LA Weekly

You can almost see their personality in this shot

photographs by Timothy Norris

The only notation I have from the Daft Punk show last night is in this illegible scribble – we were all pretty much bouncing as one as I was trying to write it. It reads, “I am the Brainwasher.” That's it, a reminder to mention something about their song, “Brain Washer,” from Human After All. I can't remember what I'm supposed to tell you, though. For all the beauty of the Daft Punk experience, and it is one of the most inventive stage shows ever presented (they could take this baby to the Vegas strip, easily), it's hard to capture in words.

The first hint of meaning in Daft Punk's show comes with note number one, a G, from the “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” theme. All five notes play and those of us up on the plateau with the pyramid stare in wonder at the two chrome helmeted visitors just below the center eye. Daft Punk is playing at Vegoose, Vegoose. What will they deliver? The same, more or less, as in L.A. -- the nature of the programming interplay between light and sound makes improvisation difficult. I haven't really seen the show described very well, so I'll try here for the unfortunate souls who missed them this summer. This was the final American show of the year, though they're hitting Mexico City soon. Anyway ...

A pyramid in the middle, with a grid of tube lights framing/mirroring the triangle in the middle. Behind, a massive rectangular LED lighting panel, like a huge piece of fabric but very pixillated. The three pieces – pyramid, grid and panel -- interact with each other. Colors on the grid complement the panel and the pyramid, move from reds to pinks to blues to blinding white. But the beautiful part of the presentation is the restraint -- if you can call it that -- the way the pyramid, the lighting system, the music, slowly unfold like a blossoming flower. At first, simplicity. Spotlights poking out from the darkness like saucers in the sky. Over the next two hours, the technology advances, whites and blues move to more vivid colors. Intricate light patterns on the grid move and transform. These patterns get more surreal and complex as the show progresses. It's like the pyramid has something to prove, like in Close Encounters when, after those initial five notes, the big spaceship starts rocking with deep, tuba-like tones, then improvises. The pyramid does the same thing. It flexes its muscle, displays Tron-like grids, freaks out, starts a rapid-fire slide show that races through photographs, images. By “Le Funk,” holy crap the pyramid was nuts.

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Random observations on dancing at Vegoose and elsewhere:

photographs by Timothy Norris

Shins fans don't dance. I know this because it was at the beginning of this show that I first discovered that my wristband was in fact MAGIC and offered me backstage access. And free food. And free cocktails. And free hookers. So I walked confidently past security and within thirty seconds I was standing backstage as the Shins, cute as buttons and dressed as chess pieces, performed one of their gentle little ditties. I was ten feet away. My verdict: I would think it would be a little depressing to be the Shins and watch their crowd not dance. Seldom, in fact, move a muscle. Out in front of them, a sea of stationary heads. A few bobble heads, sure. But the asses, they don't wiggle. They must have read Sasha Frere-Jones' recent New Yorker diatribe.

Lame camera phone shot by Roberts backstage at the Stooges.

The best onstage dancers, better than M.I.A.'s, were the S-1Ws, who, for the past two decades, have been Public Enemy's security team/onstage dance troupe. Dressed in fatigues and sporting thousand-yard-stares and deep, resigned frowns, the two troops stood on opposite sides of the stage and did the Minimal Mambo, which is what David Foster Wallace calls his variation of it in Infinite Jest. Basically, stand like a statue and do not move but for the vaguest little pinky flick to the rhythm. The S-1Ws do a variation involving basically one arm movement maybe every thirty seconds. It's a deliberate, militaristic maneuver, and packs a punch.

Iggy salutes the crowd while our hero, Mike Watt, pushes Fun House forward.

I've been seeing a lot of fist pumping at many different kinds of shows. Like weird, nearly fascistic fist pumping. At Mastodon, at the Queens of the Stone Age, a lot of it at Justice a few weeks back at the Fonda in L.A. At Daft Punk people were flat-out dancing – and jumping and freaking and rolling and fucking and Losing Their Proverbial Shit -- but the fists were all in the air, hitting lockstep with the kick drum. At a performance by the reigning worst band in the world, Infected Mushroom, lead singer Erez Eisen pumped his fist the whole time. When it's just a few people, it's not as evident. But when you're standing side stage as the Stooges kick out “Dirt”and all these dudes all amped up and pumping their fists, it really starts to look like a Youth March of some sort. I guess it's just a show of unity, but it's kind of scary, especially these ambivalent days. When you see the youth and they're saluting so forcefully, you worry about who's taking them where. Hopefully it's Daft Punk and not Infected Mushroom.

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Vegoose Music Festival, Las Vegas, Saturday, October 27.
By Randall Roberts

Back and forth we walk, through fairway-cut grass, soft and padded on practice fields, the kind that feels really good beneath bare feet. Vegoose day one, and everything is neat and tidy near UNLV. We flow in early, a gentle forest-fire haze coating the sunrays with gauze, we the fresh-faced and willing. In the daytime, it all seems so simple out here. People wander, lounge on blankets, mingle, like we're in a 21st century treeless Seurat. A maintenance guy sweeps up little bits of trash into a dustpan like he's a theater usher, as if in six hours hence we'll ever know the difference. Vegoose: two days, 27 performances, only two of whom, M.I.A. and Blonde Redhead, feature women. The rest are dudes. Most of the shoes are either Chuck Taylors or skate shoes. A few flip flops.

The set-up's simple: Three stages, each with its own sad, unclever name -- Double Down, Snake Eyes and Jokers Wild – lined in a row, a few football field lengths away from each other. Triangulated at the top is a row of food vendors for the grease to be slathered later on in the night, and booze purveyors for the eventual drenching. There's a ferris wheel, V.I.P. sections, an artists' compound, where there is free food, drink, massage, everything necessary to relax. Throughout the acreage, enough dope to kill Cypress Hill. It is smoked and smoked hard, and the wonderfully porous and unconcerned gate security lend an air of relaxation to the proceedings. A few cops on horseback aren't very stealth, to say the least. (You could have hauled in an LSD lab, basically.)

Or, another, equally accurate take, as uttered by a passerby to his friend, “I can smell the roofies in the air.”

More to come as this, the second day, progresses. I've got notes, but it's a lot to digest, and I'm missing Ghostface Killah right now. But yesterday, the Battles were great, the Shins dressed like chess pieces, Iggy and the Stooges performed Fun House and then some. Mastodon declared their intentions early on: "We came to please the wicked." They pleased us. Queens of the Stone Age's Josh Homme theorized: "Everybody knows you dance like you fuck," and for the next four hours I saw a lot of horrifying fuckers. The highlight of last night? Daft Punk, of course. Don't worry, you'll hear all about it, and more. In a nutshell: a lot of people saw God. And I'm pretty sure something weird landed on the mountain behind them. I've got this one photo that I'm having a hard time explaining.

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