a cooky, but fairly level headed dude. But now he's richer than Bezos and the power has corrupted him. Who's to tell you what's wrong when you make exponentially more money than even the 1%?
I like Jerry Seinfeld, but he (or at least the persona he plays in public) has this habit of being unable to put himself in other's shoes.
I think it depends on your personality. It probably suits some people much better than others. An example is Kurt Cobain who hated being famous and felt trapped by it.
It is really quite common for musicians to have such stage names and stage personæ.
What I find rather interesting is that if one search for Mafumafu's face, what one obtains is his virtual avatar, a nonexistent character by which he repræsents himself in most instances, and one has to add keywords such as “real” to see his actual face, — which is all the more interesting since he's actually quite beautiful and clearly puts quite a bit of effort into his appearance.
My favorites are, of course, the black meal artists who only go on stage in theatrical makeup under stage aliases such as “Necrobutcher” and “Zhaaral”, whose real names and even genders are often unknown behind the makeup.
Missing from this is 1) They are not handsome guys and that is a real factor (you don't have to be pretty, but it's hard to to be ugly) and 2) They are way to old looking to have inspired their most recent hits. Kids won't go for that.
I know this is some very hardcore marketing realpolitik but this is it.
Sia covers her face because she's not pretty, not because 'it's art'.
Adele's albums are closeups of her face not anything else, because she's attractive there, that said, she always wore herself well enough it didn't matter that much.
One of the few 'not good looking' is Ed Sheeran, but he's at least young, he's not going age well in front of the camera, it may not matter that much.
Google 'famous singers' and they are all quite attractive. Shawn Mendez and Justing Bieber are both one in at least 10 000 attractive. The ladies it's much harder to tell because of their makeup.
What would have made this much more interesting is if Daft Punk decided to actually 'replace themselves' and just let others take on the helmets. If they really wanted to milk it they could have gone for 'multiple versions' i.e. a standing show in Vegas, NY and Duabi or something with stand-ins. That's completely selling out but hey. There are possibly some legit ways to do that, like actually getting extremely talented producers and artists into the masks for a while to help kick of their career. They could make some really nice PR out of a culty thing like that.
Totally agree. Never understood why people would like that other type of fame when you cannot walk anywhere without drawing a crowd. At some point the only people you can truly hang out with are other extremely famous people.
I recently found this video of Billy Gibbons performing in the street in Helsinki without anyone noticing. I like that he becomes less recognizable when not wearing sunglasses.
It works well if your act allows you to get away with it (fellow Frenchman Danger also has a headpiece). I don't think anyone really knows any of the members of Ghost aside from the main guy.
Best Daft Punk show I ever saw was Lollapalooza with LCD Soundsystem opening on the nearby stage. LCD Soundsytem closed with “Daft Punk is Playing..” and Daft Punk emerged in a pyramid and absolutely melted our faces.
I went to a Phoenix show at Madison Square Garden last-minute with a friend in 2011. After Phoenix played a 3 song encore, the stage went dark and then a DJ booth lit up in the back, way above the stage, and Daft Punk walked out and they did an ~8 minute remix/mashup of Harder Better Faster and Phoenix's 1901. One of my favorite concert memories ever.
I was working at a startup on 7th ave and 30th st at the time. Big fan of Phoenix and Daft Punk. Found out the next day I was merely hundreds of feet away from that beautiful surprise.
I'd argue that it's one of the best live albums of all time.
These songs transcend what I'd consider mashups, it's like they treated all of their olds songs as samples, rebuilding entirely new songs out of them. It took some of the more obscure songs and made them "whole"; take Steam Machine, which in of itself wasn't that great of a song...a bit boring if you will. Combined with Too Long and it's now a song full of energy and tempo.
There are many others like it. What they mostly have in common is taking the best ingredients from the fringy Human After All and the glitzy Discovery, finding a very interesting common ground.
I happened to catch them both in Madrid (Summercase) and Miami (Bang) in 2006.
