Daft Punk ALIVE 2007 NYC

Last Thursday I took the bus up to NYC for my personal event of the summer, the Daft Punk show at Keypspan park in Coney Island.

Keyspan park is the stadium for the minor league Brooklyn Cyclones, and ended up being a great venue for this show. As we got onto the field, we caught most of the opening act, Kavinsky, an awesome DJ duo that were the surprise of the show. They didn't play on the stage, they had a little area to the right where they were DJing. This made the transition to the next act easier.


They finished abruptly, and second opener the Rapture started playing immediately after a brief introduction. I guess they were okay, but they didn't fit with the show at all, especially after the awesome-ness of Kavinsky. They finished their set and the crew put up a huge curtain in front of the set as the trailer for Daft Punk's new movie Electroma played. Then Kavinsky reappeared at their station at the side and DJed some more while the extensive light show Daft Punk is famous for was constructed. This took a little too long, and the crowd started becoming antsy. Kavinsky countered this by unexpectedly playing "Killing in the Name Of" followed by "99 Problems" then bizarrely "Holding Out For a Hero."


They ended their second extended set and the lights went out. The curtain opened and the duo was barely visible with fog streaming around them in their robot suits. They started with a ROBOT vs HUMAN argument that went into Robot Rock. It was an unbelievable light show. It started out fairly basic, just using white lights and strobes, then the pyramid with solid colors. As the show went on the complexity of the displays continued to increase until full high resolution images were flashing on the pyramid during "Human After All". When they came out for their last encore the pyramid was kept dark while HUMAN and TOGETHER flashed on the back wall. Then two orange lines slowly worked their way through the triangle lights until it got to where Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter were. Once this happened, the lights dropped and neon orange tubing around their suits glowed while they DJed the last song before once again stepping down from their pyramid to reveal the neon orange DAFT PUNK logo on the back of their jackets.


Setlist (taken from another blog):
Robot Rock / Oh Yeah -> Touch It -> Voyager / Technologic / Television Rules The Nation / Crescendolls -> Steam Machine -> Around the World -> Harder Better Faster Stronger / Burnin' / Too Long / Face to Face / One More Time / Aerodynamic / Forget About the World? / The Brainwasher / Prime Time of Your Life / Rollin' and Scratchin' / The Brainwasher -> Da Funk -> Daftendirekt -> Superheroes // Human After All // Together -> Music Sounds Better With You -> One More Time (reprise)

Crappy video I shot of the encore, check youtube for more:


Two other things: Daft Punk enlisted people with video camera and gave them film in order to use their videos to create a live DVD of this show. In addition, they are going to be releasing a CD from when they performed in France as well. So if my weak descriptions aren't enough, check these out.