Daft Punk @ Bell Centre, August 7
Aug. 9th, 2007 09:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petroniaIt was awesome and maybe lived up to 95% of the hype. The Bell Centre is an awful venue in a lot of ways so no show there will ever live up to 100% of the hype, I suspect (have griped about this enough so just as an example: bottled water at $4.75, no drinks or empty bottles allowed in from outside, no drinking fountain, and the bathroom taps run HOT WATER ONLY. Yeah, I saw someone faint, and the opening act wasn't even through). Plus we didn't have tickets for the floor, which were standing room only. If last time was any indication it would've been impossible to see a thing unless one squeezed to the front, but at least it was a Dance Party down there. Though more for the DJ than for The Rapture or Daft Punk themselves. Much of the crowd clearly had dressed for the SAT afterparty; lots of gold lamé. XD At this point I'm a little disappointed I didn't go but... Tuesday.
Kavinsky played before and after The Rapture. At least, I assume it was Kavinsky because his name was on the bill, but I've never learnt to tell which Ed Banger dude was which because they always travel in packs. XD; I think it was SebastiAn with him this time, and there were up to three guys at the mixing board at one point. They sounded really good and the crowd loved it. Probably the sports stadium acoustics and atmosphere suit this kind of banging-yet-playful electro. OTOH I've never been to one of the big mainstream dance parties at the Bell Centre either (because they cost like 150$ apiece).
The Rapture kind of hurt my ears - the sound was really loud all night, but one notices the sonic assault more when there's a frontman yowling like that. XD Ced didn't know them at all. I was surprised by how many of their songs I was familiar with, though, and how much I enjoyed hearing them. I would've said that they were a band I fairly liked on record, that is, but not so much that I'd know the words to their songs or anything. Also, I was not aware that there was a saxophone on "Sister Saviour".
The other girl from work, A., is a big fan of The Rapture and said she was disappointed that they weren't more "energetic". I did find it surprising that not many people danced or were flipping out. In retrospect I don't think it has as much to do with the band or the crowd as the size of the venue. It's like heating a big pot of water versus half a teakettle's worth - you have to pour way more energy into the container to get the contents moving.
We were stage left, row C in the reds - good seats by most standards. Ced and I tried to take pictures with our cel phones but I doubt they amount to much. Here's a Pitchfork article with photos of the light show and participants, and no doubt there are a billion others on Flickr, but soundless stills don't do it justice. At one point I had a vivid fantasy that the roof was going to cave in, and maybe after that Daft Punk's pyramid would take off in a cloud of white smoke and rise into the stratosphere, colour LEDs still winking and pulsating to the beat until they became one star among many. Basically it was how a sci-fi writer in 1980 might have imagined a twenty-first century rock show. I like how Bangalter and de Homem-Christo could actually be robots or blue-skinned aliens and still no one would know (or, for that matter, care).
Ced pointed out, too, that there was something worshipful about it. Human After All, et cetera. I guess the schtick of Daft Punk is that only by adopting robot-ness (robot-hood? robot-dom?) is it possible to engage in discourse about being human, anyway - you have to take yourself out of the frame of reference, somehow. It's a little bit naive by 2007 standards, like Asimov. But so is the way they assimilate old-skool electro and disco to their music. Naiveté attainable only by Parisian sophisticates. XD
Afterward we walked to Concordia, where Ced had parked. A. and I wanted bubble tea but the cafés were closed, so we went to Hawaiian Cocktail and got smoothies instead. Ced was going home but bumped into friends so ended up staying downtown longer than we did.
Kavinsky played before and after The Rapture. At least, I assume it was Kavinsky because his name was on the bill, but I've never learnt to tell which Ed Banger dude was which because they always travel in packs. XD; I think it was SebastiAn with him this time, and there were up to three guys at the mixing board at one point. They sounded really good and the crowd loved it. Probably the sports stadium acoustics and atmosphere suit this kind of banging-yet-playful electro. OTOH I've never been to one of the big mainstream dance parties at the Bell Centre either (because they cost like 150$ apiece).
The Rapture kind of hurt my ears - the sound was really loud all night, but one notices the sonic assault more when there's a frontman yowling like that. XD Ced didn't know them at all. I was surprised by how many of their songs I was familiar with, though, and how much I enjoyed hearing them. I would've said that they were a band I fairly liked on record, that is, but not so much that I'd know the words to their songs or anything. Also, I was not aware that there was a saxophone on "Sister Saviour".
The other girl from work, A., is a big fan of The Rapture and said she was disappointed that they weren't more "energetic". I did find it surprising that not many people danced or were flipping out. In retrospect I don't think it has as much to do with the band or the crowd as the size of the venue. It's like heating a big pot of water versus half a teakettle's worth - you have to pour way more energy into the container to get the contents moving.
We were stage left, row C in the reds - good seats by most standards. Ced and I tried to take pictures with our cel phones but I doubt they amount to much. Here's a Pitchfork article with photos of the light show and participants, and no doubt there are a billion others on Flickr, but soundless stills don't do it justice. At one point I had a vivid fantasy that the roof was going to cave in, and maybe after that Daft Punk's pyramid would take off in a cloud of white smoke and rise into the stratosphere, colour LEDs still winking and pulsating to the beat until they became one star among many. Basically it was how a sci-fi writer in 1980 might have imagined a twenty-first century rock show. I like how Bangalter and de Homem-Christo could actually be robots or blue-skinned aliens and still no one would know (or, for that matter, care).
Ced pointed out, too, that there was something worshipful about it. Human After All, et cetera. I guess the schtick of Daft Punk is that only by adopting robot-ness (robot-hood? robot-dom?) is it possible to engage in discourse about being human, anyway - you have to take yourself out of the frame of reference, somehow. It's a little bit naive by 2007 standards, like Asimov. But so is the way they assimilate old-skool electro and disco to their music. Naiveté attainable only by Parisian sophisticates. XD
Afterward we walked to Concordia, where Ced had parked. A. and I wanted bubble tea but the cafés were closed, so we went to Hawaiian Cocktail and got smoothies instead. Ced was going home but bumped into friends so ended up staying downtown longer than we did.