It's not often I'd travel to watch the "same" show twice. That was a nuts setlist and show period.
Especially since my going to Madrid was via hearing about it from a hotel concierge and "Hey dad, I know we're here for your business, but can I go to this music festival, across a city neither of us know, that speaks a language I can maybe passably bang out?"
Totally agree. There are two or three distinct shouts from someone in the audience at the beginning of Around the World / Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger that are now part of my experience of listening to it. The audience is absolutely part of the energy of the album.
It was amazing to see them live. Caught the London show. Here's my video from the night: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLA7L60sCr0 (the shaky blurry videocamera footage ages it).
It is now, but wasn't originally. It was a touring show the first half dozen years until it went on hiatus. When it was revived in the (mid?) 2000s, it became a solo Chicago event.
It's touring again. At least outside of the US. I was at the one in Stockholm, Sweden two years ago. It was supposed to come back last year, but you know...
Wow. You must be really young, or from a sheltered lifestyle. I remember skipping school to attend the first couple of shows, and then continued in college. Seems to my memory that the 'palooza festivals re-energized the whole music festival concept, as there were many more annual festivals that came through town after. I still have the t-shirts that I can't wear, but refuse to throw out.
I don't live anywhere near Glastonbury, but I'm fully aware that it is a real event. I'm at least in the same country as Miami, but have never attended the WMC, or the Grammys, or iHate Radio events in Vegas. I was a wee lad when Farm Aid occurred, but I was aware that it was more than a reference in an animated TV show. I've also been able to read music 'zines and websites without being geographically near any of them.
So yeah, sheltered or at the least, thoroughly uninterested in music as anything more than just something in the background. Willing to admit, I have a much more intense interest in music, so I do read/listen to things that would be considered history to something compared to anything performed before Taylor Swift.
How so? Having never experienced things outside of your "comfort zone" or your upbringing seems like the culturally accepted definition of sheltered. Whether that was overbearing parents never allowing you to listen to music other than prescribed by religious beliefs or parental personal preference or just one's own personal preference all seems like sheltered to me. Being culturally unaware of events that occurred outside one's personal experience might be stretching sheltered a bit, but maybe it's the more polite term. People unaware of what came before yet was very influential of what's occurring now also seems to me to work with sheltered. Whether that's in music/film/any form of art, or even political/cultural/programming/etc.
Willing to stipulate a bias in that I'm a dork that always wants to know the how/when/where/why/who of anything in which I get involved.
Different people are into different things. Some people are really into music and know all about many music festivals around the world. Others are into board games and know about board game conventions. Others are into e-sports and know about all the tournaments to go to. Others know everything about a sport or sports league.
Not being well-versed in the others isn't necessarily being sheltered, but a consequence of having a limited set of interests.
All this to say it’s somehow necessary to know about the palooza to not be sheltered? Why would the bar for comfort zone be going to popular events of a specific niche?
There’s many influential things that won’t matter to individuals. It’s not possible to know about all influential things any way.
The only way to even perform about bigger paloozas is to be a big name. Being a big name doesn’t mean influential. Someone could be very into specific influential music that doesn’t overlap with palooza events.
I’m sure any one who’s geeky into pop media like music, film, tv, can look at your history and call you sheltered under your constraints. Meaning everyone is sheltered to some others based off your meaning of sheltered.
Those Somalian kids that might not know (gasp!) about Lollapalooza sure are sheltered then.
If only they had the courage to get out of their comfort zone of war and poverty, and just witness a mediocre first-world yuppie music festival, then they would realize how relevant Ariane Grande is to their human condition! "Can you stay up all night", Burhan? "F* me till the daylight. Thirty four, thirty five", Burhan. Come on.
Or those 6 billion non-English speakers, who don't have the common decency to just learn English and our culture! From however those countries are called.
It's all that sheltering! And we are being polite here, by stretching the word "sheltered", and not calling them out for so stupidly not conforming to our anglo-saxon-centric world view!
