To a modern Daft Punk fan, just the thought of a Daft Punk tour can evoke several strong emotions ranging from happy memories, bitter regret, or melancholy aspirations of one day seeing them live. This is the case because Daft Punk’s latest tour ended in December of 2007, long before many of us (including myself) even became fans and long enough ago that many youngsters who did see them live are now full blown adults, not to mention the people who've been fans since the 90's. I have been conducting a survey over the past few months that has reached nearly 200 entries and so far it has found that the average age of an active Daft Punk fan is about 20-21 years old. Many of us were too young to see them live or hadn’t become fans yet. Some of those surveyed were as young as 13 years old which means they would have been babies at the time of Daft Punk’s latest tour. If you did get to see Daft Punk live, am I making you feel old yet? Are you feeling nostalgic of the good old days and of getting to see arguably the most exciting live electronic act of all time? Either way, Daft Punk fans clamor over the thought of Daft Punk touring...past and present. So today I am going to dive deep into Daft Punk’s tour history starting in 1995 and eventually I will discuss my thoughts on what the future may hold.
As you can see from the videos, these 1995 shows were nothing like modern EDM festivals, rather, they were proper raves where people barely paid attention to the DJ and instead focused on having a good time. Probably only a small percentage of people that attended these early Daft Punk shows went because they saw or heard Daft Punk were going to be there. Undoubtedly a majority of the people at these shows were there for the party and it’s likely many of them didn’t even flinch when Daft Punk were announced to spin next in a long list of DJs. The most notable thing Daft Punk had produced up to this point was “Da Funk'' which would increasingly gain popularity throughout 95 with the help of their live shows and fellow DJs, such as The Chemical Brothers, also spinning the track. It is not clear if Daft Punk were even aware that they were touring at the time or if they were just playing a lot of gigs and afterwards decided to say it was a tour. Either way, we’ll count it as a tour because that’s what they called it in their 1997 press release. Overall this tour helped Daft Punk gain exposure throughout Europe and by the start of 1996 they had become a well known and hyped presence in the electronic world that many record labels were trying to sign.
"Daftendirektour" (October 2 - December 4, 1997)
Below are the 9 angles used in making the above video. These angles were made available on D.A.F.T.: A Story About Dogs, Androids, Firemen and Tomatoes (1999). There is also a short video from the lighting company explaining the light system Daft Punk used on their tour. It is not clear which show/shows the clips come from but it can be assumed this is how most of the "Daftendirektour" shows looked. Daft Punk say in a November 1997 interview that their full show is 1 hour and 45 minutes long but it seems not every show was allotted the same amount of time so some shows received shorter sets than others. The only known audio recording of one of Daft Punk’s “Daftendirektour” sets comes from Daft Punk’s show in Birmingham, England at the Que Club on November 8th, 1997. In 2001 a 45 minute long excerpt of the show was released online via Daft Punk’s experimental website “daftclub.com.” Later that year the recording was released with the title “Alive 1997” on CD, vinyl, and cassette. It is supposedly Daft Punk’s favorite set of theirs from the tour which is why they chose to release that audio instead of a different one. It is thought that Daft Punk could not release the full set because of copyright issues with some of the tracks they mixed later on. Regardless, the 45 minutes from Que Club is the only audio from the “Daftendirektour” available to the public. Listen to “Alive 1997” below. "Alive Summer 2006" (April 29 - November 11, 2006)
Daft Punk debuted the robots in 2001 upon the release of their second album, Discovery. In 2001 they played one spontaneous live show in London, England for a benefit to aid Afghanistan. Then in 2002 they played one live show at the Winter Music Conference in Miami, Florida. For both of these shows they appeared unmasked. It would not be until April 29th, 2006 when they would finally play a live show as the robots at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. This performance has gone down in history as being a defining moment for the live electronic music scene. Daft Punk performed atop an LED pyramid flanked by massive triangular light structures and a large LED backdrop. They mixed tracks from all three of their studio albums and put on a light show like no other. Their show was hailed as being an audio, visual, and technologic marvel. Even today, 14 years later, people still consider it the best performance the festival has ever seen. An upcoming Coachella documentary will touch upon this iconic performance at the end of this month (READ MORE HERE). After spending considerable amounts of time and money making this show come together, it only made sense that they do a world tour with it. So began the “Alive Summer 2006” tour.
