Looking Back on Daft Punk
Daft Punk Homework
Daft Punk will always remind me of two significant times in my life: a particularly interesting social scene of my twenties and becoming a father in my late thirties.
Music operates like a time machine for me, and I reckon it does for you as well. Any time I listen to Daft Punk’s first album Homework, even though the memories are hazy and jumbled, I am transported back to an apartment where my friends John and Patricia lived that became known as the United Nations.
We all used to hang out at Bennigan’s. I was a regular to the point I knew everybody: the other regulars, the semi-regulars, the college kids that only showed up on school holidays, even the wait staff and managers. To quote Gary Oldman in Leon the Professional, EVERYONE. So when new faces showed up, I noticed it.
One night a whole group of beautiful women walked in and occupied one of the tables in the elevated bar area. My buddies and I were at our usual corner and took notice. No one had ever seen them before, and they were soon the talk of the place. These were the type of people on the level of good-looking that’s intimidating, so even though everybody was talking about them nobody had the guts to talk to them. After a couple pints my friend A and I decided we were the ones to break the ice. If we talked to them, maybe everybody else would. We introduced ourselves and discovered they each had different accents. They were au pairs.
If you’re like I was, and your working-class ass never heard of au pairs, they’re like exchange students, but instead of going to school they take care of your kids and clean your house. I still don’t know how it all works, because I am still no where near the “let’s get an au pair” tax bracket, and at the time I didn’t care. What I cared about was I suddenly had a real life Rick Steve’s Europe in my social group, except instead of focusing on history and tourist attractions we talked about how we somehow all played the same games as kids (freeze tag must be encoded in our DNA) and laughed about how dumb our preconceptions were, ours about Europe and theirs about Texas.
One notable instance was when one of the women from France was poking fun at me for my accent and “where’s your cowboy hat?”, etc. I volleyed with something about eating snails and frog legs (both of which I have had and enjoyed BTW) and finished with the stereotypical Pepe Le Pew laugh. She gave me a weird look and asked, “What was that laugh?”
“You know. That’s the French laugh.” I did it again as if that would drive the point home. Stupidity on par with shouting slowly in your native language when you meet someone who doesn’t speak it. She raised her eyebrows and said flatly. “No one in France laughs like that.” Then we moved on to something else like why portion sizes in American restaurants are so massive.
When Bennigan’s would shut down we would migrate to John and Patricia’s apartment, and that’s how it became known as the United Nations. Homework was on heavy rotation on their stereo, which was fitting. A European group a bunch of Americans were digging.
A decade later, in memories clouded not by liquor or Spanish hash (airport security was a lot more relaxed before 9-11), but by lack of sleep and the exuberant mania of becoming a father, Daft Punk would again become a marker in time.
My wife and I split the days to try and get as much sleep as possible. I am a night owl, so I had the graveyard shift. Those nights were spent mostly on a pretty regular routine. Bath time, a bottle, a new diaper, and then we would just chill on the couch until he fell asleep. I didn’t want to put my little man to bed right away, so he would sleep in my arms while I watched TV. This was right at the beginning of Netflix, so I could fire up the Apple TV and sit for hours.
To take advantage of all this TV time I revisited shows I had enjoyed, but never took the time to watch regularly. Mostly stuff from Toonami. Ghost in the Shell. Cowboy Bebop. Animated science fiction stuff. This put me on a sci fi streak that eventually led me to watching Tron Legacy.
I had never seen the original, so it wasn’t really on my radar. However, Jeff Bridges is the Dude, I was on this science fiction kick, I had read somewhere that monochromatic high contrast aesthetics were good for brain development in babies, and Daft Punk did the score, so there you go. I watched it and loved it. I watched it with my wife, and she thought it was OK. I watched it with my son, and even though he couldn’t talk yet, I could tell from his reactions that he dug it. Tron Legacy has been a staple in our house ever since.
The first year of raising a child is a wild ride. You bring home a completely helpless little person, and in a dozen months they are walking and talking. Much like the days of random alcohol fueled adventures of my youth, that first year of parenthood is marked by lack of sleep and the exhilaration of life defined by discovery rather than routine. It all sped by in a blur, but any time I want to remember those frenzied days when we first had our baby boy I can put on Daft Punk’s score.
Music nerd side note: Daft Punk’s score of Tron Legacy was a collaboration with composer Joseph Trapanese who also worked on the Oblivion score with another French electronic musician: M83. I’m still waiting and hoping for a Trapanese collab with Justice.