As Homerpalooza taught us, music festivals are terrible, and are all about big companies turning rebellion into money, so who cares if someone doesn't know the names of them.
And with the added advantage that as they are electric they'd sound as good in the future as they did in the past. You wouldn't even know if it wasn't them under the masks.
The counter point being that I saw Velvet Underground live and they sucked badly :D
I saw Guns’n’Roses at a festival in 2012 and ho boy did Axl Rose not age well. The Slash impersonator was kinda odd too – obviously great guitarist in his own right, all he needed was to own the fact he’s not Slash.
The Pumpkins were my absolute favorite band in the heyday of 90s alt rock/grunge. I saw them once in St. Paul during their Adore tour, and it was amazing. But something about their music just didn't seem to age well with me - which very well may have been my tastes changing versus the band. I don't know. Machina didn't click, and I never really got into Zeitgeist or Oceania. I did buy Rotten Apples and enjoyed it immensely, but it was their older music.
Whenever I watch one of their music videos on YouTube, it's very bittersweet. I still love their older work - MCIS and Adore are absolutely wonderful. But it's the universal story of losing your adolescence.
I didn't really get into Daft Punk until the early 2000s, so my context was very different. I'm still sad to see this breakup, but I guess I don't feel it the same as SP. Funny, that.
I guess it's another example of "when you got into a band" as seen throughout this thread. Saw them at my first "big" concert at Lollapalooza 1994. 17 years old and it was the coolest crap I'd ever seen.
Gish is awesome and Siamese Dream will always hold a special place in my heart, but I always felt like Mellon Collie was the start of Corgan's long, slow descent into self-indulgence. If Siamese Dream was their Appetite for Destruction, Mellon Collie was Use Your Illusion (two parter at that!) I guess you could do worse, though since both are solid.
And I guess Lies would be analogous to that album with the Stevie Nicks cover.
Yep, very similar experience here. I find listening to music from that time period just makes me melancholy (err...no pun intended), so I mostly avoid it now. I'm not sure if this is because it brings me back to that time, or if it's the general mood of the music itself...probably both. I guess it makes sense that the music of a given time would reflect the general mood of the people coming of age at that time.
I don't know where else to go with that thought...ah whatever. ;)
Smashing Pumpkins were the best in the early nineties. Gish and especially Siamese Dream are great albums. I saw them at some festivals around then. Amazing.
I still get chills when I hear the guitar intro on some of the tracks from those albums.
I saw them during some of their later tours and though they were great gigs, I think I had drifted away from their music and in fact the whole scene. I was getting into electronic music in the late 90s.
What was the issue? Was it the length of the show, the aura of Billy Corgan (and his horrific aesthetics), renditions that somehow made the original versions worse?
Guy was obviously talented but I don't think he's the best judge of his strengths. There's a couple of songs from Adore and Machina where the music videos manage to make the songs drastically worse for me.
I saw them play Mellon Collie too. Did they play their > 25 minute version of XYU? Christ, everyone but Billy Corgan was bored 15 minutes into that but it just kept going and going and going...
Since I don't go to live shows, I tend to just have the disappointment of finding out that I only like some of my favorite bands' albums, because the arc of their own musical careers doesn't match my own tastes.
Why can't performers just stay the same forever, producing a never-ending sequence of similar but distinct works?
> Why can't performers just stay the same forever, producing a never-ending sequence of similar but distinct works?
Because they're artists. Even the record company-manufactured acts consider themselves artists.
On a human level, they're already performing the same pieces of music thousands of times - in rehearsals, concerts, recordings. It must get incredibly tedious after a while. You want them to write the same type of music all their lives as well? You monster! :-P
There is one English psychedelic outfit I like called "Ozric Tentacles". Every album is pretty much identical. And it turns out that I really like that album, so I have bought it ten times over the years, plus a couple of live albums.
