Earphunk as Daft Phunk Live at the Georgia Theatre (01-17-14) and my reaction to festivals.

First of all, I would like to take the opportunity to welcome myself back to the blogosphere. My last post here was about The Black Keys show at Lakewood in May of last year, so it's been a while. I've taken some time off, mostly due to the fact that YouTube and I had a little altercation where my account was disabled for a while (I guess they don't like it when Paul McCartney concert video gets posted... my bad). That problem has been rectified and now we can get back to business. This past Friday night, thankfully the Georgia Theatre had an act I wanted to go see. Thanks to the big Festival Lineup drop day that was January 15th, I had been jonesin' to go see a show. Earphunk was a band I hadn't heard that much about, but when I heard that they play a set of Daft Punk covers, I was in. Daft Punk is probably the number one band on my "haven't seen them live" list right now, and unfortunately they have not announced any tour dates any time soon (I still have the "like a little kid believes in Santa Claus" belief that Bonnaroo could do something there). Well, thanks to Earphunk (who will now be referred to as Daft Phunk), I got to see some of these songs live. They played a set of their own stuff, which was pretty solid. Think of Dumpstaphunk without lyrics and a little more jam band like. After they finished their original set, there was an intermission followed by Daft Phunk.

When the band came back out, they were all wearing blue Puma track suits and some were wearing LED sunglasses, as can be seen in the picture from the beginning of this post. They hit a lot of awesome Daft Punk tracks, such as Television Rules the Nation, Robot Rock, Voyager, and others including this little diddy:  

Around the World

It was really interesting to see the "robot voice" done in person and it was done via this tube mic that the lead guy put into his mouth. They definitely played a lot of the classics, but they also got some Random Access Memories in there, including the lead track off the album:

Give Life Back to Music

 

  But they didn't stop there with Random Access Memories, as everyone knew this song was coming...

Get Lucky

I've got to say though that my favorite moment of the night is when they played what is probably my favorite non Random Access Memories Daft Punk song, and the touch pad was definitely needed here:

Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

It's amazing to me the flack that cover acts get. FIrst of all with these guys, they have original music too, so that helps take away some of the hate. Here's another great thing about cover/tribute acts. People in smaller towns that wouldn't normally get the big acts in can go see these smaller acts, have a great time, and save a little cash. This show only cost me $12 and I had a blast. They did a great job of adding in their more jam-style influence to these mostly electronic tracks. It was a great blending of styles and they had an awesome laser show to go along with the rest of the production. Overall, this was a fantastic show that I would recommend to anyone that likes Daft Punk or funky jam bands (I actually did tell a couple of friends in Atlanta to go see them the next night when they played Terminal West).  They ended things off with an encore of one of their most known songs:

One More Time

Okay, I'll end this post with a few words on the massive festival lineup drops from last Wednesday. Robert already posted a lot of great information on all of this earlier on here, so I'm just going to drop some opinions. My two favorite lineups were those of Hangout and Firefly. It seems like all the festivals are getting OutKast, so that kind of dilutes the "special" aspect of the OutKast reunion. I'm not complaining, because I really want to see them. Bonnaroo (who aren't dropping their lineup until February 19th) have got a challenge in front of them after the other lineups dropped. Here's to hoping that they too can amaze. Right now, I'd like to go to Counterpoint (mainly for OutKast and Foster the People) and one other festival. I'd imagine it will be Bonnaroo, but if that lineup disappoints then who knows. All we can do now is wait for the 19th of February, so watch this space.