While the content is plentiful, it should be noted that these videos and audio do not come close to accurately portraying the energy and magnitude of these shows. Many fans who saw them live make this very clear when telling other fans about their experiences. The screaming fans, the rumble of the bass, the chest thumping beats, and the intricacies of the light show just cannot be duplicated on a 480p YouTube video.
"Alive 2007" (June 10 - December 22, 2007)
Much of what was said about the “Alive Summer 2006” tour can be said about “Alive 2007” since the shows were almost identical. There are some notable differences though. One of the main changes between the two tours was the substitution of the track “Burnin’” instead of “Technologic” after “Harder Better Faster Stronger.” In 2007 Daft Punk also added an encore to the show featuring state of the art red EL Wire which outlined a black version of their suits and helmets. They integrated the EL Wire lined suits into the light show of the encore by cleverly timing their illumination with the climax and drop of the musical build-up which was paralleled by the stage with it’s own build-up in the form of a red line racing back and forth until it eventually crawls up the pyramid into the robots. They also modified a relatively tame portion of the set where “Touch it” is chanted for a few bars and spiced it up by changing the chant to “F*ck it.” Additionally the light show was modified in portions throughout the show but this is partially due to the fact that the lighting was able to be modified manually by Daft Punk or the light engineers mid show just like the music. In a sense, the light show was also a live performance that varied slightly show to show. As Daft Punk put it, “we compare it to a Broadway musical. There’s a lot of people involved, and every night is a different performance, even though it’s the same music and the same show."
Below: Most of the merchandise from the "Alive 2007" tour.
Daft Punk decided to release a live album featuring the audio from this tour and they chose the audio from their performance at the Palais Omnisports Bercy in Paris, France. The live album was released on November 19th, 2007 before the tour had even ended. This meant that some people got to listen to the set before they saw it live! Some copies of the album in Japan and Australia even had hype stickers advertising the fact that you could still see them live in December, 2007. They also released a single featuring a mashup of two segments of the live show which featured "Around the World" and "Harder Better Faster Stronger." This live album and single would result in 2 Grammy Award wins. One for Best Electronic/Dance Album and another for Best Dance Recording for the single “Harder Better Faster Stronger (Alive 2007).” Daft Punk also famously joined Kanye West on stage at the 2008 Grammy awards (just months after the “Alive 2007” tour ended) where they brought out a bite sized version of the pyramid from their tour along with the red EL Wire suits which were later displayed at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles for a few years.
Over the years, Daft Punk’s “Alive Summer 2006” and “Alive 2007” tours have been largely grouped together and thought of as a single tour. This is aided by the fact that Daft Punk themselves refer to the two tours as “Alive 2006/2007” in the liner notes of the live album. It is a matter of semantics but I think it is important to distinguish the two tours because they are different no matter how similar they were. Below are some schematics from both 2006 and 2007.
Future
In case you weren’t keeping count, that’s a total of 4 tours Daft Punk have been on. The first starting in 1995 and the last ending in 2007. In a little under 13 years, Daft Punk played around 250+ shows but in the 13 years since their last tour ended, they’ve played a grand total of 4… 3 of which were Grammy performances. So here’s the question on everybody’s mind: will they ever tour again? The answer is both simple and complicated. Simply put, Daft Punk will tour again if they feel they have an innovative idea that will challenge them artistically. That is the core ideology Daft Punk follows throughout their career. The complicated part is whether or not they are even thinking of ideas for a tour at all. There’s no telling what Daft Punk might do next and that’s partially what gives them so much allure.
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AuthorI am a massive Daft Punk fan and collector. I enjoy researching and writing about their career and I have a bachelor's degree in history. Professional inquiries email me here. Archives
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