This happens in part because whenever the people behind Ozric Tentacles want to make something different from their trademark sound, they'll usually put it out under another name. If you go to their site right now the front page advertises recent albums from two different side projects with even sillier names than "Ozric Tentacles".
(The Ozrics are far from the only band to do this, they're just the first example that comes to mind.)
There are other bands I like where every album is something different. King Crimson, for instance, is a different lineup for pretty much every album. Same bandleader, some people return to perform in multiple incarnations of the band, some are only there for one album and some tour dates. I love some of their albums and some are flat for me. I'd still grab another one if I heard that Fripp had declared that the current assemblage of musicians he was working with was an incarnation of King Crimson, because the albums that work for me work really well. If it's a dud I just consider it a down payment on the next hit.
Despite having seen them live a few times, I only own one Ozric Tentacles as I figured there’s no need to buy any of the others. :)
I always figured that the members got their musical satisfaction from their side projects. Thought I haven’t listened to them in years, I actually preferred Eat Static which was formed by two of the Ozrics. Similarly, another band I listened to at the time, System 7 was formed by members of Gong.
This was around the time I was discovering what’s now called “electronic dance music”. As a music listener, EDM was much more exciting and interesting than much of the guitar-based music in the mid-nineties.
I mean, there's the odd band I like everything of (eg, Jethro Tull), but other times either the "new stuff" isn't "right", or -- when I come to a band late in their career -- I work backwards only to discover I don't care for their early stuff.
I always found it amazing that Deftones managed to change their sound with each of their 9 albums over ~25 years, never fell off quality-wise* and never alienated their fanbase (even if some of those releases weren't 100% to everyone's taste).
It's very rare for a group to avoid the "churn out crap" stage of a musical career.
I always thought Foo fighters were pretty great. I listened to them a lot in the 90s. I looked up their best hits a few years ago, and I was shocked by how many incredible songs they have.
They headlined Glasto a few years ago. It’s an amazing gig, I watched it on YouTube, really incredible interacting with the crowd, some really special moments.
A good live performance from an artist like that is all about visual and rhythmic synchronization with the lights and the dancing audience and about live EQ and effects tuned to the sound system in the venue. So no, it won't be the same.
If you get utterly fucked up with perception altering substances it won't really matter though.
It feels like they're also prime candidates for making a tour with them as actual robots (or holograms), so they wouldn't even need to tour themselves.
I didn't go in the past because I'd heard their shows had a rave-like atmosphere. I have no idea if that's true, but it put me off. But maybe I won't have to worry about that so much when I'm one of a bunch of middle-aged people at a reunion concert by Daft Punk in their 60s.
Some folks don't like to deal with a swarming mass of tweaked out people. They just don't.
As someone who survived early 90s acid house and rave culture in the Bay Area, people falling over, spilling things on you, or being rambling goofs for hours on end had a limited life span. Frankly, a mosh pit was more comfortable, because there you at least KNEW what was expected and how to counter.
While many raves are like that, many others are not. I do agree that the ones that are like that are annoying. But I wouldn’t not go to any rave-like scenes just because it may end up that way. I’d lose out on too much, personally.
The tour kinda writes itself - call it the One More Time tour, and prior put out a video rebuilding to the tune of Technologic. I am sad, but not sold I won't get to see them live eventually.
I wouldn't discount the possibility of one-off reunion shows in the future, provided they parted on good terms (and that's usually the case when a band has been together 20+ years)
(FWIW, I was very smug that I got a ticket to one of LCD Soundsystem's goodbye shows. It was awesome. They reunited a few years later, released albums and resumed touring ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )
I get the joke, but the literalist inside me wants to always point out when I hear this that it's not as though he stops being the founder of Microsoft in the few seconds he stops to pick up money.
He doesn't lose money by picking up money. It's more than likely less than the daily market fluctuation of a single stock of MSFT, but stopping to pick up money doesn't interrupt or halt his income in any way.
It was my very first concert, and honestly I probably didn't even appreciate it enough at the time (though I loved it), due to lack of perspective and being a teenager, but wow did I get lucky :)
Don't mean to twist the knife, but I saw them live and it was one of the best concerts I've ever been to :).
I've seen concerts with better music in small venues (DJ Spooky), I've seen crazier concerts (BHole Surfers) and more sensory beating ones (Chemical Brothers), but never one that was such a blast as theirs.
Came here to say this. After missing 2010 I set aside some money so that if a concert was announced anywhere in the world I could drop everything and go. Sadly it doesn't look like that will happen now.
I think they probably knew they had a bit of an issue in terms of live shows in that they had a pretty divergent audience it'd be very hard to please. It was already a bit of a marvel how well they combined their three albums into one show in 2007 and they were still pretty firmly a dance act at this stage (which I'd say has blurred a lot since as Discovery and RAM become increasingly dominant over Homework in mainstream recognition)
Outside of doing seated gigs (ie something very firmly to set the tone in advance) I'm not sure how you could clearly set a tone that wouldn't upset a large portion of the audience. I'd skip a seated gig for sure.
Plus the demand would be off the charts. Horrifically expensive tickets bought maybe a year in advance. That'd be a lot of pressure to include hits that may not fit very well in (e.g. thinking of how Digital Love was left outta the 2007 show, which was absolutely the right move)
I remember the first time I heard and saw the "Around the World" video. It must have been summer of 1997(?), when MTV still played music videos and they played the "weirder" ones late at night. Was poking online at stuff and had the TV on in the other room and I heard this weird (as in different) song come on, head to the other room to see that strange music video and I was immediately hooked. They only showed the artist at the beginning of it, so I had to stay up another 2 or 3 hours until the entire segment repeated itself to catch who it actually was.
I remember very vividly the first time I listened to Daft Punk. I was maybe 16 years old (circa 2003) and was one of the first times I was traveling without my parents. I was on a skydiving trip with my instructor and crew. At night, there was a big party at the DZ, and at a certain time the DJ dropped "One more time".
I was talking to someone and went "wait a second, I need to do something". I walked up to the DJ booth and asked him "Man, what is this song you are playing?!"
He smiled, pulled up a CD cover for Discovery and said "Congrats, you have been daft punked".
Such a powerful track... it kickstarted my passion for house and EDM in general.
"I had to stay up another 2 or 3 hours until the entire segment repeated itself to catch who it actually was."
Ah, the days when phones were on the wall with a cord too.
At least MTV did still play music back then. And the record industry wonders why file sharing sites took off? I loved limewire because I could find songs I liked, then I would grab everything else that person had and I discovered so much new content - I bought more CDs than I ever would have otherwise simply because I discovered stuff I didn't even know existed. I still haven't found anything that could match that discovery experience; it's kind of crazy really.
It's crazy how Youtube is the MTV of our dreams. If I could have had access to just the music videos on Youtube in 1995, I would have thought it was the greatest invention in history.
I am kind of glad to hear that Daft Pank is over and I say this as someone who their music means a lot to. The arc of their art is complete and there is nowhere left for them to go without it becoming forced, awkward or irrelevant: teenagers with attitude and samplers to elder statesmen recording with an orchestra.
As this is HN, does anyone remember their more interesting dives into technology: Daft Club [2] and the multi-angle DVD of D.A.F.T. [3]?
This quote [4] about Daft Club, and the state of music on the internet, from 2001 is really interesting in hindsight:
> It's great to find a new channel where there is an open access, open door to more, but not more than had to be done before. It's establishing a connection between people that listen to our music and ourselves. There's no limits of time, and it helps people get and listen to this music. A track that could have been done today can be online tomorrow. The other thing is to really express ourselves through the Internet.
> ...
> Napster is a cool thing with us. The important thing is to make a difference. Napster is a positive thing because it raises questions, it raises issues.
[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0800022/
[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20020804191122/http://www.daftcl...
[3] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0279758/
[4] https://web.archive.org/web/20070609232158/http://music.yaho...